Next Step

Benefit: Make more progress
Prerequisites:

Description

Many times we tend to leave things at a certain stage where we could have made more progress. We either switch tasks, wait for approval or get someone else to tell us how to proceed. During these times it is mostly a good option to go forward another step and maybe another and maybe another until the process it fully complete and delivered.

Practice:

Whenever you’re looking to submit a task, write down the following,

What I am working on: (write what you’re working on in 1 sentence) What are the next steps after submission: (write down the steps your boss, colleague, partner or you will do) Which of these next steps can I do: (select the part of the steps you can do before submitting)

Example 1

What I am working on: Working on a UI design

What are the next steps after submission:

  1. Come up with ideas
  2. Select the best idea
  3. Iterate on the idea
  4. Ask feedback from the team
  5. Iterate on the idea more
  6. Break down to smaller modules for testing
  7. Test the smaller modules with users
  8. Create implementation & testing strategy
  9. Implement each module separately
  10. A/B test
  11. Decide on what data this will improve
  12. Check data
  13. Decide to move forward with it or not
  14. Implement the successful version for all users

Which of these next steps can I do: I can do steps all through 1-9. For 10 & 11 I can give the implementation tasks to developers and get them to create a/b tests. For 12 & 13 I can get someone to check the analytics for me to see if they have performed better or worse. For 14 & 15 I can decide if the feature was a success or not and get it released to all the players.