A Spork in the Road

I’m reading a fantastic book about agile software development: The Art of Agile Development by James Shore and Shane Warden. And as I’m reading, I’m thinking about how to scale some of these principles — designed for and derived from teams of approximately 3-20 people — down to a team of 1.

Project management for the individual is a topic I see addressed infrequently, and for obvious reasons. One person can take on only so many projects, of a certain complexity, before the task requires more workers. A lone worker need only communicate with the client and with herself (not in a pathological sense — more on this in a moment), so there are fewer channels of communication to manage. Still, one person with several projects going needs some kind of considered, tested project management approach to be maximally effective.

I posted a question about this topic to one of my developer email lists and got some excellent pointers from Brian Hogan, who recommended a short meeting with myself every day (charming and useful — how perfect!), among other things.

A meeting with myself: it’s easy to forget how diverse our own psyches are, and that stopping to coordinate our own efforts is a crucial task. Too many days I cruise along at the border between the conscious and the subconscious, getting things done and marking items of my lists without necessarily forming a strategic plan for the day, or the week.

The most important thing is to keep yourself motivated and honest. Without anyone else looking over your code, or asking you questions, or even saying “did you do anything productive on that today?”, it’s harder to stay focused.
—Brian Hogan

Of course, what I love most about the agile approach, and The Art of Agile Development in particular, is the emphasis on mindfulness.

Agility—the ability to respond effectively to change—requires that everyone pay attention to the process and practices of development. This is mindfulness.
—The Art of Agile Development, Shore & Warden

Understanding the core principles of Agile development — quality of life, open communication, delivering real value, short project iterations, and so forth — is beginning to help me improve my own project management, even when I’m the graphic designer, user interface designer, programmer, tester, and project manager!

I can’t pair program, but I can certainly work on improving my processes, automating my testing, failing fast, practicing energized work, and a dozen other things that help me get more out of my work week and my life.