Most productivity advice encourages us to eliminate spare capacity.
We fill gaps in the diary, batch similar tasks and streamline recurring work. We try to make every part of the system earn its place.
This can certainly make us more efficient. But it can also make us less able to respond when circumstances change.
Continue reading Why a little apparent inefficiency can make you more adaptableA two-week Sprint creates the impression that a Scrum Team learns every two weeks.
But that is true only if useful feedback reaches the team within that period.
A Sprint may end while the work is still awaiting integration, testing, deployment or use by real customers. The Scrum events continue, but the most important feedback arrives several Sprints later.
Continue reading What happens when the Sprint is shorter than the development feedback loop?I was speaking with a friend recently who told me that his Scrum team had not held a Sprint Retrospective for several months.
I found myself wondering: at what point does a team stop practising Scrum and merely retain some of its vocabulary?
The Sprint Retrospective is one of Scrum’s formal opportunities for feedback. Remove it and the team loses a regular opportunity to inspect and adapt how it works.
Scrum is built around such feedback loops.
The Scrum Team frequently inspects its progress, its ways of working and the Increment it is creating. At the Sprint Review, stakeholders can examine what has been produced and influence what happens next.
Yet simply holding every Scrum event is not enough. Creating an opportunity for feedback is not the same as being able to respond to it.
Continue reading Scrum creates opportunities for feedback, but XP makes feedback technically possible
For as long as I can remember, VLC media player has been a staple on all my PCs and laptops. VLC is the ol’ reliable of software – feed it virtually any media format, and it just plays it without fuss.
But recently on Windows 11, I noticed a frustrating issue: launching VLC took anywhere between 10 to 30 seconds. Double-clicking an MP4 and sitting through a 15-second delay just to watch a local video quickly wore thin.
So, last week I replaced VLC with an app that uses the same VLC engine, but which opens instantly and is arguably prettier, Screenbox.
Continue reading Why I swapped VLC for Screenbox on Windows 11The Getting Things Done (GTD) weekly review is often described as essential maintenance for your productivity system. You gather loose papers, process your inboxes, download your head, update your projects and review your calendar. This keeps your system current and trustworthy.
But the weekly review can do something deeper. It can help you notice when your understanding of a situation is no longer accurate.
Seen through Cynefin, the weekly review becomes a regular opportunity to notice what has changed and adapt our response.
Continue reading Cynefin and GTD: the weekly review as a sense-making practice
