What do we do when we have a set of things to do and we are looking for the momentum to get them started and completed on time? If we are being Agile, we may have made an estimate as to how long these user stories will take to complete. It’s likely that we are enthusiastic about some tasks and less excited about others. We may order the stories by which would be the easiest to complete, or if we’re working with a sensitive timeline, which tasks will take the least amount of time to deliver. Even the most well thought plans yield to natural entropy. We miscalculate estimates, we overlook details, it happens, that's life, we address the issues and continue to iterate. Here at Elevator Up, we have been practicing a new technique to further combat the ever present issue of inaccuracy through a technique we call, emotional mapping.
A WAY THROUGH THE PROBLEM
Emotional mapping is a metric that provides us with another dimension to measure success, adjust predictions, and delegate work. If you are familiar with Agile development you know that a large part of determining the success of a project is your ability to make accurate estimates. Here at Elevator Up we use an app called Pivotal Tracker to sort our stories. Pivotal tracker employs the use of a point based estimate system. In this example, one point represents an hour of effort.
Luckily for us, pivotal tracker recently introduced the use of emojis throughout the app. We can use this feature as a label to then add an appropriate emoji that represents how the assignee’s feel about the story as a whole.
We can then freely add these labels to our set of stories and start to get a sense of the emotional content of the work ahead.
Like all good science, emotional mapping requires honesty in order to yield true results. It’s best for the individuals in which the stories are assigned to label feelings, as with time, as fair estimates that consider variance between people and organizations. What troubles me, might excite you, what takes long for me, might be quick for you.
DETECTING AND MANAGING PATTERNS
If we track the emotional content honestly we may grow a better sense of not only how long stories take to complete, but who are the best individuals to assign the work. We may notice stories mapped the same way by different people and we may be able to suggest that they might collaborate well if they were assigned a similar story together. In contrast, we may also start to see which types of tasks are known favorites or nefarious undertakings.
The possibilities of deducing meaning are broad but some of the more obvious observations tell us that tasks people don’t like to do, tend to take longer, and that is completely fair. This suggests that we should seek to balance this insight as much as any other.
We’ve found that doing a fun task before a less emotionally engaging task within the same span of effort tends to lower the overall time it takes to complete both. Finding balance is key, emotional mapping gives us a system through which we can further refine our various workloads.
We think that people should do things they like to do. Emotional mapping is a seamlessly integrated metric that helps you and your team optimize your work strategies. Have fun with it! 😜
Kendell, Software Developer
