What they don’t tell you about Agile
How to stay focused as an Agile PM
Agile is a slog. It’s a marathon. Made up of a never-ending series of sprints. It’s totally opposite to the way we think about efficiency.
Why?
The classic method of delegation is completely lost.
As an Agile PM, you’re checking in so frequently that after a couple of months, you just want a break from all the little decisions…
Is this bug important enough to risk your timeline?
Is this design delightful enough or does it need yet another round?
Is this flow intuitive enough?
Which story should we queue up next?
The problem with normal?
With “normal” project management, you delegate a task to someone and then they’re off! Maybe checking in periodically, but mostly just coming back to you when it’s complete.
While they’re doing that, you can focus your brain on something else. Then just tie the pieces together…and tada! You have your system.
However your initial instructions are wrong, but you don’t realize where until you’re too till you’re deep into it.
So that 3-month project might reach month two before you really think about it again in depth, this time with a new understanding of your users and their real problems.
The customer may not want to experience the solution you’re building in the way you imagined, and then you’ve lost valuable time when you could have been doing the right thing!
The problem with agile?
With agile, you check in weekly and are able to pivot on a dime! No feature should take more than 2 weeks before it’s ready to be rolled into production. It’s exhilarating!
But as a result, if you’re building something sophisticated over a period of months, the repetition (I typically call this the scrum cadence) of weekly iteration reviews and iteration planning is soul-crushing. Many people lose their focus and just want things to go into autopilot so they can relieve the stress on their brain.
So how do you build ambitious software in an agile fashion that doesn’t crush souls?
1) Plan & Estimate Properly— Lay out your feature roadmap, but before you commit to completing those ten stories this week, make sure they are properly estimated by the team. Put the stories into a Google Spreadsheet with the name of each engineer in the column headers. On the count of three, each dev enters their estimate in. The median is what you use on the story. Outliers should be discussed further.
2) Prototype — To increase the clarity of the product, make a clickable prototype and have a few people to play with it. Designs do not surface UX issues sufficiently, but they can become very clear when watching someone try out a prototype. Engineers love them because there’s no guesswork about what actually happens when you click a button (it’s often not as obvious as it seems).
3) Celebrate wins — Find things that the team can rally around and ensure celebration. Agile is constantly racing ahead, so a PM will often need to force the team to pat each other on the back. Each team has their own dynamic. Find a way to celebrate that feels genuine. My team goes to dinner in Queens every month and each person shares something they have done that they are proud of.
4) Retrospectives — Everyone gets together at the end of each sprint and lists things they’re happy about, things they’re ok with, and things they’re sad about. Surface those “it’s just the way it is” feelings…because often they can be fixed and people just don’t realize.
5) Refactor — Code quality is not just up to the ability of the engineer, it’s also up to the clarity of the product. You’re product will change, and as a result, much more than the interface will need to change as well. Allowing time for refactoring will keep your developers happy and your velocity high.
6) Take Breaks — Sometimes it’s vacation; sometimes it’s going out to visit customers; sometimes it’s building a prototype when you otherwise wouldn’t . Whatever it is, you will get a jolt of energy when you dig into something that gives your brain a break from the day-to-day pound of agile.
In the end
If you find yourself completely exhausted by agile and unable to keep a fresh enthusiasm for the constant decision-making, you might just be working on the wrong problem.
Don’t give up
Agile is hard work, but it’s by far the best way to execute well on something that matters. And that’s all that matters.
