Sean Walsh, the Co-Founder of 1904labs, explains why it's important to begin any task with the end in mind.
Transcript
Everything we do is using Agile. And using human-center design. And begin with the end in mind is nothing more than, "Where am I trying to go?" "What needs to be done?" And so as part of the agile process, planning is a big piece, and making sure you understand what needs to be done and you understand when it needs to be done, and in what sequence.
So begin with the end in mind is to make sure you have a clear picture of where you're going, because as the old saw says: if you don't know where you're going any road will get you there. And in the context of the work that we do, that's an invitation for a lot of time wasting, a lot of client resource wasting, so it's very critical that our teams begin with the end in mind. They know where they're trying to go.
It's one of the concepts of why we've embraced human-centered design so much, because we talk about building the right thing, the right way. Well the first thing is the right thing. Okay, who are you building this for? And then let's understand what they need. And let's spend the time and research to understand what they need.
And then just as importantly let's understand how they want it to work, so that we don't build something you know it's like somebody says I need transportation and it turns out that we listen to them, but we built a scooter not a car. And they were basically going to be delivering things, and so we built the wrong thing. It was transportation, but it was the wrong type. And so it's very important to really understand where you're trying to go before you go there.
The other thing is Covey is very compatible with agile. You know in fact our agile, our lead who's our delivery lead, John Royle, said when he read the book again, he's one of those people that read a 15 years ago, he had since that time become a scrum master, and really adopted and really understood deeply the agile principles, and he said these guys that did the agile manifesto, they took a lot of principles from Covey. Because the manifesto came out after the Covey book and there's an awful lot of Covey embedded in the in the principles of agile. It's not attributed, but it's extremely aligned.
Well and the interesting thing about Covey, these are timeless human principles, and he just was able to give him a name. So you know he's just basically looked at humans and understood humans, and that so that's the other thing Covey is inherently human-centered, because it's all about understanding what humans need. One, to get themselves under control, and then what they need to interact with others, and what others need from other humans to interact in a productive kind of healthy way.
So it's sneaky good.
ATTRIBUTION:
All excerpts are from: https://www.stephencovey.com/7habits/7habits.php and the book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People®: https://tinyurl.com/yas8bb7s.
