Understanding your Job

Back in February I wrote a post about transitioning your job effectively to a new person.  I have used the same concepts and approach when helping people be more effecient and effective at their jobs as well.  What I find is that people don’t fully grasp all of the things they really do in a given day (or week, month).  Once they write it all down and analyze what they are doing is when an increase in productivity can be seen.

The tricky part is analyzing what you do and finding areas that can be improved.  People can be so deep in their work they can’t see around it – bringing in another person, which is the role I have played, is extremely benficial.

Original Post – here

photo credit: beija-flor

Take Control of Your Schedule

The entire time I was reading this article I was in awe – what an awesome way to take back control of your day at the office.  It is a 5 to 10 minute read and worth every minute.

Thinking through the feasibility of setting boundaries of when you are available, when you are not available, when you are open for meetings and for how long… may be a stretch for some.  However, the point is not to copy and paste this example into your life – but there are pieces and parts that may provide a bunch of structure in your day and at the same time provide what seems like an unlimited amount of freedom.

I originally read this on the David Allen blog – RSS feeds here.

- Bill Weber

photo credit: jay_que

Getting Things Done – Almost Done!

I am near complete with the re-reading of David Allen’s Getting Things Done .  I am at the beginning of chapter 9 “Doing: Making the Best Action Choices” and have about 65 pages remaining the book.  While reading last night, I came across this sentence – “If you have a bunch of things to do on one to-list, but you actually can’t do many of them in the same context, you force yourself to continually keep reconsidering all of them.” This really hit home for me.  I know my biggest obstacle to overcome is thinking of things in context (tasks grouped by how/when you can do them) – Calls, At Computer, Errands, At Home, Work, etc.

I am still living in the one to-do list world for the time being.  I am slowly but surely starting to incorporate GTD into my workflow… and yea, it’s a bit uncomfortable.  I relate it to golf.  In golf lots of things are “backwards” – you hit down on the ball to make it go up, you hit the ball from the left side and it goes right to left, you hit it from the right side and it goes left to right – doesn’t FEEL right.  I am figuring out, much like golf, you have to trust what you are doing is correct.

I will check back in in the next week or so, I imagine I will have the book complete by then.  I am looking forward to implementing more and more of the workflow changes to my daily life.

- Bill Weber

photo credit: sookie

“Getting Things Done”… again

If you are not familiar with “Getting Things Done” or “GTD” then click here for a little background.

I first bought “Getting Things Done” by David Allen in early 2007.  I read through about half of it and then skimmed the rest – got frustrated/overwhelmed and put it down.  Really… a 43 folder system for organizing my crazy hectic life?  I don’t need 43 more of anything – unless it’s hours of vacation time.  Wait, who really uses paper anymore?  Don’t we live in the digital age with computers, PDAs and mobile phones with email?  A series of lessons learned and a 5 minute conversation brought me back to the book.

It was early 2007 and I was nortoriously unorganized.  I would agree to small, simple, to-dos from my manager and then… forget.  It frustrated the hell out of my managers and became something that would hold me back in my career if not rectified.  I was in search for the perfect tool, yes… THAT is what I needed.  If I could just find the right tool then I will be organized and all of my problems will magically disappear and I will be organized.  So I turned to Microsoft OneNote.  What a great tool!  It was perfect – note pages, tabs, colors, free form highlighting, print to pdf – it was all there.  No.  No it wasn’t.  I found that I was glued to my PC which is just a source of distractions – meeting reminders, emails arriving, other open windows of work – all grabbing for my attention.

Scrum – a Project Management Approach

Scrum – noun

1: a rugby play in which the forwards of each side come together in a tight formation and struggle to gain possession of the ball using their feet when it is tossed in among them; also: the arrangement of players in a scrum b: a usually brief and disorderly struggle or fight.  2a: (British) madhouse.  2b: a usually tightly packed or disorderly crowd

The Scrum I am talking about is none of these.  Scrum is an iterative process of software development that is typically used with agile softward development.  Even though it was intended to be for management of software development projects, it can be used in running software maintenance teams, or as a program management approach.

I have found it to be very effective in managing ongoing projects – meaning projects that are not building something from the ground-up.  If you read my post on Context Switching, you will remember the diagram of “Total Demand” to “Completed Work” – Scrum is the way in which I manage the “Total Demand”.

Work/Life Balance

This is something I rememeber my Dad always telling me when I was (still am?) growing up – Balance.

You can break work and life into more granular pieces.  Life – immediate family, extended family, friends and self for example.  Work – subordinates, superiors and clients.  The simple concept is not to let any one of these, or “Work/Life”, to dominate your time and energy for an extended period of time.  You may work 65-70 hours in a given week, maybe even 3 weeks in-a-row – you will be out of balance for a period of time.  The key is to stay balanced over a long period of time – their will be ebbs and flows.

A blog I read on a fairly regular basis, The Art of Manliness, just did a piece on the Work/Life Balance.  While their target audience is men with kids, the concepts apply to both genders.

How do you deal with the Work/Life balance? Leave a note in the comments.

- Bill Weber

photo credit: star5112

Context Switching

There are lots of issues to be concerned with when leading a team – who is dependable, who is not?  who is your go-to problem solver?  how do you raise the overall “level of the water” on your team?  All valid concerns.  However, what I struggle with the most is the having a team that must deal with planned strategic-type work and also ad-hoc requests – or better yet, context switching.  Context switching is the changing of focus for one or more of your team members – it is absolutely a productivity killer.

The simple formula that I use to go from a pile of work to the delivery of work is a series of filters or stages… Total Demand -> Prioritized Demand -> Capacity Constrained Demand -> Completed Work

Total Demand – this is the total “list” of all things that must be completed.  It is important to get EVERYTHING on the list and accounted for – if everything is not on the list to begin with you are setting yourself up for failure.

Prioritized Demand – this is a forced ranking of Total Demand – it must be a forced ranking… no ties.  Once forced ranked or “prioritized” the top items should be given estimates – they can be ballpark.

Capacity Constrained Demand – this is understanding how many hours per week (month, deployment cycle, etc) your development team has available.  Example – you have 4 developers on your team.  You assign 40 hours of work per week to each developer for a 4 week development cycle – that is 640 hours of capacity.  Your team can work on the first 640 hours of highest prioritized items.  Clearly this is a simplistic scenario.