Adjust your dreams to align with reality and what's possible (focus on next steps)

Take one step at a time and focus on the water.
Maybe it's good, maybe it's not.  To dive in or not?

Dwelling--or really spending much time at all--on analyzing the way things are or why they are the way they are is kind of a messed up, useless waste of time but apparently we have to do it as humans.  I'd rather spend my time imagining the future and figuring out what I need to do to get there.

Focusing on where we want to go and figuring out how to get there is a really important and necessary thing for us to be happy.  We have to take one step at a time and crawl, then walk, then run there.  We want to imagine ourselves warping into the future, to the place where we'd rather be.  But it takes time to get there in reality and our imaginations are way faster than time and real-world processes are.

We need to make things happen in reality through our actions and by externalizing our vision to other people and the world around us.  This takes time and keeps us grounded in the now and thinking about what steps are required to execute next.  We have to keep our pace and sense of urgency high (by developing new, more complete and current visions) to get to the future fast enough or it could be gone by the time we get there. 

So be flexible in your vision and let it change because hopefully it will only get better or more realistic as you take the steps to getting there.  Don't just be a dreamer, be an adjuster of dreams to align with reality.

Failing happens

No matter how well we plan and try to control the outcomes, things will change and happen that we haven't anticipated and we have to adjust.  Being able to adjust is probably even more critical than being able to plan.

Being really structured and rigorous in our expectations is bad news if it prevents us from reacting when things happen or change.  Don't over-do your planning or over-set your expectations but do have and set expectations.

When your expectations aren't met rapidly go back to planning and adjusting mode and figure out how to respond to the situation at hand.  Blink.  Add this to your mental model for next time and continuously improve always and forever.

Managing Schedule Risk in an Agile Scrum Process

Managing time and the team in an agile scrum project is difficult but it's gotta get done. In all projects, we have to estimate what we're going to do and try to get it done. If we aren't getting it done, we have to either work more and meet our deadline or communicate to our sponsors how things are going to be different at the deadline or move the deadline out. It's all about delivery and customer service in the end. At any rate, typical software projects have two distinct parts, each requiring their own management techniques:

1. New feature development



2. Bug fix, customer service and support

Since we have to manage both of these types of work, and they behave very differently, we need to develop a language around getting things done to support effective communications within the delivery team and to our customer community. The choice we use at my company is Agile/Scrum, where we plan and deliver our work in 2-week increments called sprints. By doing this we're able to execute and significantly re-tweak our process every two weeks. We are given a quote-unquote new lease on life every two weeks; it should be a refreshing way to work and partner.

In our methodology, new feature development is handled by the Agile/Scrum methodology burndown method to track work. The burndown method is the typical agile/scrum way of tracking work: we create a definition of done in terms of scope and features, then estimate how many hours we think it will take to do it. Between the ScrumMaster and the team, we track how the hours are burning (up or down since maybe your last estimate wasn't great and there was unseen work) on a recurring basis and if we think our velocity is what it needs to be. If the velocity starts to slow down, the team addresses how to remove impediments and get the velocity up to such a degree that the project is scheduled to finish on time. If things don't go well, we figure out how to mitigate the risk with the customer.

Burnup is a different but important concept to understand and use to manage our work. Our example of using burnup here is a 50-hour max promise to the customer to deliver customer service. We don't have to provide all 50 hours in our example but we do want to know how much of this time we're spending because it's a distraction to the other part of the project since we can share resources and sharing resources is efficient. This method requires tracking ACTUAL hours spent, which is different from the burndown method. Note that this is a key difference from burndown, where we really only care about how many hours are left. We can see how many hours are left on a burndown type of project but what's potentially left on it is certain, whereas what's left in burndown is only estimated.

These two methods of burnup and burndown are two very different ways to think about work: the former is a picture of what's necessarily remaining and the latter is a guess of what's left. The latter is best mitigated by good planning and knowledge of what tasks and how much time is required to get to "done". Together, we use these two techniques to manage risk and communicate effectively.

Conclusion: We Can Now Manage Projects That Burn Time Up and Burn Time Down

By understanding how these types of work are different and how we can manage each, we're able to develop and speak a language about risk and progress making our velocity increase and our projects more fun.

How to Continuously Improve

Deming tells us to plan, do, check, then act. Is that all there is to it? Yes. But it's not that easy for a lot of people to do this. Why?

In more detail, here's the algorithm I use:

1. Plan a project or action based on your conversations with powerful and legitimate stakeholders.
   
2. Do the project or action according to plan. Do not deviate. Almost always there will be a gap between what was expected and what actually happened.
   
3. Check how big this gap is. Get feedback from the stakeholders. Note what to keep doing, stop doing, and start doing for next time. Make a plan to support what you want to keep, stop what isn't necessary, and start what's required.
   
4. Act on the plan.

Does this work for you? How do you modify this or do it differently? How does technology affect this? What tools do you use to support this process? Is there a different process? What is the hardest part about this? What makes this process break?

Planning Freaks People Out

People react differently to planning. Some like it, some hate it. Planning makes people think, commit, trust and eventually do work, perform, and risk exposing themselves. Their plans cause them to announce their intentions and make things public. That's scary for some, glorious for others.

An Answers.com definition of "plan" (the noun) is, "A proposed or tentative project or course of action." The word in the definition that I like is "tentative". It's funny because EVERYTHING is tentative! No one can predict the future or know the results. So why are we all so scared?

Expectations are another aspect of this. What do you expect? Why do you expect it? Do you have high expectations from yourself? Others? Products? Services? Things you make? Things made by others? We all have expectations but should we? Doesn't having them just hurt us? It's been said that "happiness is inversely proportionate to expectation." I would agree. So stop expecting and start planning 'cause none of us know anything ever.