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Ship as fast as you want
Agile, Lean, Scrum, Kanban, Scrumban (š¤·), Burndown, Shape up, Wake upāfor teams wanting to increase their product development velocity, thereās no shortage of methods to choose from. But just like tools, methods donāt matter. What matters is figuring out what you want and then setting up structures to support that.
Here are my three universal rules for shipping exactly as fast as you want, what you want:
1ļøā£ Match your planning period with your preferred shipping frequency
If you want to ship something every week, plan for one week at a time. If youāre okay shipping once a month, thatās your planning period. Set goals and lay out initiatives for a longer time period all you want, but only commit to deliverables at a pace youāre fine shipping.
2ļøā£ Donāt plan projects to span across multiple planning periods
This creates a disconnect between your planning period and shipping frequencyāin other words you say one thing and do the other. Anyways, when have you ever seen a two-quarter project get delivered during the first one? Inability to scope down and split projects is nothing but lack of effort, discipline, or both.
3ļøā£ Never let projects roll over to the next planning period by default
Your deliverables donāt magically become more valuable (worth spending more time than previously planned for) just because people failed to ship them in time. That said, itās totally fine to deliberately continue working on any delayed project.