Algorithmic Life (13): From "Scrum" to "PDCA Time Management Method"

In work and life, the step of "repeated practice" is indispensable, in this article, the author starts from the Scrum framework, PDCA method, etc., and talks about his own views, you might as well take a look.

Many people wonder why "I read a lot of books, but I still don't know how to live this life"?

Everyone may have their own understanding, but as Mr. Wang Yangming's "unity of knowledge and action" said, "knowledge" must be able to "act" to be considered "true knowledge", many times in life knowledge is not necessarily possible, so there is still something difference between knowledge and action. The author believes that there is a "repeated practice" between "knowledge" and "action", and after reading the truth in the book, he did not "act" according to what the book said, or "did it once or twice, and then gave up", because if the "link of thinking" is to be established, it needs to be a repeated process, and without repeated practice, thinking will still be linked to the old chain.

You see that when the baby is just babbling, the same word and sentence have to be practiced repeatedly by adults. In the same way, many of the thinking links of adults have been fixed, and it is unlikely that the knowledge of books will be transformed into "wisdom" by reading a few books (just knowing, but not practicing), and wisdom must rely on "practice" on the knowledge in books, and it is necessary to rely on "repeated practice" to dismantle the old thinking links and establish new thinking links. For the method of iterative practice time, Scrum, which is commonly used by IT people, is a good reference.

Scrum is an agile project management framework in which projects are divided into a series of short units of work called Sprints, which usually last 1-4 weeks.

The goal of each Sprint is to deliver a working product increment. It emphasizes iterative incremental development, aiming to achieve goals and continuously improve the product in a short cycle, and the general steps are divided into Sprint Planning, Daily Scrum, Sprint Development, Sprint Review, and Sprint Retrospective, which are as follows from the perspective of another PDCA cycle:

1. Plan: In Scrum, this phase corresponds to the Sprint Planning meeting. Based on the Product Backlog, the team selects a set of User Stories or other work items as the Sprint Backlog. In this process, the team clearly plans the work to be completed in the next Sprint (typically two to three weeks).
2. Do: This is the Sprint Execution phase where the team develops product features, tests and prepares demos. Throughout the Sprint, the team focuses on achieving the goals defined in the Sprint Backlog.
3. Check: Daily Scrum to synchronize progress, coordinate and resolve impediments, and Sprint Review, where teams demonstrate what they've completed and review incremental outcomes of the product with other stakeholders to gather feedback.
4. Act: Corresponds to the Sprint Retrospective, in which team members reflect on how they worked during the past Sprint, identify what went well and what needs to be improved, and develop a specific action plan to implement the improvements in the next Sprint. This process ensures that the team is constantly able to learn from the experience and improve its effectiveness.

Speaking of the PDCA cycle, it is a continuous cycle process popularized by Dr. Edwards Deming, an American statistician, including a scientific quality management and continuous improvement methodology of "Plan, Do, Check, and Act", which is based on the idea of iterative improvement, and encourages the formation of closed-loop management in the four stages of planning, execution, inspection and action, to ensure that each improvement process is based on the previous round of feedback and learning, and the general steps are as follows:

1. Plan: Determine the goal, analyze the current situation, identify the problem, formulate improvement measures and plan the plan.
2. Do: Implement the plan according to the plan and implement the improvement measures.
3. Check: Collect data, monitor the execution results, compare the planned goals, and check whether the execution effect meets expectations.
4. Act: Based on the results of the inspection, analyze the cause and take appropriate action. If it is a successful improvement, the results will be standardized and applied to the market, and if it is not as expected, the problem needs to be re-analyzed, the plan should be revised, and the PDCA cycle should be implemented again until the problem is resolved.

Let's take an example to see how the PDCA cycle can improve an individual's time management efficiency:

1. Plan: Individuals can make detailed plans according to the current project arrangement and personal learning and living arrangements, including the allocation of time, when important things are done, whether trivial things can be uniformly divided into a certain period of time to do together, and the things that communicate with others depend on the time of others, etc., and can clarify the goals of work and personal life in a daily, weekly or even a period of time, as well as the approximate time required to complete each task;
2. Execution Phase (Do): Stick to the plan, you can refer to time management methods such as agile development or Pomodoro Technique, to ensure that each time period can focus on the task at hand, away from distraction-prone environments or things, and reduce distractions and interruptions. It is still recommended that you try to do things in the "flow", because in the flow, the "I" is put very small, and it is easier to concentrate on the current thing, so the efficiency and quality of completing this thing are relatively higher than those who do not enter the flow (when there is distraction);
3. Check: Regularly assess the completion of the task, using a written record or some tools, to regularly check the gap between the plan and the reality, so that the gap is not already large and it is more difficult to remediate. The author recommends that you have a written form to record, and it is best to display it within the range of sight often, so that it is convenient to remind yourself in time.
4. Act: Analyze the reasons why the assigned tasks are completed well or not on time, think about how you can build on your strengths and continue to complete more tasks, or how you can improve a task to catch up, and how to avoid similar things in the future. This is a process of self-organization, for example, a task has been scheduled for a long time, but it has been delayed, so it is necessary to deeply analyze why it is delayed, because it is because it is worried about failure, or because it is the pursuit of perfection, etc. Only by finding the cause can we think about the solution, and can we practice whether the solution is effective, which is a process of continuous practice, correction, circulation, and gradual stability.

One of the key points of PDCA thinking is that based on the "practice results", the cycle of optimization continues to practice, which is also a good route from "knowing" to "doing". Only by constantly practicing, based on the results to revise how to continue to work, how to do better, how to be able to do without being affected by the external environment, and the continuous cycle process can strengthen the establishment of a new thinking chain, so as to better transform the knowledge of books into their own "wisdom"!

This article was originally published by @养心进行时 on Everyone is a Product Manager and is not allowed to be reproduced without permission

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