This falls into the "required reading" category - you know, the thing that your boss assigns you because they think it will help with your development, so you groan, roll your eyes, and suck it up to get it done.
At least, that's what usually happens.
Change or die.
Continuous improvement is continuous.
Working more is indicative that the problem is you, not the work.
Deliver the most value in a minimum viable product.
These are actual sentences that seem obvious and yet do not align with how we see work working.
The first 5 pages of this book I knew this was going to be different. Not only does Sutherland have an engaging, coversational style of writing - he uses examples that are digestable and entertaining. Each example provided at each element of this book, I found myself chuckling and thinking, "Yup - I know what disasters/doubters are like when X happens...."
I can't even begin to highlight all of the things I'm noodling on as a result of this book. Consistent with trying to be the best version of me and aligning my learnings to my values, I've set out to reorganize how I approach my daily work - to minimize disruption to my team (and, ultimately, to my productivity).
For example, I used to believe that taking a team of 12 to 15 folks and spreading the individual, 1-on-1 time I gave them throughout the week was the best way to balance my calendar. Yet inevitably something would happen and I'd move the scheduled time to a different time of the day, trying to maintain some consistency. Generally that happened day of. I didn't ever consider how disruptive that could be to them.
So, I'm going to try a little experiment. I have 12 1-on-1 sessions that I need to have each week. At 30 minutes each, that is 6 hours I spend on helping people with work problems and their development. I surveyed my team to ask them to pick a day and specify if morning or afternoon worked better. Nearly everyone picked - you guessed it - the same day of the week. So now with the exception of one of my leads (who i kick off the week with on Mondays as he backs me up when i'm out of office), the remaining folks are all on Tuesdays. Starting at 7am through 12:30pm, every single person on my team has their individual time with me scheduled, back to back, and I've cleared all other potential conflicts from my Tuesdays. I've shared this plan with the manager who assigned the book for work, as well as my director. After 4 weeks, I'll see what people think of it. If it doesn't work, i'll try something else. And if it does, then I'll make another seemingly minor yet oh-so-potentially-critical change to working more productively.
I've recommended this book to my ex, to my best friends, to a friend who is working on becoming a published book-author, and even talked about it with my kids. It is not your typical lean or agile flavor-of-the-month book. It is truly a fantastic read for anyone, in any profession, at any time.
Scrum gets 5 stars as a non-fiction/business book, and as a general "i need something to read" I'd still probably give it 5 stars.
Happy Reading.
--Jennifer
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