Light Agile. Improving the process for a startup.
As a software engineer, I’ve got seriously excited about Agile methodology. It is perfect, isn’t it? Undoubtedly, it was a huge breakthrough for software development itself. It is so exciting to create cards, move them around, enjoy the flexibility of the process.
Today, I would like to question it for startup building though. And also, I would like to suggest a lighter way of moving those cards around.
One day working on a startup I came to conclusion that “Done” section of the board exists only for our own self-esteem. At the end of a sprint, we could sit there with a cider or beer feeling good about ourselves thinking how clever we were because we did so much. The question I asked myself was how valuable this “Done” section had been for our development process and could we remove it from our board. What will happen then?
Here is the thing, we didn’t need the “Done” section for our startup. At all. If you are all that flexible all you need is to care about a single task. We moved so quickly. In fact, our sprint became a single task.
Therefore, I would like to suggest to do simpler iteration. Iteration through tasks. You’ve done the task and then the team assesses backlog to decide what to do next. It makes the whole process simpler, lighter and easier.
This way you will fulfill three goals:
- Faster the iteration. Startup environment differs from a bigger stable project, especially the in-house one. Processes should be as light and as fast as possible or startup would lose the competition.
- More flexible process. Shorter the iteration, more flexibility you have. This would definitely work well if you are building the minimum viable product.
- Quality over quantity approach. This is a psychological one I suppose. To feel productive and valuable we tend to accumulate those tasks. More tasks we do better we feel. Therefore it’s easy to get caught in a trap of false productivity. More tasks not always better. Most of the time it’s that one task that sets up a sprint goal.
And if you are like me and you really need to enjoy those “Done” tasks then track them in a bug tracker. You would definitely see how well you’ve done without cluttering your task board.
Good luck with your startup.
Clap clap, please.
