Scheduling for Productivity

As a freelancer I am very aware of the need to schedule my day to make the most of my time.  I love my paper lists and sticky notes to keep short term tasks front of mind. After reading the article How to Schedule Your Day for Optimal Productivity by John Rampton, I started to think about how I could apply these skills to help my clients perform more efficiently.

When working with stakeholders your goal is to ensure their participation with minimal effort required on their part.  

• Get your stakeholders used to receiving input and providing feedback on a consistent cadence.  
• Learn the way they most efficiently process information and tailor your delivery as needed.  
• Set expectations around how feedback should be communicated and the deadline to respond.  
• Continually evaluate and be open about the status quo.
• When presenting options, also provide a recommended path with a data driven reason why.
• Work within their schedule.

When working with direct contributors the goal is to allow them to work as efficiently as possible.  You can help them by creating schedules and organizing work around rational delivery instead of arbitrary milestones.

• Instead of delivering features in serial, can shared framework tasks be scheduled up front?
• Schedule cross team dependent work early and when all teams can focus together.
• Tackle high risk or high dependency tasks first so you have time to adjust if something needs to change.
• Listen to your team, if something is not working, change it.

Above all, explain the "why".  At all levels, clients are more enabled to make smart decisions if they understand the reason and impact of a goal, milestone, task, etc.  When they understand the "why" they can help you by raising context you may have missed.  At the end of the day we all want to get to the same place. There are tools to help us get there, but your most effective tools are the people you work with.  Help them be effective and productivity will follow.