Re: Re: Time management

So said  Andrey Khavryuchenko  on  12/15/2002 --------------------

>JB,
>
>"JBR" == J B Rainsberger wrote:
>
> JBR> I am testing that hypothesis as we speak, and in the first managerial
> JBR> role in my career. I am doing it Scrum-style, though: monthly
>backlogs
> JBR> and the very cool progress chart. I do it in Excel so as not to lose
> JBR> the cards, as I have essentially three offices plus the road. I also
> JBR> translate from Scrum to IBM-style weekly status e-mails to my
>manager.
>
> JBR> If I have any stories to relate along the way, I'll post them where
> JBR> appropriate.
>
>Doing such things, I've found it useful to do a root cause analysis ("5
>why's") on things that I've planned to do this week and yet didn't managed
>to achieve.

I will definitely do that. I will upload my current monthly backlog to the file area for this group. In it, you'll see that I made 6 hours of progress between 12/3 and 12/11, but then 6 hours of progress per day, on average for the following three days.

Why?

1. In the beginning, I underestimated the effort on a few tasks. I am upgrading courseware and I hadn't realized that some of the courseware was in pretty bad shape.

2. We have "labs" or exercises for our courses. We have a problem with labs being too interdependent, even though we want to use the same labs in many courses. I spent extra time decoupling the labs.

3. I had to learn a new topic and write new material. I underestimated the effort on this task.

4. I took a day off and worked a Saturday in its place.

5. I had an emergency request to produce a course outline, which added a task to my backlog.

6. I had difficulty installing WebSphere Application Server 5.0.

7. I did not realize how much difference there was between WAS 5.0 and WAS 4.0. This made upgrading the administration chapter much more work than expected.

What is interesting to me is that I internalized all those things, but wrote none of it down. Perhaps keeping track of it all is a good exercise, in and of itself. It provides the raw data out of which I can identify systematic problems that affect my planning.

Although it wasn't "5 whys", it's a start. For root causes, I think I'll go with these:

1. I did not evaluate the current course material deeply enough to understand how much improvement was required.

2. I did not understand the differences between WAS 4.0 and WAS 5.0 enough to see that at least one topic required a total rewrite.

In spite of those root causes, I think that things are on track. I am upgrading two courses. My only concern is that when I finish Course 1, I'll have the same flat progress curve at the beginning of Course 2. If that happens, I won't finish on time. I'd better plan for that.

J. B. Rainsberger,
President, Diaspar Software Services
Let's write software that people understand.
http://www.diasparsoftware.com/
telephone: +1 416 791-8603
All correspondence (c) 2002 Diaspar Software Services.
If you want to use it, just ask; don't steal.



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