Try it out!

Proving a concept is very important step when jumping to something new. I like it and I often suggest it to Agile teams. Call it POC, Spike, Proof of Installation and Verification, these are details. The thing is that you try it, you see how it works and either you keep it, you build on top of it or you throw it away, it's up to results and to the final goal.
I know that in Chinese, you either do something or you don't. The word "try" doesn't exist. But I like to put an equal sign between try and do. While you try, even if you do not succeed or you decide to throw away what you did, you learnt something along the way.

Today I decided to do a POC on my wardrobe.
Until 6 months ago, I have worked in companies where people were not evaluated by what they were wearing. Some of the people used to wear one red snicker and one blue one. Shorts at work during summer were normal for boys and girls. Some of the designers had their hair coloured in bright red or green. I have always been wearing jeans, t-shirts and once in a while, when I bought a nice piece of cloth, I have dressed formal. This changed at my new work. This is an institution where people have a business dress code. There is an un-official Jeans-Friday and some of the people do wear jeans. I tried to do that but I was called and pointed out that I shouldn't.
Today was Friday and some people were on vacation. So I decided to run a POC and see how much of my morning time I would save by wearing jeans. It sounds like I was doing something behind the back, but things need to be proven!

Believe it or not, I made it to get out of the door 20 minutes earlier than usual!
Someone asked me: Why do you take 20 minutes to dress in morning? Well, let's say I like to look good. And if I have to look business like, I want to make business look good. This means I need to put some thinking into matching clothes and then the right shoes. Sometimes I have just done laundry and I have a lot of choices to pick. But when I wear jeans, all I have to chose is a nice top. Anything goes with jeans so whatever I chose it will be ok. The only thinking will be on matching shoes.
The other thing I noticed is that none of the people I work with (my internal clients) had a problem. Some of them were wearing jeans too.
So, in short, I tried and proved that by wearing jeans at work, I saved time in the morning. I felt comfortable during the day and nobody pointed out my jeans as a a sign of  being unprofessional.
That does not mean that I will be wearing jeans again. At the end, I accepted to work at this company and I knew from start that there was a dress code. Changing this rule is not a must at this point. There is so much more to do and this is down on the list. So it is a test that will be thrown away. The take away is " Wearing something easy at work saves time, and creates a more comfortable working place"