time to look under the bed

and the time to look under the bed

I've been fortunate this week to have a brief respite from the reactive, time-bound work that is the norm for agile coaches everywhere. After the euphoria of having nothing pressing to do had swept over me on Monday, I dusted off my to-do list and started tackling those projects I repeatedly deprioritise for another day. Some of these things are tedious grunt work that just needs to be done, and contains no joy in doing it, like content reviewing a training deck. Other tasks are delightful little problems that need time to get into and stay in, like creating a Power Automate flow to post weekly community messages automatically.

When I have time to look at my long-term to-do list, it feels a lot like cleaning out under my kids’ beds. I know it’s going to improve the situation, but it doesn’t directly affect the quality of my day-to-day life. I know there are many surprises under those beds, and I’ll need the time to tackle them all, so I'm not even thinking about it until I have a clear few hours.

Likewise, I fully expected automating my community posting would take more time than I imagined. I’ve never created a Power Automate flow that hasn’t taken three or four times longer than I estimated. No one else minds if I spend half an hour a week posting community messages, but I do. I’m always looking for ways to automate away repetitive tasks; the irony is that these tasks take up the time I need to think about how not to do them.

Cleaning beneath those beds and catching up on the work that’s been lurking at the bottom of my backlog are both thrilling and terrifying. There’s an overwhelming sense of dread about what I’ve forgotten: commitments, messy processes, outdated documentation.

Just like the technical debt our teams have. Whether or not we leaders know about it, our developers have an ever-growing list of things they will tackle as soon as they get the time for it. It's not immediately obstructing progress, but it subtly adds friction to everything they do. Ignored for too long, technical debt can lead to sudden and painful emergencies, just like a mysterious smell coming from under a little boy’s bed…

As agile coaches and leaders, it’s easy to overlook these kinds of lingering, unprioritised tasks because they don’t shout as loudly as time-bound or client-facing work. But there's plenty of value in getting these items off the backlog before a customer notices one of those odours. Not only this, but clearing them out frees up the mental bandwidth of those who have noticed something and are worried about it.

Development teams don’t often have the luxury I’ve had this week to tidy up the technical debt we all leave behind us. Product Owners often feel the pressure from their stakeholders to deliver explicit value, and this is where the Scrum Master needs to hold fast and support the team by insisting they have regular time scheduled to tackle these issues. Leaders can help by supporting by the PO and SM to allow the developers the time they need to clean up the mess they’ve made.

Consciously scheduling periodic clean-ups into our work lives means proactively tackling these hidden but impactful tasks. We might never look forward to them with unbridled enthusiasm, but the peace of mind gained from regularly dealing with these lurking issues is well worth the effort.

And who knows, next time I won't need to brace myself quite so hard before peeking under the bed.