There’s a misunderstanding floating around out there that Agile can only be executed by teams or collections of teams. If this were true, it would leave a lot of individual contributors and 1-person projects out of the Agile equation. In this post, I’ll attempt to debunk this limiting belief by sharing approaches that will absolutely allow you to bring pieces of the Agile mindset to how you do your work. In fact, if you’re on a team using Agile, you can still apply these approaches to your own work and help your team accomplish even more.
In a nutshell, the idea for individuals breaks down to paying attention to three key areas. I refer to them as The Three Fs.
F is for Focus
Focus is about making sure we concentrate on finishing (not just starting) the most valuable work. I describe Focus as having two parts:
- Making sure priorities are clear. If you own the vision of what you are working on, that might be up to you. If not, then you will need to champion yourself getting clarity on what you should work on and why.
- Influencing distractions. I use the word “influencing” here as you may not be able to eliminate all distractions. With a mindset of influence, however, you can allow yourself to try experiments and see what works regarding distractions. This includes making efforts to limiting your exposer to interruptions, reducing context switching, and limiting the amount of work in progress.
Here’s a quick list of a few specific habits you can experiment with related to creating focus:
- Setting your desk phone to go to voice mail
- Blocking time in your calendar for yourself every week
- Turning off automatic notifications in email, chat, IM applications, …
- Setting your cell phone to airplane mode
- If you have door, closing it, sit facing away from the door, and hang an available at X:XX sign
- If no door, setting up a signal and/or hanging a sign that explains it. For example, “If you see me with my headphones on, please pretend I’m not hear and send me an email or leave me a note on my whiteboard”
F is for Flow
Flow is about making sure we pay attention to the things that are in flight. I also describe Flow as having two parts:
- Visualizing your plan. Knowledge work is mostly invisible. We need to create situations that allow us to see it. With that in place, it will provide us with the ability to see what’s in the plan, what’s in flight, and what’s done.
- Getting things to done. If we spend a lot of time doing a little on a lot of things, we won’t get much done. We will, however, be busy and have a lot of things started. We really shouldn’t be rewarded for that behavior, but that’s another story.
For both of these, I recommend that you look at techniques like Personal Kanban (http://personalkanban.com). Visualization can be as simple as putting three pieces of masking tape on your desk to create the following:
This Week | Today | Doing | Done
With that in place, you could use sticky notes to represent the work and load your plan. This will help you see and manage your plan for the week, your plan for the day, and what you are actively working. You’ll get real feedback about how well you are doing at getting work to done. If you’d prefer an online option, look at Trello (http://trello.com). It’s free, it works on a lot of devices, it can be customized, and you can take advantage of some interesting way to automate things.
F is for Feedback
Feedback relates to creating continuous improvement loops for yourself. I describe Feedback as having, you guessed it, two parts:
- Reflecting at the end of the day. This daily discipline will allow us to get closure on the day and get a glimpse of what will be on our plate the next day.
- Reflecting at the end of the week. This Retrospective-like behavior is similar to the end of day reflection, but it will also allow us to see how we plan and execute for larger blocks of time.
Here’s how to go about it. At the end of each day, do a Plus/Delta (what worked/what would you change). Simply grab a piece of paper or a notebook and draw a line down the middle. On one side label it with a + (plus). On the other side label it with a Δ (delta). Now start with the + side and write down what worked well today for you. When you drain the tank on that side, move over to the Δ side and write down what you would change or do different.
At the end of the week, look at what you got done and review your daily reflections. It will create opportunities for you to recognize what you are really able to get done and what things end up getting in your way. Additionally, keeping those stickies around can also make it easier if you need to produce some type of weekly report.
Wrapping Up
There you have it. Some specific to dos designed to help individuals learn to adopt an Agile Mindset. Give them a try and let me know what you learn. You can always reach out to me via email at FrankS@FreeStandingAgility.com.
Thank you for reading.
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