In Predictably Irrational, Dan Ariely discusses Procrastination and a human beings tendency to under estimate their resolve and ability to stay ahead of the game. During an experiement he took three of his classes and gave them an assignment to write three papers over the course of the term.
“As they settled into their chairs that first morning, full of anticipation (and, no doubt, with resolutions to stay on top of their class assignments), the students listened to me review the syllabus for the course. There would be three main papers over the 12-week semester, I explained. Together, these papers would constitute much of their final grade.”
From the outset the students understood the importance of these papers, they would pretty much amount to their final grade. Each class was given a different schedule, the first was given three due dates (4th week, 8th and 12th), the second class was given a sheet (a tool) with which they were to set their own deadlines and turn that in. They would be held to these deadlines. The third class was told to turn all three in at the end of the semester, they could turn papers in early, but there would be no extra credit doing so. The class that had the equal due dates set for them did the best, those that set their own due dates were second and those that turned them in at the end of the semester did the worst, by far.
“What do these results suggest? First, that students do procrastinate (big news); and second, that tightly restricting their freedom (equally spaced deadlines, imposed from above) is the best cure for procrastination. But the biggest revelation is that simply offering the students a tool by which they could precommit to deadlines helped them achieve better grades.”
So, the best way to achieve your goals is to have some Draconian force from above giving you hard but reasonable deadlines. Failing that, give people the tools they need to combat the need to procrastinate.
Agile Development has had a huge surge in the last 5 years or so, to which I believe owes its success by helping people fight off the tendency to procrastinate. Scrum and other Agile methods give developers the tools to set the appropriate deadlines and meet them. Imagine if Agile is the second class in Ariely’s study with Waterfall being the third.
Waterfall development defines a rigid structure of Gather Requirements, Design, Implement, Test, Maintain. However, it doesn’t provide a good mechanism for applying appropriate deadlines (that is up to the higher level management, who typically just want to see the finished product by a certain date.) Therefore, the development team may have a couple months before they have to show anyone anything. Making it that much easier to put things off early in the development cycle.
While, Scrum instill shorter milestones (one month or less, typically three weeks) with something demonstrable at the end. There is the first tool to fighting procrastination, there is less time to do so. Secondly, every developer is given a larger task (Story) and breaks them up into smaller tasks, typically a day or less. With this, it has given each developer the tools they need to set their own deadlines with daily tasks, further reducing the time to procrastinate. Thirdly, daily meetings with peers are used to update the entire team, quickly exposing any potential procrastinators out there.
Agile has a multitude of benefits, helping people understand their work habits and tendency to procrastinate being only a small part.
