It’s Sunday night, Sprint Planning Night.
It’s been a fabulous Mother’s Day. Worship and the Word. We got some fence posts and a gate put up in our backyard for a new adventure. There was chocolate. There’s bubbly water chilling in the fridge for when we watch an episode of our current show. And now that the children are tucked in, we’ll complete the first half of the adult Sunday evening with Sprint Planning like we do every week.
If you’re a systems and productivity junkie like I am, or if you work in the software industry, you’ve already heard of Scrum (named after a restart-formation in rugby). But maybe you haven’t thought of it in a Franklin-Planner / Highly Effective People / Good to Great / Bullet Journal kind of way.
Here’s the basic premise of Scrum: you block off cadences of time which are used to execute work and measure productivity. The team itself determines what work is best completed in the next block of time, using a couple of handy dandy tools. Let’s explore these elements in the case of my family, below:
The Team: because life is great in teams.
Our family operates as a team, as much as possible. Even when we aren’t all simultaneously working on a project like we were today, we count our work as a team. So when my 2 boys moved our fire pit to a new spot in the yard (to make way for coming chickens), our whole family got “credit” for the completion of that task. Because the family picks the work together for the week and because we play as a team, the whole kaboodle feels collaborative. This is helpful in any organization, blood-related or not.
Timeboxes: because my brain works on one-week sized chunks.
My brain doesn’t do very well working in very long chunks. I can’t explain it, but there is something to a 7 day week. It’s just enough time to wrap my head around (in terms of getting things done or looking forward on the calendar) without feeling overwhelmed. So our family works on a one week “sprint.” Some organizations work on longer sprints, but we like one week. So Husband and I sit down, look at the calendar, and determine what’s going on for the week and what needs to happen. We use a list called the Backlog . . .
The Backlog Burndown: because we like to get stuff done. And fire is fun.
The backlog is the list of tasks from several areas of focus that we pick work from each Sunday. Every time we consider a task to put on this giant “master list,” we size the task using points. This is a way for us to track how much work we can actually get done in a sprint, and helps us to set reasonable expectations (at least somewhat). Every time a task from the sprint is completed, we check the task off and count those complete points toward the sprint. We call that the burndown rate. What makes this extra fun is that the app we use to track our tasks and projects and points sprays little hearts everywhere and shoots narwhals and unicorns across the screen when we complete a task . . .
The Project Focus List: because my life is more complex than ABC123.
I’ve tried many personal productivity systems and by far, Scrum for me, plays best with the reality of life. I’ve tried a simple “to do” list, I’ve tried adding prioritization codes, I’ve even tried picking just 1-2 major things to get done per day. But none of these worked because my life just has too many moving parts to be this tidy.
Husband and I look at what we call the Project Focus List, a list of lists. The master list covers every realm of life where we want to apply energy toward. It includes things like:
- Home finanaces
- Education and training of the children
- Church life
- Recreation
- Health and wellness
- Creative outlets
- Our marriage
- Extended family
- Automobiles
- Family outreach and giving
You get the picture. Under each of these headings is a small list of the things that could get done. We consider the way we’ve spent our time recently and we’ll pull items from these lists for the week. It works well because we don’t need to nag one another about how we are spending our time (remember, this is a team endeavor). It’s easy to go back and say, “the last time either of us addressed our health and wellness was in September. How are you feeling? Back still hurting? Okay, let’s get back to appointments scheduled for the chiropractor.” Or “I feel like I’m dying on the vine because I haven’t been with adults in forever.” And we can include items like “schedule chiro appointment” or “get out with a friend” to the week’s sprint.
Benefits
One thing I love about Scrum as a family is the sense that we are getting things done together in concert. We also know about how many points we can achieve throughout the week (remember how we sized our tasks)? So we set our weekly backlog for that number of points, give or take, knowing that we’ll probably achieve everything on the list!
The biggest benefit from my perspective is the freedom that comes from saying “no” to things for the week. I’ve chosen to strategically neglect certain things that don’t make it into the sprint. Then I don’t think about them at all until the next sprint planning meeting.
It’s Spring. You may be feverishly cleaning your dwelling place. Maybe you’re caught in the end of school year spin and thinking about complete vegetating this summer.
By all means, please relax and enjoy some time off as a family. Take that vacation! And after you get back, consider how the natural rhythms of your week might be enhanced with a tool like Scrum. You might just find that some balance of life throughout the year is great for your productivity and sanity. Feeling like my system is working for me helps me to feel more confident that not only are we getting things done, but we are getting the right things done. For me, that’s a key to successfully staying off the conveyor.
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Have any questions? Ask them in the comments! I’ll try to cover them in subsequent posts.
Nice. What app do you guys use?
We use Asana. There’s a free version too!