Agile Practices You Need [#AgilePractice #AgilePractices]
1. Visualize ALL of Your Work
2. Prioritization, Not Planning
3. Do One Thing at a Time
1. Visualize ALL of Your Work
If you do not have a good handle on everything — literally everything — that you could be doing, you’ll spend way too much time searching through emails, instant messages, texts, etc. to make sure you are not forgetting something.
To ensure you focus your energy instantly and effectively in every free moment you have to work, you need a system that acts like an external brain.
In Agile, we call this a backlog.
In layman’s terms, it is a prioritized to-do list.
But it is also where you dump every new action item, idea and future project that hits your desk.
By putting everything here, you have a unified location for all your work, and you can confidently prioritize your time knowing you are not leaving anything out.
2. Prioritization, Not Planning
Once ALL the work is out there, it is time to get ruthless and prioritize it. This means look at your huge to-do list and put just one thing at the top.
The beautiful thing about a prioritized backlog is that you always know the most important thing to work on.
Typically prioritization works far better than formal planning, especially at an individual level, because things are going to crop up during your day or week that derail your plans.
If you have a consistently prioritized backlog you do not have to worry about constantly readjusting your plan when these interruptions happen.
The important thing is to proceed with confidence and not spend your precious work time figuring out what you should be doing.
3. Do One Thing at a Time
Context switching destroys productivity. So do not allow yourself to actively work on any more than two things at a time.
Most of the time keep that to one.
That does not mean you only do one thing all day, but it does mean you will not start a new thing until you finish the one you are working on.
Stop starting, start finishing.
ADAPTED FROM:
3 Agile Practices That Knowledge Workers Need in Their Lives
CMSWire
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