Just Do IT

Just as there was a risk with “yes we can”, long term vision might block people block from starting. I call this the perfectionist syndrome. People rather do nothing than doing something wrong.
Well, in reality never taking any decision is worse than taking a wrong decision sometime.
The cure for this syndrome is “Just Do IT” A lot of books about starting your own business (see the biography), tell you the same thing: better start.

Just start doing something,as whatever you do now, it will be wrong anyway!
😉
Ok that might feel bad. Stick with me for a second. If you take for granted that you will be wrong whatever happens, you will feel better if actually, what you do is wrong. (In the sense that, you did expect it to go wrong anyway. )

And if, by fortune, you are right, it will be a bonus and you have all every reason to have started !

The benefit of starting before you think you know what to do, is that your customer will discover what he wants by you showing him what you’ve got. (And you will discover it at the same time.)
yes, just like you, I want my customer to know what she wants before I start. Unfortunatly customers never do. When I show her what I have done. She looks at it, sees something she does not like and then tells me what she needs. Then I make a new version and we start over. After a few versions, we together create something my customer really likes. (This is true even if I am the customer.)

A lot of agilists, react to BDUF, which is the best know part of perfectionism. That is the old model perfectionism, the “Active perfectionism”.
In agile teams I see the same idea popping up: “ I can’t start with a scrum-board as I don’t have the right material/software etc…
The right answer is “Yes you can. Just DO IT.”

Just look at your todo list, GTD cards, backlog, what is blocking you from starting? Really? Are you sure it’s not resistance?
In Do the Work, Steven Pressfield goes over the different reasons of resistance.  Are your blockers really blockers or only resistance?

Look at your list again. Forget what block you and just DO IT.

 

Agile Techniques that support Just Do it

  • Continuous Integration
  • Refactoring
  • Unit testing
  • Daily Standup’s

Books:

Games that teach “Just Do IT”:

Thanks to Jurgen & Oana for reviewing this post.