Productivity

Advances in technology should, in theory, make your job easier, but sometimes it feels impossible to get it all done. These productivity techniques can help.

If you’re struggling with being productive, you’re not alone. A quick Google search of “how to be productive,” yields 190 million search results. You and just about everybody else out there are looking for ways to get more done.

Thankfully, we don’t have to reinvent the wheel. There are a lot of tried and true productivity boosting systems out there. While all these systems can be useful, finding the one fits in with your lifestyle can be a little overwhelming. This quick guide to six popular productivity techniques should make it a bit easier for you to find ways to ramp up your workflow.

Pomodoro
History: This time management technique was created in the 1980s by Francesco Cirillo. The term Pomodoro is Italian for tomato (Cirillo named it after the tomato-shaped kitchen timer he used.)

What is it: The premise behind this technique is that you are training your brain to focus intently for short bursts of time, with the idea being that you can accomplish more in short, focuses bursts of intensity, over longer, distracted chunks of time. The Pomodoro technique is made up of six different steps:
Choose a task
Set your timer for 25 minutes
Work on the task for until your timer goes off
Mark your progress on a sheet of paper
Take a quick break (about 5 minutes)
After every four 25-minute segments take a longer break (20 to 30 minutes)

Effort: Easy. All you need is a timer and a willingness to stay focused for less than half an hour at a time.

Resources: You can read the book The Pomodoro Technique, by Francesco Cirillo, or head over to the website for more detailed information.

Drawbacks: Some people don’t like that it’s such a rigid method for focusing, and it’s focused strictly on time-on-task work without any system for organizing or managing your tasks.

Time Blocking
History: This history is a bit murky, but one of the earliest records of time blocking is in Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography. Many well-known people like Elon Musk and Jeff Weiner (LinkedIn CEO) say that time blocking helps them get more done and have time for family and personal events.

What is it: Time blocking is a way to organize your tasks into, well, blocks of time. Some people block their entire day; others focus on the working hours. Once you block off all your work hours (say 9-5), then you segment those hours into smaller blocks. One tip for this method is to schedule any appointments or meeting on specific days, and only those days, to help keep productivity flowing.

You can even block your time, and people like doing this because it might be hard to fit in that run or pottery class otherwise!

Effort: Moderate. You must think about your day, organize events in advance, and learn to say no.

Resources: This detailed post from Cal Newport, a computer science professor, gives a great look at how time blocking works.

Drawbacks: This requires commitment, and you must take time to plan. It’s rigid, which some people find frustrating or overwhelming.

The Ivy Lee Method
History: In 1918, Charles M. Schwab was busy running Bethlehem Steel Corporation. He wanted to improve his productivity. According to stories, Schwab met with Ivy Lee and asked him for advice on getting more stuff done. Lee told Schwab to try his method for three months, and then he could pay him what he thought the advice was worth. Three months later, Schwab mailed Lee a check for $25,000.

What is it: The Ivy Lee Method is simply the act of prioritizing your to-do list by focusing on the most important things you must accomplish each day. The practice goes as follows:
At the end of each day, write down the six most important things you need to do the next day.
Rank the items in order from most important to least.
The next day, you should focus only on the first task on your list until you complete the task. Then move on to the next. Do this with each following item on your list.
Any items left over at the end of the day, move to the list for the next day.

The trick here is to not add more than six items on your list and to stay focused on each item until you have finished.

Effort: Easy. You only need a few minutes each evening to plan your list for the next day. The tough part is sticking to your list and not getting distracted.

Resources: Think and Grow Rich, by Napoleon Hill, features the story about this method.

Drawbacks: Other than the time investment of tending to the list, there aren’t a lot of disadvantages to this method. Sticking to a list of six can be tough, but setting limitations can reduce anxiety and improve focus.

Eating Live Frogs
History: Success-guru Brian Tracy is most often credited with popularizing this productivity method. The idea comes from an alleged Mark Twain quote (there are different variations of the quote floating around) “If it’s your job to eat a frog, it’s best to do it first thing in the morning. Moreover, if it’s your job to eat two frogs, it’s best to eat the biggest one first.”

What is it: The premise is that you tackle the most arduous task first thing in the morning so that you can get it out of the way. Keep working on the task until it is finished before you move on to another commitment.

Effort: Moderate. It takes some will power to go after the most intimidating project. However, once you get started, it should get easier to plug along.

Resources: You can learn more about Brian Tracy’s method on his website.

Drawbacks: The biggest drawback is the method itself. If jumping into the deep end isn’t comfortable for you, you may have a hard time committing.

Personal Kanban
History: The system dates to the 1940s and to an industrial engineer at Toyota named Taiichi Ohno. The method was created to help streamline processes and increase productivity in the factories. The idea was to find the bottlenecks in production and address those issues. You can use the same method to figure out where you need to be more productive with your time.

What is it: This simple productivity plan relies on visual cues to keep your brain motivated to keep pushing forward. If you tend to start many things at once, this trick can be the nudge you need to finish something. You can use a piece of paper, a whiteboard, or sticky notes. Split your “board” of choice into three categories: To Do, Doing, and Done. Move each project into its respective categories as necessary. People who swear by this says it works because once that to-do or doing column starts filling up, it can be a kick in the butt.

