Tasktop Director of Digital Transformation, Dominica DeGrandis, presents The Balanced Calendar: How to Optimize Your Time at DevOps Enterprise Summit 2017.

1. The Balanced Calendar
How to optimize your time
Dominica DeGrandis

2. @dominicad

3. Agenda
§ Address the too-many-meetings complaint
§ Provide some ways for you to optimize your time
§ How to get buy in from the boss to do so
@dominicad

4. @dominicad

5. The all day cram
The 30 minute jam
The triple booked wham

6. The 30 minute jam
10 meetings a day - perpetual stop and go - exacerbates context switching
@dominicad

7. Back-to-back 7am to 7pm meetings leave zero flexible time
– no room for unexpected important urgent work
The all day cram

8. A canceled meeting creates rework – which has a cost
The triple booked wham

9. 3 Calendar solutions
1. Maker calendar: Creative people (developers, designers, writers)
2. Manager calendar: Decision makers
3. Combo calendar: People who do both
http://www.paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html

10. Maker calendar
Ultradium cycles: https://www.polyphasicsociety.com/polyphasic-sleep/science/rhythms/

11. Manager calendar
@dominicad

12. Combo calendar - before

13. @dominicad
Combo calendar - after
D1 D1
D1
D1

14. 3 Interruption busters to help you optimize time
1. Pomodoros
2. Do Not Disturb hours
3. Office hours

15. @dominicad
Pomodoros
Break down work into time-
boxed intervals separated by
short breaks.
Set timer for 25 or 30 min and
work to finish your task until
timer rings.
Pomodoros provide intense focus
time.

16. @dominicad
Do-not-disturb hours
Set a regular cadence to let
people know when you are
available and when you are
not available.

17. @dominicad
Office hours
A regular cadence of office
hours signals times when
people can schedule time on
your calendar, or drop by for
important discussions.

18. @dominicad
“But that won’t work here.”

19. “The difference
between successful
people and very
successful people is
that very successful
people say “no” to
almost everything.”
~Warren Buffett
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/756.Warren_Buffett

20. @dominicad

21. How to get buy-in from the boss
Measure at least one metric trend in 4 different areas.
§ How fast
§ How productive
§ How good
§ How predictable
Troy Magennis team dashboard - http://focusedobjective.com/team-metrics-right/ based on work by Larry Maccherone
“It’s relatively easy to game a single metric. Measure the impact of change
in one metric by showing the other metrics.” ~ Troy Magennis

22. @dominicad
Look at Flow time
Balanced Flow chart exercise – How Fast?
www.ddegrandis.com

23. @dominicad
Look at Throughput
Balanced Flow chart exercise – How productive?
www.ddegrandis.com

24. Balanced Flow chart exercise – How good?
www.ddegrandis.com
Look at Quality
change failure rate (CFR)
% of done FD items
total # of done items

25. Consider the
90th percentile
to discuss the
probability of
finishing work
within so
many days.
90th percentile filtered
for business requests
Balanced Flow chart exercise – How predictable?
www.ddegrandis.com

26. If your end-to-end workflow network
isn’t connected, is there any point in
optimizing one particular area?
It’s hard to discover bottlenecks with
sparse visibility on work across
disconnected systems.

27. @dominicad
DevOps Workshops
Location: Imperial Ballroom A
Mon: 4:10 - 5:10 pm
Tue: 1:40 - 2:40 pm
Max capacity 100 (FIFS)

28. 1. Try the interruption busters: Pomodoros, Office hours, DND hours.
2. Consider the balanced Flow chart experiment to improve.
Call to action – Experiment for a balanced calendar

29. Connect with me!
Subject: DOES17 FLOW
Email: dominica@tasktop.com
Website: ddegrandis.com
@dominicad
therealdominicad
/in/dominicadegrandis