I have a question for you: when was the last time you did an experiment on work you do? I mean if you are a developer when did you try something new: new practice, new way of doing things, maybe new technology to deal with a problem? If you are a project manager when you tried to do your stuff differently? Maybe it was a different way of running a retrospective or moving a planning meeting to a cafeteria or something completely different?

If you don’t have the answer at hand think about it for a while. It is kind of important.

If you think that there is expected answer you’re right. The expected answer is “today.” I expect you experiment all the time. I expect you challenge the way you work constantly. I expect you put rules to a question every now and then.

It’s a funny observation – as I go through different questions on PMSE I often see this pattern: “I follow this, this and that and I do have this issue.” Every time one of answer is: “challenge your rules.” You can bet this kind of answer will be there in a matter of hours.

This doesn’t come up as a surprise for me. This is the lesson I get over and over again. What you know is wrong. Well, it’s wrong in a way that it isn’t the best, or the most optimal, way of doing things. So if you want to keep you saw sharp you need to look for ways to improve your toolbox constantly.

Is there a better way to do it than experimenting?

So please do one thing today: do an experiment on your toolbox, your rules or the way you build things. Change something and see how it goes.

Then, make it a habit.

And if you ask what kind of experiment I did today there were many of them: I was experimenting with approach we have to training, with tools we use to build applications, with Kanban at portfolio level and with team organization. And these are only things I touched in some way today.