#agile working

The nonfiction book "Do the Work" was published in 2011 by American author Steven Pressfield. It is a sequel to his 2002 book, "The War of Art". In it, he once more explains his thesis of "resistance", the enemy of creative efforts that prevent people from accomplishing their desired goals. He lays out the measures to take to overcome and destroy obstacles to realize artistic, athletic, and smart goals that take time and effort.

"Start before you're ready" - Steven Pressfield

 A common agile mindset that creative businesses encounter

Resistance

Due to procrastination, self-doubt, perfectionism, addiction, distraction, etc., family and friends are affected.

Rational thoughts

Rational reasoning frequently arises from the ego, and it frequently results in negative outcomes.

Friends and family

They are accustomed to who we are, which might make it challenging to bring about changes.

6 behaviors that frequently cause people to resist

·      Anyagileaction that demands emotional dedication

·      Any business to help others

·      Any program for spiritual development

·      Launching a business venture

·      A diet or exercise program

·      Any sort of imaginative art

Here are three areas of resistance that every project encounters:

1) Before starting

The decision to implement a novel concept requires guts. This might not work, as Steven likes to say. We're scared. Resistance constantly tells us things like, "This is a lame concept”, "You're a loser", "You can never pull this off", and "You're a loser".

 2) In the middle

Although you've traveled too far to turn back, the destination still seems so far away that you doubt you'll ever reach it. This point appeals to resistance. It pounces on you with all of its dark, self-destructive thoughts.

3) At the end

Many times a task or goal becomes so important to us that even after its completion we avoid submitting or publishing it due to fear of its results. To explain it well I will share the story of my close buddy who had published his big book; he was a successful author with years of expertise. The book was completed and was in a box and ready for delivery to the editor. But he couldn't bring himself to take that chance because it was so crucial to him making him afraid that the book wouldn’t succeed. My friend's passing is the story's tragic climax. He never removed his book from the box. It is necessary to understand that the goal of the resistance is to kill, not to inflict harm.

 Smart Goals

Resistance impedes development

Resistance is anything that prevents us from acting creatively, such as procrastination or self-doubt.

Creating fulfillment in your life

Make lists of the things you already do and the ones you still have to do. You may discover and fill in the important gaps in your life with the aid of these lists. The opposite of resistance is assistance.

When you put love into your work, you foster enthusiasm, purpose, and optimism. When you do this, the universe responds, and you start moving in the direction of your objectives.

Resistance is a major factor in many people's failures.

Resistance is everything that keeps you from acting creatively, including internal concerns, procrastination, and self-doubt.

Create a mindset regarding your goal

At least twice a week, take a break from your job and consider what the central idea of your project is. You can evaluate your circumstances and make the necessary preparations thanks to this exercise.

Goals are delayed by resistance.

When you resist, it pushes you away, diverts your attention, and prevents you from finishing your tasks. You need to figure out what makes you less motivated to work to overcome resistance.

Resistance occurs frequently.

You cannot escape your resistance; it is a natural part of who you are. Understanding resistance and then managing it is the most effective way to overcome it.

Fear keeps you from taking any action.

With a fear of taking a step forward or failure, there is resistance to action. Instead of going with fear, we must embrace our task and our job with love as love provides you the rightagilityfor raising support.

Important tasks create resistance.

Your resistance to acting on a call or taking an action will increase in proportion to how important it is to your progress.

"An ongoing project produces its energy field". The work is being infused with love by the artist or business owner; it is being infused with passion, intention, and optimism". - Steven Pressfield.

About Advance Agility

We, at Advance Agility, are the new-age Agile Coaching, Consulting and IT services company. We enable end-to-end Digital Transformation. Agile execution is integral to our being. We are doing SAFe implementation with small, medium and large organization across the globe. Our vision is to be the leading Agile execution player globally. To keep adding value at every process stage. We are on a mission to empower our clients, move from concept to cash in the shortest sustainable lead time by adopting human centric approach to business agility. Embracing the change is in our DNA. Things that keep us apart are Quicker and Seamless execution with End-to-end gamut of services. Our Global presence and Stellar Track Record give us an edge over our competitor.

Agile has always valued customer feedback. Agile uses various methods to include customer feedback and to aid it in the process of software development. Much of the work agile teams include feedback from users like fixing and tracking the bugs and improving user experience. User story prompted from the user feedback is a small unit of work in an agile workflow but also an important one.

In cases where a solution to the user story is not immediately cleared, the team requires more research time and breaks the story into smaller divisions. This time is allocated by the product owner in advance of the sprint. The time spent in preparation for this story is called a spike story.