Effort: Easy to moderate. It’s a simple method and requires very little in terms of supplies, but you’ll be forced to focus on your tasks.

Resources: You can learn more about this method on the Personal Kanban website. There’s also a book you can purchase if you prefer.

Drawbacks: It might be tedious for some people.

Must, Should, Want
What is it: This method is simply a tool to help you prioritize your tasks so that you can focus on things that need attention immediately without getting distracted by items of lesser importance. The first step is to make a list of everything you need to do. Then, categorize each item as a must, a should, or a want. Must’s are your non-negotiables. They must happen. The should category is for important items, but you can put them off if needed. The want category is for things you want to do, but they can be put off indefinitely.

Effort: Low. Once you have your list of priorities, you can focus on the most important tasks until they are finished without worrying about items that don’t need attention right away.

Resources: There is a variation of this tactic called MOSCOW. It’s a little more in-depth and offers reminders for things you should say no to every time.

Drawbacks: Not many, though you might initially feel guilty putting things into a less important category.

Once you find a way to be more productive during the time you have to get things done, you might find that your downtime feels more like time off!

https://www.lifesavvy.com/856/productivity-101-six-favorite-methods-for-getting-more-done/


The term iterative and incremental development describes a class of methodologies for software development where the system grows incrementally through a series of complete development cycles.

Agile software development methods are a group of specific iterative methodologies that combine relatively short iterations with evolutionary refinement of the requirements, plans and targets across each subsequent iteration.

In my experience, agile and iterative methodologies are lower risk than using more traditional 'waterfall' style methods, where all of the planning and design is done in advance.

Scrum
Scrum is one of the simplest "Agile" methodologies and is also proven to be highly effective for both software development and more general product development. Scrum is often used in financial product development.

Scrum is based on the idea that during a project the customers will almost certainly change their minds about what they want and need. To address this, a Scrum project moves forward in a series of short iterations each of which delivers an incremental set of improvements to the product.

Scrum has frequent intermediate deliveries with working functionality. This enables the customer to get a working product earlier and enables the project to change its requirements according to changing needs.

Scrum provides a set of practices and predefined roles which a team adopts in order to maximise the team's ability to deliver quickly and respond to changing and emerging requirements.

The Scrum Team
A Scrum team is typically cross-functional and generally consist of around five to nine people, however it can be much larger. The team has the responsibility to deliver the product. Scrum encourages co-location of all team members and verbal communication between team members.

A number of specific roles are defined in Scrum:

The ScrumMaster
Scrum projects are run using very flexible management style and require project managers with specific experience managing Agile projects. The project management role is non-traditional in that the ScrumMaster is primarily a facilitator who enforces the agreed rules, removes impediments to progress and ensures the team remains focussed.

Scrum teams are self-organising. The ScrumMaster is not the leader of the team and instead acts as a buffer between the team and any distracting influences.

Product Owner
The Product Owner represents the customer and ensures that the Scrum Team works on the "right things" from a business perspective. The Product Owner writes customer-centric "stories" which are one or two sentences in business language describing a specific product feature. These are then implemented by the Scrum team.

Stakeholders
These are the people for whom the project will produce the agreed-upon benefits. They are only directly involved in the process during reviews of progress.

"Sprints" and "Backlogs"
Work is packaged into small parcels of around two to four weeks in duration, called "Sprints." During each Sprint, the team creates a complete product increment resulting in a potentially shippable product.

The set of features that go into a Sprint come from a prioritised set of high level requirements of work to be done, known as the "product backlog." This product backlog contains broad descriptions of all required features for the new or enhanced product, prioritised in terms of their projected business value, along with estimates of the effort to deliver them.

Which specific backlog items go into a Sprint is determined during a planning meeting prior to the Sprint. During this meeting, the Product Owner informs the team of the items from the product backlog that they want completed. The team then determines how much of this they can commit to complete during the next Sprint, which becomes the "Sprint backlog" for the next Sprint.

During a Sprint, no one is allowed to change the Sprint backlog, which means that the requirements are frozen for that Sprint. After a Sprint is completed, the team demonstrates the product to the Product Owner. The team can cancel a Sprint if they feel they are unable to meet the goals of the Sprint and external stakeholders can cancel a Sprint if external circumstances negate the value of proceeding. If a Sprint is abnormally terminated, the next step is to conduct a new Sprint planning meeting, where the reason for the termination is reviewed.

A publicly displayed chart is often used to show the remaining work for the current Sprint. This is known as a Sprint burndown chart and should be updated each day to provide visibility on progress.

Transitioning to Scrum
The transition from traditional methods of working to Scrum is relatively straightforward. You may benefit from engaging an experienced Scrum coach to assist in training and implementation.

Scrum works very well in its own right and is also an excellent first step if you want to introduce Agile concepts into your organisation since it is simple and focuses on high-level project management.

https://www.projectsmart.co.uk/introduction-to-scrum.php