Cardigan Man

How to obliterate feeling overwhelmed

“taking an axe to him would probably have been a bit bold”

“Hey how’s it going?” said an unfamiliar voice.

I recognised the face. A kind face, but far taller than me. They were one of the bigger boys at my school. Only a year or two above me. This was about the time of Junior school, so I was younger than ten.

“You’re cardigan man!”

“What?”

“We call you cardigan man, because you always wear that red cardigan instead of a jumper.”

It was true, I was wearing a knitted red cardigan, “Oh okay”.

We exchanged some further pleasantries for about 6 seconds, and off he headed to our school. His legs carried him much faster than my little ones.

Both of us went to the same secondary school, so we saw each other, but never really spoke over the next 8 years of our lives.

Following on from school we went our separate ways, as people do. Never to see each other for the next 20 plus years.

Just last week, whilst taking my eldest son swimming, I noticed this giant of a man. It was my knitted loving friend. To be fair, he wasn’t the giant that I remember. I’m not exactly tall nowadays. He was still far taller than me, but I’d filled out a bit, so he wasn’t quite so intimidating.

Behind our masks and with 20 years more “experience”, it was easy to go unnoticed. I wanted to say “hello” but felt too overwhelmed to do so…

We’ll come back to Cardigans after some mild theory.

In a previous article I mentioned that I felt that the S was the most important part of INVEST. As a quick primer if you’re not sure on INVEST.

Product Backlog items should have the following characteristics to be of good quality (Bill Wake)

Independent

Negotiable

Value

Estimatable

Small

Testable

Why do I believe small to be one of the most important parts?

It helps to reduce overwhelm

When I started out early in my career, I generally preferred working on support, rather than the big protracted delivery of features.

It wasn’t easy for me to get overwhelmed with any volume of support work. As items would rarely get blocked, it was easy for me to focus on one thing at a time.

I would prioritise my tickets (if they weren’t already) and just work through them one by one like a machine.

Each ticket resolved would give me a small hit of dopamine and I could happily work like this for weeks without any bother.

Looking at a massive system or overarching feature was a different issue. Where should I start? Which bit should I do first? How to you estimate this?

It’s.Just.Too.Much

The generic advice is to split large pieces of work into small digestible chunks.

• Small pieces that can be developed “Independently”.
• Small pieces that can be “Negotiated” on and prioritised.
• Small pieces that each provide “Value”.
• Small pieces that can easily be “Estimated”.

See what I did there? 😉

Small also feeds nicely into counting so you can project delivery dates instead of estimating them. This can be accomplished with Monte Carlo forecasting which I’ll write about in the future.

After breaking everything down, the feature becomes more like support work. People can go through it and have their productivity chemicals flood their bodies. Again, the general rule is:

Feeling overwhelmed? — take an axe to it, chop it up

When I saw my old friend in the swimming pool, taking an axe to him would probably have been a bit bold. But I could have reduced the feeling of being overwhelmed.

• I could have made eye contact.
• Even a slight nod.
• Stood closer to him when he’d found a place near the pool (may have been a bit weird if I just moved randomly).

Maybe he muttered cardigan man under his mask. Maybe he had no idea who I was.

But any step, any “Small” step from myself could have given us both a lot of Value as we reminisced about my cardigan.