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degraded beyond my established
objectives.
I will explain how I set my objec-
tives, and how I
aligned
my
measures
with my objectives in a moment.
When I was young, I didn't pay close attention to my golf game. Although I
could play well I didn't play well consistently. It was routine for me to get to
a point where I was playing poorly before I would figure out I needed help
from my teacher.
Now I didn't have my golf teacher to run to so I needed to be my own
teacher. I also didn't want to risk a bad round or two. I wanted to make sure I
was ready to perform consistently well for an entire week. In a way, I was
placing more stringent requirements on my game from a
consistency
point of
view than when I was young.
This is where I employed a fundamental
Agile
approach, and
CMMI level 4
and 5 practices
together. This is where I moved from the Shu to the Ha stage of
learning by developing
my own rules
to address
my unique swing weaknesses
.
9.10 Agile Approach
A common Agile approach I employed on the golf improvement project was
continuous self-assessment
(similar to Agile daily standup meetings), together
with
on-going small adjustments
(continuous refinement of the plan). The rea-
son these assessments needed to be continuous was to ensure I was avoiding
my known trouble spot of letting the
imperceptible
changes creep up, allow-
ing my game to get to that out of control point. For this to work I needed to
be sure I was continuously assessing the
right things
. This leads us to the
important topic of
specific checkpoints
, and how you pick the right ones.
9.11 Selecting Specific Checkpoints
Now I had to be my own teacher. Agile teams continuously self-assess and
make small process adjustments as needed.
In this case, I created a routine to help me monitor my known recurring weak-
nesses so I could rapidly sense the need for adjustment and take timely action.
I created a
pre-shot routine
where I deliberately looked at my grip to see if my
thumb was sliding. Over the next few weeks I caught myself a number of
times trying to move that thumb back up on top of the shaft. I don't know
what makes me do it. But I know now how to correct it before it does much
