Experimentation: More Agility and Aha! Moments in Your Life
The famous inspect and adapt is not only meant for Scrum teams
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When we say experiments, a classroom or a laboratory may be the first association, or possibly work (especially if you’re in tech or product). However, the famous 'Inspect & Adapt' is not reserved for Scrum teams only, and it can be an important and positive approach to your life. There’s a lot of universal value in experimentation, testing assumptions, and learning. By setting goals, measuring results, and adapting based on regular feedback, we can make positive changes in our personal lives. On top, agile experimentation helps us overcome the fear of failure, since experiments are seen as an opportunity to learn and grow, rather than a test of our abilities or value.
While experimentation is a whole philosophy in and of itself, it is also a matter of practice. Following a few simple steps, you can start experimenting in your life, and slowly build up and embrace the mindset.
Agile Experimenting in 3 Steps
Identifying Areas for Agile Experimentation
From tiny random decisions to huge existential questions, there are many choices and opportunities for experimentation we meet with on a regular basis. However, it’s not always easy to choose an area for experimentation. I’ll share a few principles that can help, as well as what worked well for me.
In terms of principles, there are some important factors to think of.
Value and Effort; Risk and Reward
What and how much value (or reward) are you getting from the experiment and/or potential improvements? And what is the effort needed, and what risk is involved? As a rule of thumb, higher value and lower risk and effort are preferred. For example, if I introduce a brief meditation or a gratitude diary to my daily routine, the upside can be significant in terms of my well-being and mental health, but the risk and effort are low.
Relevance and Importance
You should also think of relevance and importance. Experimenting with choosing a career or a romantic partner is different than choosing a place to dine out for the evening. Consider how relevant and important an area is to you, and what you’re ready to experiment with. Maybe I’m already very active and outdoorsy so additional exercise routines and similar is not very relevant, or I may have a sedentary job and lifestyle or a medical condition that makes physical activity more necessary, so I should prioritize looking into this area.
Growth and Learning Opportunities
Growth and learning opportunities are, in a way, the point of experimentation – it’s why we do it in the first place. So, think about potential areas of experimentation from the perspective of what you could learn, and if there is space for growth and improvements.
For example, you may want to choose an area in your life with more space for growth and improvement versus an area that is already quite optimized, with little space for learning and (bigger) improvements.
Balance, Well-Being and Manageability
Finally, it’s very important to remember balance, well-being, and manageability. As in the 8th principle behind Agile Manifesto, promoting sustainable development and a pace we can maintain indefinitely is crucial. Start with manageable experiments, focus on maintaining a good balance overall, and prioritize your well-being. Don’t go out and run dozens of parallel, demanding experiments and introduce a large amount of stress to your life. Think of experimentation as a lifestyle and philosophy, not a fast sprint with short deadlines.
In terms of practice, I suggest reflecting on your personal goals and aspirations as a starting point. What would you like to achieve or improve near term and long term? What motivates you? Maybe you would like to get in shape, or become a better storyteller? Learn an instrument or a language? These are all areas where you can – and should – experiment.
What also worked particularly well for me in the past is accessing current habits and routines, and introducing changes. For instance, adding something to your morning routine, tweaking your daily schedule, or similar. It’s also interesting to introduce different “limitations”, such as doing X but only in a certain way. For instance, washing your teeth with a different hand, keeping your diary but only a gratitude diary (or maybe a complaint diary for a while), and so on.
Designing and Running Agile Experiments
Now that you’ve found areas of experimentation, it’s time to design and run the experiment(s). This phase consists of 3 steps:
Formulating a hypothesis
Designing the experiment that will enable its testing
Running the experiment
Formulating a hypothesis
Formulating a hypothesis comes from the scientific method, where researchers start with the so-called null hypothesis (denoted as H0), and compare it with their hypothesis (referred to as alternative hypothesis and denoted as Ha or H1). The null hypothesis represents the assumption that there is no significant correlation between the variables being studied, while the alternative hypothesis proposes a specific relationship or effect between the variables. The null hypothesis acts as a counterpoint to the alternative hypothesis and provides a benchmark against which we evaluate the evidence from the study.
