Improving Time Management in Agile Teams

 “The key is in not spending time, but in investing it.”- Stephen R. Covey

Time is most important thing in today’s business world. Managing and investing well in time will make you achieve anything you aim for. For businesses, time is a systematic and urgency-based allocation structuring and distribution among competing demands. The agile core consists of principles of working under challenges, working with constant speed, overcoming issues, and continuously improving. Agile was well popular because of its short time for task completion and market reach along with providing quality products. Agile consists of heavy business value and focuses on managing cost, time, and scope in a project.

In agile we have seen some concepts and processes which are used to manage time like time box, daily stand-ups for 15 minutes only, adding buffer, reducing cycle time, decentralized decision making to avoid a gap between decision making and working, prioritization, and avoiding overtime. This has shown us that organizations that follow agile are way better at time management than any other traditional ones. When compared we can observe differences in traditional and agile time management and come to understand why agile is in a boom right now. Some of the differences are;

During projects in the traditional working, the scope is fixed at the very starting of the project resulting in driving the schedule and project without understanding the quality and in-between fixes. In agile, teams fix a time for the near future or tasks, assess and reassess the upcoming task and work completed ensuring how much they can complete further in a provided time. Traditional projects never start working from the very start of the projects, whereas agile work from the very first week of sprints and projects. The main is meetings and project updates are carried out without any time frame in traditional projects whereas in agile every event is time framed.

There are some basic habits agile team members have to follow other than the processes and concepts to achieve this time management and make their team more effective and efficient. These habits will help them individually to manage their time more properly than anyone else.

Habits to Improve Time Management

Go through tasks you need to complete in a decided time being

Leaders must establish a habit among team members of visualizing the tasks they need to complete within the decided time like within a week. Team members must decide how long they will have to work. By visualizing the tasks they want to complete they will get an overview of the tasks and time it will take roughly and what problems may arise. Put priorities to them and start working.

Build focus on task one at a time

Instead of jumbling on all the tasks at the same time and creating confusion agile teams must go with doing one task at a time and focus on completing it. We always must discipline ourselves and prioritize our tasks and not switch unless and until something urgent or important comes along.

Enjoy your work to the fullest

You perform well when you feel well. We many time lost time while we enjoy what we do. When teams work routinely on anything until it becomes a habit team members will start liking it after some time. When it becomes a habit they will follow the routine even without thinking of it. While working and enjoying they even lose track of time and overcome minor challenges without noticing. It helps in motivating for working.

Complete the task before moving to other

We many times keep things undone we may not know the reason why this happens but we do this a lot like we start emails that we never send, we develop products or features that we never take to market etcetera. This should always be avoided, plan by understanding and knowing the need of task we will be working on and complete it till finish and not almost done. Once completed then only move towards the next task.

Follow up and recheck schedule regularly

It is mostly not possible to always complete tasks as per the list prepared at starting so put a habit among team members to recheck the list and make the required changes to improve it after some interval. If changes are not required then still repeat the process at decided intervals as this habit will always help you in improving and managing your time wisely.

Agile has already taken time management in projects and organizations to a higher level reducing product-to-market time and improving efficiency but when team members follow the above habit it not only improves their performance but also boosts the organization's processes and environment of discipline.

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.

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