Practice “metawork”
“Metawork is all the work you do, to make your actual work happen.”
Think about why you invest your money in equities. The idea is simple. You have some money. You’d like that money to earn you some more money. It’s a passive act in a way. Invest the money in the right place for long enough, and you’ll earn money while you sleep.
In a similar way, if you want to make yourself redundant, you must make your metawork explicit. Your work should work even when you sleep. Let me share a few examples of explicit metawork.
Decision records. Decisions allow you to progress your work. Record them and create an audit trail. You can reference them later by just “responding with a link”. Your metawork works for you.
Automation. Is there a repetitive task you perform that a rule-based system could do instead? Automate it. Even if you can’t code, there’s so much you can do by just wiring together spreadsheets and survey forms.
Frameworks and templates. Is there work you do that you can simplify for others? Create a framework or template. Test engineers do this all the time, by creating automation frameworks for their teams. You’ll notice that I’ve done something similar on this site by sharing retrospective templates with you. You can use these to run your own retros, much like I’d run them for my teams.
Online learning. Many of us have picked up skills from our experience that we can teach others in a short time. The trouble is, that if you try doing this real-time, you become a bottleneck. How about putting those learning materials online? They needn’t be fancy. Back in the day, Richa Trivedi and I realised that many analysts applying to Thoughtworks, could do with a basic introduction to agile analysis, so they have a fair chance in the interview process. So we created a playlist on YouTube, called Foundations of agile analysis. Similarly, I noticed that estimation is a thorny and confusing topic, so my colleague Akshay Dhavle and I created the Estimation and planning masterclass. Now you don’t need Richa, Akshay or me anymore. Just watch the videos!
Knowledge sharing. Like with skills, sometimes the only difference between us and another person is the knowledge we have. While we may have spent years getting to that piece of knowledge, others don’t have to. We can make it simple for everyone else by just writing things up! This is the easiest way to make metawork explicit. This website is my attempt to do just that.
Here are a few questions to ask yourself when you’re doing any metawork.
How can I take myself out of the equation, the next time this metawork must happen?
What’s the most scalable, lightweight way to teach someone how to do this metawork?
Is there something I can do, so no one has to do this metawork anymore?