To illustrate simply, imagine you’re researching a new treatment for diabetes. Your Null hypothesis (H0) would be "the new treatment has no effect on diabetes", while the alternative hypothesis (H1) would be: "the new treatment has a positive effect on diabetes". If you’re experimenting in private life, you may, for example, make hypothesis on the effect of meditation to your sleep, running in the morning, diet changes or any new routine.
While this is a great way to formulate a hypothesis, I personally prefer a simpler method coming from product management, where a hypothesis statement is used. There are different variations of the statement, but two must-have parts are assumption and condition under which the assumption is validated.
In the most simple form, this could be just a sentence: We believe X, and we will know this is true when Y. Of course, this can be expanded with context around assumption or condition. Going back to the example of gratitude diary we could formulate the following hypothesis: “I believe that keeping a gratitude diary will improve my overall mood, and I will know this is true if there is at least 10% increase in days I was in a good mood after 3 weeks of regular journaling”.
Designing the experiment
Designing experiments is a whole science in and of itself, but we’ll focus on the most important aspects in practice and principle, and keep it lightweight for the purpose of this article.
The practical part consists of establishing measurable ways to test the hypothesis, a small ‘protocol’ of sorts. In our example, it could mean rating my mood at the end of the day on a scale from 1 to 5 for 2-3 weeks to get the baseline, and then start keeping a gratitude diary for 2-3 weeks and then comparing the results (both on average and seeing if there are improvements week to week and so on).
The most important principle is to make sure there is causality and not only correlation. Back to our example, this would mean making sure keeping a gratitude diary caused me to be in a better mood over a certain period, versus that the improvement didn’t have to do with the journal, but happened at the same time by chance. This is achieved by eliminating other factors (for example, making sure that the only thing that changed in my routine was the gratitude diary, and not starting to exercise, eat better and sleep more at the same time); and by trying to achieve reasonable statistical significance (for example, by making sure I’m tracking for a longer period of time, a few weeks, versus just one weekend where my mood could randomly be better or worse).
Lastly, I want to underline the importance of designing manageable, balanced experiments that will not overburden you – balance and a sustainable pace is a key here.
Running the experiment
Once the hypothesis is in place and the experiment has been thought through – it’s time to run it. Not much to add here, except reminding of the 4th value of Agile Manifesto: Responding to change over following a plan.
In case your context changes, it is ok to adjust and reiterate. Going back to the gratitude diary example, in case something (drastically) changes, I may need to end the experiment or tweak it. For instance, a big life event could influence my mood and invalidate the experiment.
Welcoming Feedback and Adaptation
The final step in agile experimentation is welcoming feedback and adjusting based on the new learnings. It’s important to keep an open, non-judgemental mind, with the willingness to learn and grow rather than to prove X or Y.
Try to have short feedback loops, learn quickly and adjust based on insights as you go.
Bringing It All Together
In conclusion, experimentation can be a valuable approach to life, not just limited to work, classrooms, or labs. By adopting an agile mindset and applying the principles of experimentation, individuals can make positive changes in their personal lives.
When identifying areas for experimentation, it's important to consider factors such as value and effort, relevance and importance, growth and learning opportunities, as well as balance, well-being, and manageability.
The process of designing and running agile experiments involves formulating a hypothesis, designing the experiment, and running it while maintaining flexibility to respond to changes. The hypothesis can be formulated using the scientific method or a simpler hypothesis statement approach. Designing the experiment involves establishing measurable ways to test the hypothesis and ensuring causality rather than just correlation. Finally, running the experiment should be done while keeping in mind the importance of balance and a sustainable pace.
Welcoming feedback and adapting based on new learnings is the final step in agile experimentation. By maintaining an open mind and a willingness to learn and grow, individuals can make the most of the insights gained through experimentation and make further adjustments as needed.
Hopefully, this article can help you run your own experiments, or at least inspire you to learn more. By applying agile experimentation to our personal life, we can foster a growth mindset, improve problem-solving skills, and ultimately live a more interesting life.
The book Build Your Way - Applying Product Management to Life is out now. Get your copy.