New Year’s Resolutions — Paul Henman — Toronto Agile Coach

I’m sure most people will be happy to see the end of 2021 but also trying not to build up too much expectation for 2022. There won’t be a sudden end to COVID — it’s going to take a continued effort from everyone. It won’t go away just because we’re all tired of dealing with it. Stay strong; hang in there; support each other; and keep safe, please.

The New Year is a time when many people set Resolutions — things they want to improve, e.g. eating better, getting more exercise. It’s a handy reminder to review how happy we are with various things, but is doing it once a year really enough? It often leads to huge goals because it’s going to be so long until the new review… and, of course, huge goals aren’t usually achievable. That’s why most resolutions are abandoned within a few weeks. It probably helps to have a vision of how you would like things to be in a few months (even a year), but set smaller goals — what are the steps that you think will take you towards that vision?

Hopefully that sounds familiar: regular retrospection, identifying where you want to improve, deciding on small steps to go in that direction; take a step, then go back to retrospection, rinse and repeat.

Engineers and product owners should be well practised in this — retrospectives to look at how we work, and experiments to…