Hard sh** and smart sh**

Great GSD ("Get Sh.. Done" as ApexSQL Nis office central poster says) = consistently have both short term and long term transparent results

Some teams are working using Scrum work organization through goals (answer to what?) and tasks (answer to how?), while others have monthly goals / quotas to achieve by making daily and weekly progress in smaller increments

We often forget about the goals while focusing exclusively on the tasks at hand to get them finished no matter what, forgetting about what is actually needed in the end and in what time

Now I'm not saying that focusing on daily tasks is wrong - one of my own email quotes from the early days said:

"Focused, hard work is the real key to success. Keep your eyes on the goal, and just keep taking the next step towards completing it." - John Carmack

 

We must always keep in mind both the goal and have Daily deliverables at all times

But in order to grow, besides working hard we must also be cognizant of the end goal at all times and be able to work smart to achieve the goal

GSD has two levels:
   1) Hard Sh**: daily deliverables, things we must all do our part and complete in order to make daily progress, i.e. fix stubborn bugs, test bug fixes and report new bugs, write TS articles for unfixed bugs, publish articles, communicate with stakeholders, share your progress daily, etc.
   2) Smart Sh**: make a dent in the universe by aligning all action with end goals and complete the goals with a reasonable amount of effort in a reasonable amount of time

How does Smart Sh** translate to your everyday work?

   a) Dev teams should realize that customers don't have a use for 50 bug fixes in code and would much rather prefer 20 bug fixes in a product build they can actually download - know when to cut and deliver.
   b) SQA should invest time to understand product usefulness, to learn about it and to use it as customers use it in order to test the product well, to never assume they know everything, to write about it in non-hamburger helper way, and to excel in customer support.
   c) Everyone should be investing time into ERF mentorship with new colleagues so that they can start contributing back and in turn save time to you.
   d) Everyone should automate repetitive work - currently a huge soft spot in multiple teams.

What does automation have to do with working smart?

A lot: one of the funnier historical examples is several devs going rogue and writing a software that fully automates sending Daily Scrum Summaries - while other teams were taking hours of time weekly to manually compile good Scrum Summary emails, these devs took one day and created a two-click solution that in turn saved them days of time; I always received spotless Scrum Summaries from their teams which was a mystery to me until I found out about the "plot" ;) (devs are good guys, they were planning to distribute the software to everyone when we stopped sending these emails daily)

 

Time is a limited commodity so by investing some in order to automate repetitive work (smart vs. hard), devs gained more time to focus on what really matters: to write better code and to deliver great products to the customers in order to make a dent in the universe. I'm also sure devs had more fun in the process ;)

Ultimately whatever we do we must ask ourselves:

   A) Can I complete the task at hand more efficiently with less effort and time?

   B) What goal will be closer to completion when I finish this task today?

   C) What will I deliver to customers when the goal is completed?

   D) Will the customers pay me for the deliverable?

 

If no one will pay you in the end, why would you do it in the first place? ;)