This is one of those rare books that both explains a concept well and provides an extremely actionable system to actually put the ideas in action.
Let me take a step back - 'Agile' is a framework used for product development. The goal is to develop the product iteratively, incrementally, and in a time-boxed fashion. Work gets done in 2 week sprints with 'just enough' analysis, as opposed to attempting to plan everything out up-front.
What the JD Meier does in this book is present a simple way to translate this system into a personal workflow management technique.
Here are the very basics:
-At the beginning of your week (or 'sprint') plan out your key intended outcomes. You should try to bite off only what you can fit into your timeboxed sprint (in my case I like to plan 2 weeks at a time). As you do this more, you'll get better at estimating what you can bite off. Write these key intended outcomes / goals on a list.
-At the beginning of each day, pick a couple things to work on, that map directly to your weekly (or 'sprint' goals). These should come directly from what you mapped out already.
-At the end of the week (or sprint) evaluate how you performed. Ask yourself, what you can do to improve for next time.
The system is simple. The beauty of it is that as work comes in, you can store it in a 'backlog' and feed it into your system based on priority. The author also recommends to do a monthly and yearly review with higher level goals, and recommends categorizing tasks by different areas in life (i.e. family / relationships, work, recreation, etc).
This seems very simple, and it is in a sense, but it's also very powerful because most people don't actually have the attention span to work on a goal that they set out at the beginning of the week, and evaluate how they performed.
Sprinkled around this simple concept are a number of little gems of wisdom... I'll list a few:
-Intended Outcomes over Activities - focus on your intended goal. The fact that you put in X hours does not necessarily mean that you are any closer to your intended outcome, and does not mean that you accomplished anything. Your criteria for success should always relate to whether or not your achieved your intended outcome, and not the time or effort you put into an activity.
-Rule of 3 - For any yearly, monthly, weekly, or daily goal setting, stick to working on 3 things at a time, you lose focus after any more than just 3.
-'Good Enough' over Perfection - people will often obsess over achieving perfect results (I am guilty of this) and spend more time or resources than necessary on a problem. Focus on 'Good Enough' and 'Version' your results, meaning you can always come back and improve in a Version 2 or a Version 3 of the task at hand.
-Throwing more time at something is one of the *worst* things you can do.
-Fix time and flex scope - if you have an intended outcome, get 'good enough' done in the allotted time and move onto the next thing, instead of going for perfect. Over the long run this will force you to be more efficient.
-Block time around eating / sleeping / working out.
-Results over Productivity - A lot of systems focus on being 'productive' or always using your spare capacity to work on something. Actually you DON'T want to do this. It's ok to have an hour break between appointments or commitments, the goal is always to achieve RESULTS. If you block all of your time on so as to have no spare capacity, you are almost guaranteed to be working on a lot of low value items with no spare capacity, when in reality you need to be focused on fewer high value items that will really make a difference.
This book is great. My only light criticism, is that it is probably hard to put into practice or truly 'get' the system if you haven't worked on an agile team before. It's still worth reading and re-reading certain parts a few times. I'd recommended phasing the system in, in small steps, starting with just the basics first.
As companions to this book, I'd recommend Getting Things Done, Zen to Done, and The Pomodoro Technique which all do a good job complementing each other but cover slightly different things. Of all these books, this one and Getting Things Done are probably the most essential ones to read.
Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.
Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.
Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.
Customers who bought this item also bought
Page 1 of 1 Start overPage 1 of 1
About the author
Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations.
Customer reviews
4.1 out of 5
We don’t use a simple average to calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star. Our system gives more weight to certain factors—including how recent the review is and if the reviewer bought it on Amazon. Learn more
396 global ratings
Top reviews from other countries
Reader
Great as a standalone system or an addition to your existing setup.
Reviewed in Canada on April 8, 2015