In short, we can say that a spike is a story where team members can not estimate the required time required by the story so instead of jumping to the solution or speculating about outcomes team members perform small experiments before moving towards implementation. Spikes can be used in various situations such as;

·       Conduct Research to familiarize team members with new technology and domains

·       Reduce risk, and uncertainty and gain confidence in a technical and functional approach

·       To determine the viability of epics perform feasibility analysis and other activities

·       Provide insight on the approach of splitting features and capabilities into small and quantifiable parts

·       Estimate new features and capabilities to analyze implicit behavior

·       The situation where development teams are confused if the required result will be obtained or not with the considered solution

·       A team requires initial work to estimate the user story

·       When multiple options are available and the team needs to find the most suitable one for the project

Types of Spike

There are two types of a spike in agile

Technical Spike- Used in research of various approaches of the solution domain. Examples are like defining build versus buy decision, load effect of a user story or evaluating potential performance, assessing specific technical application approaches, and developing confidence in the developed desired path.

Functional Spike- Used to analyze overall solution behavior and helps in determining how to break it, organize work, indicate risk and complexity existed, and use the insight to influence implementation decisions.

Teams sometimes require technical spikes or functional spikes. Even in some cases both the technical and functional spikes are used together.

Benefits of Spikes

·       Breaks uncertainty

·       The pressure of going undefined makes team define their actions

·       Clarity of the path where you are heading

·       Avoid overestimation caused due to uncertainty

·       Due to splitting the risk of certainty estimation is close to reality

Many have questions about whether multiple spikes can be used for a single story then the answer to this is- Yes, multiple spikes can be used for one story. For example, a team can use an agile spike for research of possible solutions, one spike for trial and error of solution, and one for estimating the implementation. All these spikes can be used for one story in three different sprints.

As spikes don’t directly deliver value using them sparingly with the help of the below guidelines

Guidelines for Spikes

Demonstration, Acceptance, and Quantifiable

Spikes are put into team backlog, estimation, and sized to fit in iteration similar to other stories but they provide information rather than working code-like stories. Spikes are for driving the necessary data to identify the solution confidently. The output obtained from spike can be demonstrated by providing ownership and responsibility for decision-making. The product owner accepts the spikes that are domed and meet acceptance criteria.

Spike Timing

As the uncertainty in spike is in more than one story it is advisable to avoid planning for both spike and resulting stories in the same iteration as it will be riskier. If only it’s small, straightforward, and quick for solution finding then only go for the same iteration.

Exceptions

Agile development consists of uncertainty and risk for almost every story. Experimenting, discussing, collaborating, and negotiating lead to the discovery of the right solution. Thus this shows us that every user story in agile almost consists of spike-like activity for technical and functional risks. Spike in agile is more critical only when uncertainty and many unknowns exist.

An agile spike gives trust, visibility, and predictability to the product roadmap and helps improve the agile product delivery by accurate information that leads to the right estimation.

We, at Advance Agility, are the new-age Agile Coaching, Consulting and IT services company. We enable end-to-end Digital Transformation. Agile execution is integral to our being. We are doing SAFe implementation with small, medium and large organization across the globe. Our vision is to be the leading Agile execution player globally. To keep adding value at every process stage. We are on a mission to empower our clients, move from concept to cash in the shortest sustainable lead time by adopting human centric approach to business agility. Embracing the change is in our DNA. Things that keep us apart are Quicker and Seamless execution with End-to-end gamut of services. Our Global presence and Stellar Track Record give us an edge over our competitor.

Agile Management:

Throughout the project the team has used the original discord that has been set-up and frequently met up every Thursday (7pm) and Sunday (5pm) to ensure the team was on the same page about what was expected of them that week or in the next steps.

In the first week an initial 3 meetings were made over discord at pre-set times to clarify what each member had in mind for the project, what they would like to accomplish and why they wanted to join the team specifically. This then lead to foundation tasks being set such as research, mood boarding and general idea gathering to base off of. As seen in the pictures above, the team were quickly met with a list of tasks they were delegated and could start work on to be checked on the following meeting. Any tweaks, adjustments or questions would be raised at the next meeting and peoples progress would be showcased - this was a good form of motivation, especially when physical meetings wouldn't be possible due to the introduction of frequent deadlines and the expectation that others would be able to view the progress you made (or lack there-of). 

As weeks went on this proved to still be effective and smaller tasks would be completed on creating smaller workloads and naturally less work being handed in until the next step could be taken. This is especially prevalent in our weekly blogs as the first few weeks have more detailed and easier tasks for our peers to complete where-as weeks 5-7 are more about finer details before extra details and fine tuning can be added.

During the process we also introduced the agile work platform Trello, though useful and visually pleasing it quickly became another thing for members to check up on externally. We found things outside the one platform (the discord server) would either be forgotten about or slacked on so it was agreed as a group to carry on with the laid out plans within the discord.

In general: Trello’s external software did not work in our favour and we instead opted for an all-in-one experience with discord after the irregularity of updates and issues keeping it updated alongside the meetings and other projects. The time consumption and addition to workload was not something team members appreciated and wanted to keep on top of.

Social software represents a contrasting design perspective to support project working. With social software the emphasis is more on the employees’ engagement and optimizing group working than project practices.

Social software is often associated with particular types of tools, like chat, tagging, wikis, blogs, and social bookmark services. However, the focus should be on a people’s framework that optimizes participation in terms of diversity and inclusion, relationship patterns, collective knowledge, and self-adjusting groups – all to improve group dynamics and work results.

