Managing Product Development

I am still making progress, although it’s more difficult to see my progress today. Why? Because I did not get as much to done.

One of my readers asked a question about the Urgent queue  and the relative ranking of my ever-growing left hand column. How did I determine what to do, and what was the rank of each?

The Urgent queue always trumps everything on the left hand side of the list. I was so frantic on Monday, I didn’t order anything when I put the list together. It almost didn’t matter what I worked on, as long as I made enough progress to get enough things to done. As you can see, I did pick and choose. When I rewrite my list for next week, I will reconsider what I need to do in order. I need to complete the workshops and talks first. Then do the writing. My list next week should be shorter, so I should feel less frantic and be able to finish it.

As for the ones I have added to the bottom of the list, trumping the older ones in importance? No, not really. They are there because I realized I needed to do them also this week. My todos are getting away from me. Putting them on the list means I don’t lose them. I can relax because they are there. Now, I have to focus and do them.

If you are wondering, will I continue this series next week? No. I will not. One week of this is plenty. I wanted to show you a number of things:

• Everyone has trouble every so often, with too much to do
• The best way to organize your work is to see it, not matter what you decide to do next
• I like personal kanban, where I finish one chunk of work and go on to the next
• If you keep your chunks of work small, you can finish one and continue on to the next one. If your chunks of work are too large, you can’t finish anything and you are tempted to multitask. (Don’t do that!)

If you want to see all the posts in this series, here they are:

• Personal Kanban and Iterations, Day 1
• Personal Kanban and Iterations, Day 2
• Personal Kanban and Iterations, Day 3
• Personal Kanban and Iterations, Day 4

To see a “real” personal kanban board, the way I suggest you do it in Manage Your Job Search, go to Personal Kanban for Your Job Hunt.

Read my Book Review of Personal Kanban for more information on how to do it right. And, Gil Broza will be interviewing me for his Individuals and Interactions virtual training May 15, 2013. My topic? “Focus Keeps You Going.” Surprised? I don’t think so!

I’m still chugging along, making great progress. I took some interruptions yesterday, as many people do. They are not reflected on my kanban. They are in my calendar, which I am not showing you :-)

A potential client emailed, asked for a call. I said yes, and we arranged for a call that day. Could I have put it on my kanban? Yes. Did I bother? No. Does that make me a bad person? No. It’s my kanban, not yours.

I don’t track metrics from my kanban. If I did, I would want that and the other calls there. But I don’t, so it’s fine.

I’m using my kanban to help me to get to done on my tasks, not to track my every piece of work. I’m using it to not forget work. I have a couple of phone calls this morning and a phone call this afternoon. I hope to complete one of the workshops today. Maybe.

I have a workout tomorrow and a number of phone calls, so I might not complete anything tomorrow. We will see. On the other hand, I am whittling down my list to something manageable. I no long feel anxious about it. I can see my progress. And, I have managed to blog this week. I am a happy, productive woman.

And, that is what personal kanban is all about.

I’ve been busy crossing work off my list. And, as with all of us busy people, I’m adding more work to my list. I feel as if I’ve accomplished a lot this week.

It’s just about time to rewrite my list, because with the cross-outs, it’s hard to see where I am. It’s time to go to draft 2 for the workshops, which might be the final drafts for the prose. I will be revising the simulations and interactions during the week. I hope to complete them by the end of the week. I do want to complete the workshops by the end of the week. I will feel more comfortable.

I had some items pop up on my urgent queue: I did go vote.

In yesterday’s post, there is a comment from Lukas, about how he likes rewriting his list, because he gets to reassess the relative rank of each item on the list when he rewrites the list.

If you use stickies, in a real personal kanban, such as I suggest in Manage Your Job Search, you pick up the stickies and put them down. Because you handle the stickies, you have a way of checking in with yourself to reassess the relative value of each item on your queue.

Okay, off to work again today. I’ll check in with you again tomorrow.

I’ve made great progress on Day 1, and I wasn’t even in the office all day!

You can see I’ve added more todos, at the bottom of my queue. I discovered two urgent todo’s. I had a call-back, to reschedule a doctor’s appt this week to next week, and to vote today. (We have a primary election today for a special senate election in June.)

And, since I’m cheating on how to do a real personal kanban, I thought I would at least describe for you how to do real personal kanban over at Personal Kanban for Your Job Hunt.

You can see now there is a huge drawback to my list. I will have to rewrite my list, instead of just moving the stickies off. This is why in personal kanban, the right way is to not have a list. If you move the stickies, you don’t get this list nonsense, with lines crossed through.

Well, most people don’t have vertigo, either. So, tough. Okay, enough being meta today. On to the real work of the day.

If you missed part 1, here is the link: Personal Kanban and Iterations, Day 1.

I use a form of personal kanban inside one-week iterations to finish my work and notice what I am not doing. I do this to maintain a cadence of blogging and to finish work. Did you notice that word, finish?

Sidebar: For those of you who don’t know what “kanban” is, it literally means “card.” It’s been used in manufacturing for years as a pull system for work. I have an example for what a kanban system might look like for teams in Agile Lifecycles for Geographically Distributed Teams, Part 3. I just realized I don’t have a picture of a personal kanban on Hiring Technical People. I will have to fix that.

I’m human, the same as you. I get bogged down. I sometimes get freaked out by the amount of work I have to complete. And, this week and next, as I complete my preparations for my London workshops and Let’s Test, I have more than I originally expected to do.

Why? Before PSL, several local potential clients called and wanted meetings. Meetings! Not phone calls, but in-person meetings.

The problem with in-person meetings is that they take longer. They aren’t one hour long. They are close to two hours long. I have to leave enough time to get there, have the meeting and get back. But, these are very interesting potential clients, so I took the meetings.

The result? I am not where I want to be with respect to my deliverables. So I will be blogging my personal kanban this week, so you can see what I do to finish my work.

Now, you can see from my picture, I don’t always do personal kanban “right.” I don’t have stickies. I have a list. That’s wrong. You’re supposed to do queues. Well, I don’t. This is my kanban. I can do anything I want with it.

Why don’t I use stickies? Because I don’t want to get up and move a sticky on a board. I get too dizzy. My desk is a disaster, so I don’t use a kanban notebook. it would get buried And, I don’t believe in tools. (Sorry, tool vendors.) I like paper and pen. I get total transparency this way. It’s easy for me to move things around.

I do schedule my longer-term article commitments to other people in the reminders tool on my Mac, so I don’t forget things.

I have a backlog in rough order of priority. Well, sort of. I have a ton of things to do before Wednesday, 5/1. Yes, everything down to “SQGNE presentation by 5/1″ is supposed to be done before 5/1. I can pick anything I want off that backlog and get it to done before 5/1.

Note that I have first drafts specified for the coaching workshop and the PM workshops. I have draft zeros done already. It’s time to finish the first drafts, and put them aside for another day or so. I already have draft one of the Sweden hiring workshop, which needs finishing, which is why it’s farther down on the list.

If people call and need something that does not go on the backlog, I have an urgent queue on the right side of the page. We’ll see how the week goes.

Remember, I’m only one person, so my WIP limit is one, which is why I didn’t even bother with a “Doing” column. I’m not going to have a PEN column this week. If I call anyone this week, it has to be after I get my todos done for my trip. I’m not taking interruptions. I have way too much work to do.

Oh, and I’m still working out at the gym, and sleeping my regular hours and eating properly. In order to accomplish everything I need to do, I have to take care of myself and maintain and sustainable pace.

Let me know if this is interesting to you. Yes, this blog post counts as my “MPD blog” entry.