I have been revisiting the Popendiecks’ 2003 book: Lean Software Development: An Agile Toolkit. One of the tools in the book is Set-Based Versus Point-Based approach. This tool is based on Lean principle of amplifying learning.
Point-Based approach is based on choices. The authors represent this via the following an illustration:
Whereas, Set-Based approach is described as one about “constraints, not choices” and that it requires “significantly less data to convey far more information.”
I inadvertently stumbled on an opportunity to try out this tool, exactly in the way it is described in the book. While facilitating a community of practice which has 9 team members, I had a need to schedule a meeting. But, since we all work on different teams, coordinating simple schedules for this part-time effort is usually a challenge. It would be simple to see everyone’s calendars and schedule a meeting. However, many people don’t keep their calendars up to date. Or they have blocked off time, but are actually available.
Even during face-to-face meeting, since people don’t have their schedules in front of them, they are reluctant to commit. So it becomes hard to converge on a time.
My initial instinct was to use the point-based approach by letting everyone know the best time that worked for me. But I decided to try the set-based approach.
Here is how I communicated the constraints via email to all the team members:
- Apart from me, one particular team member needed to be present, as she had the key information on the topic
- Additionally we needed 2-3 more team members
- I provided 2 blocks of 2 hours each that I could meet for an hour long meeting
And lo and behold, within few minutes, I got the needed response. What had in similar circumstances took a flurry of emails, and still no convergence; with this approach, we converged on time with just 1 email each from the team members. Few let me know which time worked, others let me know they weren’t available. And I was able to quickly pick a common hour that worked for half the team to meet.
It was great to see the tool in action. Next, I am keeping my eyes open to use this on a development project.