I came to the practice of procrastination late in life. I was always one of those annoying people who arrived for appointments early, handed in assignments early, went to bed early.
Becoming a full-time working parent drove me to the dark side.
Now I’m routinely late — late for exercise classes, late going to bed, late getting the kids to daycare.
My forgetfulness factor has increased about 26-fold too. I’ve always been a list-maker, but now I have a few sayings that my husband is sick of: If it’s not in my calendar, it’s not getting done. If it’s not on the grocery list, it’s not going to show up in the fridge.
My work equivalent: If it’s not in XPlanner, it’s not getting done.
However, I’ve also discovered that adding tasks to XPlanner is a necessary but not sufficient condition for something getting done. Ever so occasionally, I’ll realize that a task in my slightly overlong list of tasks for the iteration should have been done… yesterday.
In my pre-kid years (which incidentally and unfortunately coincided with the days of larger doc teams), that just didn’t happen. I had sufficient brain space to accommodate what needed to be done.
My colleague Patti and I decided to elevate this practice of procrastination in agile documentation by giving it a name:
DOCRAGINATION.
Fortunately, in my latest slip into docragination, I got away with it: I wasn’t the only reason for another software build.
As I get older, I’m growing more certain that procrastination in general is not always a bad thing. There’s something to be said for waiting, listening, processing — even sleeping on it — instead of rushing in and finishing.
Patti just reminded me of another of my annoying sayings: What doesn’t get documented today won’t have to be revised later.
About the Author: Helen Abbott
I'm leader of the intrepid User Communication team at Klocwork and have been in the user documentation field for about 14 years. During that time, I've had two children and two husbands. Given the steady decline in the size of doc teams over this period, I'm currently investigating cloning technology in my spare time. Related Posts
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