Lately I heard a remark along the lines of “…they are worried that with agile we are going to do less stuff” and I replied “It’s not a worry, it’s a certainty”. It made me wonder about the relationships between speed, agility and consistency. More and more often I find myself in situation where I feel the need to slow down agility. I don’t think that going faster should be the goal of agile, but, if anything, maybe, a by-product. ...
A lot of retrospectives and conversations I’m involved with lately revolve around the topic of time scarcity or the need for better time management. When people finally can take some time (ah!) to reflect upon what’s causing time scarcity, one common source are interruptions. “Can you ignore notifications?”, more than one person asked me, disgruntled. I can, because I turned off most notifications on most apps. Are you even allowed to do that, at your job? Think about it. ...
Here’s an idea: no company culture is dysfunctional. Even though I’m the first one who usually and gladly makes a list of observations about which and how many dysfunctions I encounter when I meet with a new team, I learned to re-frame my approach. It’s not easy to re-frame the view that all dysfunctions are bad. Truth to be told, and an idea for a follow-up article, I have a sort of Cultural Dysfunctions Bingo™ in my head whenever I start working with a new organization or team. ...
“Open your calendar, cancel all your recurring meeting” I’ve seen this kind of advice. You probably have seen it too. Many times articles and guides about how to reclaim your time, describe recurring meetings as one of the first poisonous element to eradicate from your agenda. But why? For me, recurring meetings are good. They are a pillars around which I get work done. While working on multiple projects, I can space out meetings in a predictable way for everybody working with me. ...