Complete Meaningful Tasks

The MusingOur work should provide value to someone or something, otherwise why do it?When we build our Personal Kanban, we are building a board that drives us toward completing our work. But is that work worth doing?val·uenoun

1. the regard that something is held to deserve; the importance, worth, or usefulness of something.

2. person's principles or standards of behavior; one's judgment of what is important in life.

verb

1. estimate the monetary worth of (something).

2. consider (someone or something) to be important or beneficial; have a high opinion of.

Application

Tasks

Visualizing a goal

Visualizing Clear Goals

The words we use to describe value (regard, importance, usefulness, standards, beneficial) indicate that value is not merely based on cash, but also on how it makes us feel, how we respond to it.  So when we say we want to understand the value of our work it means a great deal to us, to our colleagues, to our companies, and to society. You figure out in your own Ayn Rand to Che Guevara scale where your own value equilibrium lies.But … understand it and work towards it.The Practical ApplicationLet’s take a look at a simple case to see what this means practically.Over the Christmas break I quickly assessed how secure my internet holdings were. The answer was rather frightening. I, like most people, was extremely susceptible to hackers getting ahold of emails and passwords and running amok with my accounts.I downloaded Dashlane and began working with it to set strong and constantly changing passwords for all my accounts.My first ticket read “Update Dashlane”. I knew what Dashlane was and why I was updating it, so that seemed to make sense and tell me why I was doing the work.The problem: I had no idea what updating Dashlane meant to me. I knew I wanted to get done by the end of the week, but updating all your passwords and making sure you are letting others impacted by those changes know what’s changed leaves “Update Dashlane” as an open ended task.

I need a Victory Condition.So I created this ticket. “Update five sites in Dashlane.” Okay, great. That had a clear victory condition.The problem: I had no idea what I was working toward or where I was in the process. Or what I was working toward. What was my goal? I wanted to be more secure. Dashlane gives me a metric about security.I wanted to become more secure, not just update sites. Who cares if I update 100 sites and am still dismally unsecure?So, I changed the ticket yet again. This time to give myself a specific goal that was measured by Dashlane. I want to get to 80% by Friday. So 50% today, 60% tomorrow, 70% Thursday and 80% Friday. Four tickets, clear goal, all with demonstrated value.This was today’s card, it’s surrounded by other “Dones” which say what I am doing and the value provided. Note the card next to the 50% card tells me not just to reply to my colleague in Oregon, but also what resolution to get out of that reply.Sage AdviceWhen you create a card, ask yourself what the goal or the value of that work is. That not only gives you the task to complete, but the way to know when you have completed it. Quality and value are hard to determine without a definition. Let yourself know when you’ve achieved victory.And do yourself a favor … if you can’t come up with a goal or a value statement for your work, strongly question why you are doing it in the first place.

Two Goals Quickly Visualized

I realized that I had fallen off the writing wagon. I had become a non-writer.

Two Goals Quickly Visualized

That was really bothering me.I sat down several times to write blog posts and wrote portions of them or huge rambling missives that went nowhere.Soon it became clear that I needed a goal and to visualize it. It was pretty simple really. It looks like this I wanted to make sure that I wrote blog posts and participated on Twitter. So I made a quick (ugly) chart over my done column on the board by my desk. It has the days of this week with two swim lanes - one for blogging and one for entering 3 tweets per day  into Social Flow.I then mark down how I felt about them when I was done. Overall, it was pretty good. No home runs there, but it was okay. (I’d make a big mouthed smiley for one I was really happy with).What I’m doing here is quickly visualizing, rewarding, and evaluating a goal. Since they’re daily tasks, moving the stickies would be redundant and perhaps even annoying. But setting up a rapid feedback system helps immensely. 

The Psychology of Kanban (Video)

In November, 2010, Jim Benson spoke at the Oredev conference in Malmo, Sweden on Energizing the Individual Coder and the Psychology of Kanban.Clarity Means Completion: The Psychology of Kanban - Jim Benson from Øredev on Vimeo..

How We Interact with Kanban (Video)

In November, 2010, Jim Benson spoke at the Oredev conference in Malmo, Sweden on Energizing the Individual Coder and the Psychology of Kanban.Personal Kanban: Optimizing the Individual Coder - Jim Benson from Øredev on Vimeo.

Complex Lives Pt 1: Jessica’s Future In Progress

Ready –> Doing –> DoneLife presents us with opportunities, and so we've no choice but to take on concurrent projects. Unfortunately they don’t always conform to that simple Ready –> Doing –> Done value stream.Last month I was in San Francisco giving lectures on Personal Kanban at Stanford and Keller. My host for the trip was my good friend Jessica. Jessica is a single mom. She  has two jobs on opposite ends of the Bay. She  is studying for her financial advisor certification. She is training for a triathlon.Jessica has a lot to keep track of.As a mathematician and an expert in intangible assets, it was not a big leap for Jessica to recognize: (1) she had so much on her plate that busting her WIP limit was guaranteed, and (2) making money was only one asset out of many she had to devote time to.So on a sunny Sunday morning at a coffee shop, the simple question “Do you want to talk a little about your Personal Kanban” quickly turned into a 2.5 hour conversation. We discussed what she valued, what her goals were.It soon became clear that Jessica is not simply goal-oriented, she's a goal-collector. So we needed to get that under control. Goals are awesome, but when they start generating more tasks than we can handle – they need to be tamed.We agreed she needed more than a WIP Limit – she needed a FIP limit. Future In Progress. She had the triathlon, the certification, a book she wanted to write, and more. It made sense to pick two and (no pun intended) run with them. The triathlon enforced health and working out, so we couldn’t say no to that. The certification was immediately necessary for her job and short-term. So that too was obvious. The others, went into the FIP queue.Jessica now had a FIP limit of two.