Priorities

 

When everything is a priority, nothing is a priority.

I've been saying that for over a decade and had no idea it was an actual quote, by Simon Fulleringer.  I'm not claiming it was me.  I just thought it was one of those things that was inherently true and often overlooked.  It's also a sign that priorities probably need to be addressed.  That is where I find myself.

I've been trying to do too many things for a while, now, and not gotten very far on any of them.  The impact to my blog is that I am going to start posting every two weeks, instead of weekly.  As I will also be cutting back on other activities and using my time more effectively, or trying to, anyway, this should give me time to finish one of the books I've been planning to post on  - The Agility Shift. 

My plan is to post more content about making an agile transformation, not just about adopting agile practices.  I'll also post about some of the personal projects I am working on, and will continue to give updates on my agile team, at work.  And, of course, anything else project management related that comes to mind.

Speaking of my team, we had our first formal retrospective, today.  One of the things that was identified was how valuable the communications tools we are using have been.  We've got developers in three different countries, but they are in regular contact with each other in spite of time differences.

The team is all on the same page with regards to improving our definition of ready.  We're going to make a conscious effort to examine our stories and determine when more detail is needed in the story before putting it into the sprint, and when we just need the appropriate conversations to take place.  There needs to be enough detail to estimate the work without BDUF - big design up front.  The conversation is key.

Back to priorities.  It's not that you're not important, but I have other priorities that I need to take care of tonight.  See ya' in a couple of weeks!