Photo by Rachen Buosa

This post's title is an old quote I've heard since my early edge, but I never gave it much attention or tried to go beyond this phase, just some words shared by older people in my family. Unfortunately, it took me years before I mind the importance of continuously complete small tasks and cut off with the idea of doing the whole job at once. Thanks to agility I'm changing my mind and acquiring new ways of working and producing. Before sharing with you why and how splitting any job or mission into small tasks helped me to achieve goals, I would like to share the pain encountered while trying to provide many efforts at once.

I remember the school-age when I was trying to prepare for my exams, I always adopt the same strategy by spending a whole day revising my courses, doing exercises, and once I got tired I close my books mark the material as completed. I often succeeded in my exams but many times I recognize that I could do better, but who cares, I wasn't obsessed about getting the highest score.

While I'm writing these lines, I remember the time when I want to get abs and being fit, I can't tell you that my motivation was something other than having the summer body. As a consequence, I start going to the gym and training in late April, But for 3 years consecutively, and contrary to my exam story, I've never reached my goal even though exercising 6 times per week for not less than two months. From these two stories shared above, I retain one lesson providing much effort in a short period may, or not work.

But what if I could change something to increase my chances to get a shaped body, maybe be coached by a professional! Yes, I did, maybe follow a restricted diet! Yes, I did, the only thing that I could do and not did it is starting my program earlier and going slowly but surely.

Few and permanent

A few years ago I've had the opportunity to discover agility at my university, then I worked on an agile project, 1 month after starting the project our web application was in production, users interacting with and we are having feedback, this is really amazing and so satisfying. I do believe that the key rules for such success were

• defining small but valuable feature
• continuously delivering

Breaking a big task down into small, more feasible ones helped me avoid procrastination and an overwhelmed workload. Here are some steps to follow for breaking a task down, but remember that you're the only one capable of doing that depending on the context, the knowledge, and priorities:

1 - Make sure you visualize the big picture, that means what the end product or make sure you visualize 2 - Think about the order, which one should be completed first, second, and so on... 3 - Define milestones: make a short plan which will help you stay on track. 4 - Complete your tasks early to have additional time for a final review

I do believe that permanent iteration pays in the end, with the adoption of a few concepts we gain confidence and progression:

• Going slowly, how many times have we heard that? but Have we ever enjoyed it as much as we can. Going slowly means to me doing things at my pace while giving all my attention and concentration to do it the right way and achieve high quality. Consider coding a small program or write a report, try to do it rapidly and at once, then do it slowly over 3 times within 1 day, then compare your results, I have no doubt that quality will differ.
• But Surely, yes make sure at any stage, you are performing with your best efforts, concentration, and passion.
• While doing things over many periods, make sure at the end of each milestone you create something tangible, deliverable, and useful.
• With dedicated attention to detail, because details make the difference.

How the rule of "few and permanent" affected my motivation and productivity:

• When I started scheduling my job and tasks as few ones completed over many steps, I begin to feel more confident, and sure about my achievement. In my unconscious mind, I'm convinced that I'll reach the expected goal whatever how many iterations I'll go through.
• My motivation and passion are often at the top, as completing tasks that are tangible, apparent, and useful. As a software engineer, I do love to deliver small features as soon as they can be deployed to production and being used by end-users, But this is certainly true in other fields of application.
• As my tasks are small, they are completed early so I can get feedback on their useless then I'll iterate to improve and optimize, rather than reviewing a whole job with many comments and issues to handle.

We always need to remind that

Overwatering can kill flowers, a moderate and continuous one give them chances to grow up

A new project is in the pipeline and we are ready to kick off this new challenge, Our team is ready and full of energy and enthusiasm. Scoping sessions are scheduled this week. The first session started with a short description of the project, making the focus on the business and strategic impact and how will help the company to accelerate its digital transformation in the perspective of developing new digital products and cloud-based offerings. It’s time to finish the workshop with one conclusion all team members share the same frustration regarding where we want to go. During the week these sessions succeeded one after the other and still having a blur vision, confusing features, and also an organization that we believe is not convenient to drive the boat to the shore.

Exploring the real value​

As a product owner, I have to gather the maximum information about the customer business, their strategic goals, and where they want to land once the project takes off. I remember this quote from Dassault Systemes Dassault Systemes !

If we ask the right questions, we can change the world

Asking pertinent questions is crucial to understand the business and the desired value we expect to provide. For a successful scoping workshop, this job should be prepared before and these reflections and analysis at least started in order to keep the team members away from any frustration or defeatism.

Why The role of the Product Owner is very important at this stage?​

The product owner is the guard of the vision and customer value, keeping the train on track requires a lot of effort regarding the business understanding and mapping this knowledge to user stories that designers, developers are easily able to take in charge and implement.

Based on our experience, our product owner iterated regularly over the backlog to refine the items and get rid of the irrelevant ones, each time he was approached to revise a business rule.

Specifications and requirements​

What kind of format our documents should follow to write down the specifications and requirements and how many details we should draft? this question is indispensable to answer before starting, the more we give attention to what to write the more implementation will be easily taking into consideration all constraints and customer-specific requirements such as solution’s time responding, availability, number of future users. These notes help considerably when it comes to architecture design and technical stack decisions.

Deliverable frequency and type​

While in agile project continuous delivery is at the heart of it and shouldn’t be part of discussions but the frequency of delivery and type of deliverable could be, The reason why a team should agree and state early these points.

The adoption of continuous improvement is totally appreciated while the business is evolving but we have to pay attention before investing in this area causes often lead to delivery postponed even contract issues.

Cost​

Sometimes and due to technical choices such as licences, do not forget to include them in your budget estimation and let stakeholders know about them, When it comes to money transparency is the key to spread trust and avoid undesirable surprises. the rules are:

• calculate an accurate budget and make sure all elements are included.
• define a process that helps to keep the budget flexible regarding features without over budgeting.

Communication​

Whatever the project scope or size, communication is a key to a successful customer value and team satisfaction, Defining communication channels, rules, and tools between stakeholders and project team can considerably impact project progression and target achieving. Communication also implies some values such as transparency about the team’s capabilities what we can and we cannot do, these kinds of statements should be communicated as soon as possibl to help the customer make the best decision.

In my point of view, I prefer to avoid the usage of multiple communication tools and formats with our stakeholders (telephone, email, video-conference, meetings…), this can help keep our exchanges simple, effective.

Regarding internal communication between team members, Personally, I have a lot of appreciation for meetings or face-to-face discussion believing that is the quick and right way to argue a decision or explain a point of view to convince my team-mates of any technical choice. Otherwise using a project management tool to track and monitor is still very useful in order to keep everyone updated and everything documented.

Flexibility and adaptation​

Agile practices come to solves today’s project issues and pains, but at any stage, we should be wedged, In my opinion, we have to cope with challenges, involve the team in every decision, think differently and act like one. Scoping is the stage where we invite all involved people to the same boat with one goal is to reach the destination.