Social software encourages interaction, helping people organize themselves depending on information sharing and community participation.

Enterprises are beginning to understand that social software can assist to create environments that enhance how communities and teams innovate and perform. This software offers a different perspective to look at system design. Instead of focusing only on process and data requirements, social software focusses on the implicit aspects of how work is carried out.People learn best from the perspective of their work, and usually through peer interaction. Social software concentrates on ‘the edge’ by making it simpler for people to communicate and share information that the formal channels may not offer. Social software offers a balance to more formalized processes around learning and knowledge management.

Similar trends have emerged in other areas, like enterprise content management and enterprise portals, where suppliers are under pressure as once-specialized technology becomes a commodity as general infrastructure. It would be vital for these suppliers to focus on specific infrastructure services/vertical market products and applications that extend what major suppliers offer as a core framework.

Technologists have become more knowledgeable in understanding business needs. The result? A slight enhancement in the way enterprise infrastructure and applications are built, planned and deployed to support the information and process management needs of the firms.

What is the contrast among light-footed and adaptable working?

Individuals regularly utilize the terms reciprocally. Adaptable working courses of action, which have been around for quite a while, are exclusively arranged, require the board consent and are seen essentially as a worker advantage and an exemption to the standard. Spry, or brilliant, Agile working is business-driven, bridling innovation to make another standard where everybody may work whenever anyplace, if business needs are met. It depends on proof of advantages, for example, higher representative profitability, lower office costs, a decreased carbon impression and increasingly spurred laborers. It requires a change from the board by inputs (time and nearness) to the executives by results - it's about what you do, not where you do it. Adjusting business and individual needs isn't in every case simple, however shrewd working can bring all-round favorable circumstances on the off chance that it is executed attentively.

How can one start to establish deft working?

Perceive that it will challenge direction and-control authority and culture, and ensure that your senior group is ready. The technique should be business-wide, with heads of offices, for example, money, HR, IT and property driving it together. You should likewise assemble the case for your association. What are your key objectives and how could light-footed functioning assistance? There are assets accessible: the UK government this year propelled a keen working code of training, PAS 3000, created by the British Standards Institute. Worldwide Workplace Analytics in the US gives an abundance of proof on the advantages and disadvantages of savvy working. The UK philanthropy Working Families a month ago propelled a "multidimensional business case" device for part bosses.

By what means can center chiefs be convinced to acknowledge such critical change?

They have to recognize how might this benefit them. Get them to open up in a private setting, to air and address their qualms, yet to talk about how they could profit and build up their abilities. Light-footed work expects chiefs to relinquish micromanaging and become mentors and empowering influences. Give them how driving scattered groups is a fundamental aptitude for advancement to senior administration.

What befalls gatherings and joint effort if everybody is working in various areas?

You've most likely heard the expression "lithe workplace" hurled around at office the board gatherings, yet what precisely does it mean? A coordinated workplace builds efficiency by giving representatives the opportunity and adaptability to work in various regions of an office when and how they pick.

Nobody can say for certain what's on the horizon, yet a light-footed workplace guarantees you'll be prepared for it.Elements of An Agile Work Environment

Nimble working methods relinquishing the conventional office space and grasping a totally unique worldview. It begins by review fill in as a unique arrangement of exercises rather than a fixed area. From that point, it's guaranteeing you have the correct space, arrangements and innovation to help this better approach for working.

Start making your deft work environment today with this outline.

In particular, that implies:

Having the correct blend of calm, private space and communitarian space (otherwise called movement based working, or ABW)

Having a working environment structure that can without much of a stretch be balanced as your workforce changes

Actualizing arrangements that give representatives the opportunity and adaptability to work where they can be generally gainful, (for example, a remote work approach)

Having working environment innovation that keeps representatives associated with the individuals, spots and assets they need

The three most well known light-footed condition choices are action based working (ABW), office hoteling and hot desking. While every one of these methodologies wipe out relegated work areas, every one does it a piece in an unexpected way.

In an action based working (ABW) condition, representatives can save rooms, hardware and even work spaces for the duration of the day, regularly moving starting with one spot then onto the next as their exercises change.

Office hoteling is more inflexible—representatives save a workspace before they show up and remain there for the afternoon. In an office that utilizations hot desking, there are a set number of unassigned workstations accessible to any individual from the workforce on a first-come, first-served premise. At the point when workers land at the workplace, they select an abandoned work area where they'll go through their day.

The Benefits of an Agile Work Environment

In spite of the fact that most of Agile Working environments still have doled out seating, that is changing quick as officials adjust to the requirements of the hyper-associated, versatile workforce.

In a 2018 CBRE study, 52 percent of administrators said they intended to execute some degree of unassigned seating inside the following three years.

This progressively light-footed workplace has numerous advantages, including:

Decreasing land expenses and office the board costs

Making it simpler to suit contractors, experts and new contracts as organizations develop

Better cooperation and more prominent worker profitability

Adding to an increasingly positive worker experience, which improves enlistment and maintenance