Weeknote #35 What’s done is done

Ben Lidgey
Aug 31, 2018 · 3 min read

This week has been a slow one, what with the Bank Holiday Monday and lots of people still being off work. It has been one of those week where I have often been feeling that I have not achieved anything; I have not got things done.

As Head of DevOps a lot of my job is spent looking at getting things done better and quicker (a bit of a simplification but it will do for now). This means looking at a lot of metrics, data, value streams, thinking about topics like Kanban, work in progress (WIP), and what it means for a task to be done. This is shown in burn down charts, todo lists getting smaller, metrics improving.

This has rolled over into my personal life too. We have recently had a loft conversion completed, but have not moved our bedroom into it yet because there are a number of jobs that I have not done. Things like putting up shelves, lights. Looking at it though, we can move in without the shelves and some lights and those can be done earlier. If we were to define the work in agile terms the MVP may be “have a bed and curtains”, with the backlog for future releases to include shelves and lights. However for this I don’t really care. And here’s why.

At work we are starting on an organisational transformation. I am involved in the people and culture work stream. On Thursday I was facilitating a session with people from all over the organisation on the current culture, the future culture and getting ideas on how to get there. One fairly large topic of conversation was that some parts of the organisation have targets to meet, and this affects people’s perception of what their job is to just meeting the targets and not attending workshops, training, or reading updates on the transformation programme. Their understand of doing their jobs was doing the tasks to reach their defined target. The other stuff wasn’t considered as equally valuable tasks to do.

“person holding pencil and stick note beside table” by Marten Bjork on Unsplash

It made me re-think about what I have done this week. I have cooked meals for my family, gone shopping, put fuel in the car, checked bicycles, spent time with my family. Even at work I have done things, like facilitating the workshop, chairing a meeting, discussing upcoming work with team members. All of these things are good things to get done, but are often overlooked as “normal life”. Yet they are still valuable and often necessary.

So my challenge to you is to think about all the things you have done this week, and not just the “big ticket” items. I bet you have done a lot. I know I have.

Over and out.

Photo by Masaaki Komori on Unsplash

Ben Lidgey

Written by

I have always made things. Now I help others to make things by helping them to improve their Agile and DevOps practices, while always enjoying life to the max.

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