Guiding principle 4: Be agile and get started
Today it's all about the fourth guiding principle: do it simply, but do it right. This is where the hackneyed buzzword "agile" comes into play. The great thing is that many companies now understand agility.
This is the 5th part of the series: 5 guiding principles for engineers to achieve success and fulfillment in their profession.
Contents: Introduction | 1. framework | 2. good work | 3. lead | 4. agile | 5th way
Guiding principle 4: Be agile and get started
Why?
Fulfillment at work comes from seeing results, among other things. And by results, I don't mean a 50-page report that nobody reads. The great thing is that engineers have always been in a good position to make things. And with today's technologies, more than ever.
One of the basic ideas of agility is to get started as quickly as possible in order to get feedback. Companies have recognized that agile methods can reduce risk and drastically increase the chances of developing a product that delights customers. That's why our goal ("make") fits perfectly with agile working.
As a reminder, here is a typical Agile feedback loop. Here in the blog there is also Many articles on agility.
Agile-but how?
What "doing" actually looks like depends very much on the employer. Some employers invite their employees directly. Google originally had the concept of only working four days a week for the company and the fifth day on a personal project. SpaceX makes every engineer a chief engineer, with corresponding freedom (including budget).
Even if a company does not have a comparable program, successful companies should be open to good ideas. This raises the question: if we have a good idea now, how do we go about it? Here I found the book Driving Digital (Amazon) is very useful. It explains how a small team can quickly convince decision-makers to try out an idea and then implement it with a small budget. The catch: as the title suggests, the focus here is on digital products.
And what if the company is not open-minded at all? Lars Vollmer expresses this frustration in his book Zurück an die Arbeit! (Amazon) is very good, but does not really provide any answers as to how we can solve the dilemma.
However, the nice thing is that we can also work outside of our work environment. Whether it's a blog or a 3D-printed project, everything has become incredibly affordable. So we can get started right away, even as a hobby alongside work.
What?
In short, get started and do something. But don't do it in an unstructured way. Make sure that the project fits in with your goals and, if possible, implement it in the context of your work in agreement with your boss. Make sure you don't just get started, but take agile principles into account. There should therefore be measurable added value (for whoever), it should be minimal (an MVP) and implemented in small iterations. It is important to be regularly informed by the Stakeholders request feedback.
Note: The links to Amazon are affiliate links.
