Scrumify Your Life
A Short Guide To Personal Agility
Reading time: 30 minutes
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Scrumify Your Life
A Short Guide To Personal Agility
Version 1.0
Quick Contents (click to jump)
I. BEFORE YOU GET STARTED
Who Is This Guide For?
Right now, you are approaching or already at a turning point in your life. You are facing a huge change or opportunity and you don’t know exactly where to start because it’s too big and complex, and a little bit scary. It's your Big Move.
You want to do something like:
Change careers
Move overseas
Turn your side hustle into your main hustle
Lose 50 pounds
Find your life partner
If you’re attempting anything where all the steps are not known from the start, then Scrumify Your Life is for you.
Scrumify will add structure where there is chaos, simplify approaches to solving big problems, and break large, daunting efforts into easily achievable mini-projects.
It will help you boil a large, overwhelming idea down to a simple to execute, direct solution to a problem. It will give you tools to solve that problem in less time than you would have spent before giving up if you never had them at all.
Scrumify helps you approach challenges in a methodical way in order to reduce complexity, chaos, and stress.
Along the way, you’ll also organize and simplify all the things in your life that are routine, tedious, or mundane.
What Is Scrumify?
Scrumify is a framework for personal Agility. It is derived mainly from Scrum, an Agile framework that has helped development teams to solve complex problems for about 30 years.
Scrum adds structure to the processes and methods teams use to complete complex work. It has been used in software development since the 1990’s, and now it's found in a myriad of other industries and workplaces.
Scrum is meant for teams. Scrumify is meant for individuals. It allows you to structure your planning and execution in a similar way, adapts guidance about values and culture, and incorporates tools from other methods in the Agile world that are especially useful for solo ventures.
You do not need to have any experience with Scrum or Agile to get started. But you do need to start by gaining a little bit of knowledge of it.
Fortunately, the entirety of the document that defines Scrum only takes about 20 minutes to read. You can have the full knowledge necessary to grasp this program in just one hour and three simple steps:
Read the Scrum Guide.
Wait 20 minutes.
Read it again.
You can download the Scrum Guide at scrumguides.org.
Scrumify Your Life will show you how you can adapt the Scrum framework and other lessons from Agile to add structure and simplify the work you need to do toward personal development.
Using This Guide
This book, Scrumify Your Life, will walk you through the Scrumify framework. It is meant to be concise and direct while remaining process-agnostic and non-prescriptive. Each section is no longer than one page.
Scrumify contains a few different pieces, and this book endeavors to lay them out in the order in which people should generally learn them and try them out.
First, you'll start by learning the Scrumify structure by applying it to work that is not at all complex. This will build familiarity, remove mental overhead, and help you adopt the simplest practices before diving into the deep end.
Next, you'll embark on a kick-off for your Big Move. This will entail a week's worth of self-reflection, workshopping, preparation, and goal-setting. When you've finished your kick-off, you can apply the same Scrumify structure you're already using for the little things to get maximum benefit.
The rest of the book is about tools, processes, values, principles, and mindset. The tools and processes are merely suggestions, not rules. But learning about all of it is important for finding real, sustained success using Scrumify.
II. SCRUMIFY YOUR CHORES
Before you can tackle a big project, you have to get your literal and metaphorical house in order.
You can practice the first steps of Scrumify by applying it to non-complex work that you have to do everyday. This will reduce your stress level and cut back the amount of energy it takes you to complete menial tasks.
The four steps below let you add structure to any part of your life that is lacking it. Start by applying them to your household chores, and bring your family or roommates along if you have any.
Planning
Daily Check-In
Review
Retrospective
Apply this structure to anything routine, mundane or boring that must be done. Things that come up and hold space in your head because they can't be forgotten.
For instance, if you're planning a trip in the next year but need to coordinate schedules, look for hotels, book flights, and request vacation time, Scrumify this, if for no other reason than to take these tasks out of your brain so you can focus on the Big Move you want to accomplish.
You'll use this structure for your Big Move too, but for now, just get started with something easy.
This section will show you how to use the structure and teach you the important parts of each step.
Structure Your Week Like A Sprint
Planning and working on a weekly cadence keeps the amount of work manageable and lets you adapt faster. Each day, conduct events to keep you on track.
Planning (Monday)
Take note of your capacity for work on this project for the week, and commit to an amount of work that you are certain you’ll be able to deliver. Name your goal for the week so that if you have to adjust to changing conditions, you know what must stay.
Daily Check-In (Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday)
Check in with your team (or yourself) to talk about what you’ve accomplished or learned over the last day. Discard your plans from the previous day, and write a new plan for the next 24 hours with a clean slate. Your plan should bring you closer to achieving your goal for the week.
Review (Friday)
Invite other people interested in the outcomes of your work and share your progress with them. Ask for their feedback, and take it to heart.
Retrospective (Friday)
Look back over the week with an eye to how you did your work. Find ways to improve the way you work.
Use the weekend to soak in all you’ve learned. You will start all over again on Monday.
PLANNING
1. Prioritize Aggressively
Prioritize your to-do list with a machete first, then with a scalpel.
This process is especially important at the start of your Planning session. You need to know which item on your list should be worked on next.
The Machete
Order your to-do list with the most important, most valuable work at the top and the least at the bottom. Then, starting from the bottom up, ask yourself “Will anything go spectacularly wrong if I simply never do this at all?”
If the answer is no, just slash it off the list. Stop when you get to something truly important.
The Scalpel
Now, starting at the top of your to-do list, examine each item for implied sub-items.
For example, if you have “make a ham and cheese sandwich” on your list, then you’ve implied
get ham
get cheese
get bread
are steps needed to make that sandwich. If you don’t already have cheese, then you have to answer the question “Do I really need cheese on this ham sandwich?”
If you don’t, carve that bit off your sandwich task and simplify it so that it doesn’t involve a trip to the market.
Prioritization creates focus. Focus creates productivity.
PLANNING
2. Plan Only For Small Chunks Of Work
Make a small but valuable commitment every week.
Planning A to Z on how to do something you’ve never done before can be complicated, messy, and error-prone.
So plan only for the part you’re about to do. This should be the stuff where you know everything you need to know, and the complexity is virtually all removed already. Only go into detailed planning for the things you think you can get done in the next week.
For instance, imagine you want to plan a family vacation a few months in the future. You know your kids have the time off from school, but there are a few other things to determine. Don't commit to buying plane tickets this week if you haven't gotten approval for time off from your work and your spouse's work yet. Just get the time off.
Next week you can lock in those plane tickets and hotel bookings because you'll know the exact dates you are able to travel.
At the end of your planning, write a goal for the week. This should be a statement of the value you will add to your product, rather than just a restatement of the tasks you’re committing to.
DAILY CHECK-IN
Replan Every Day
Every single day, re-evaluate how things are going, and make a new plan for how to move forward.
Start by scrapping yesterday's plan. Then ask yourself these three questions.
What did I learn yesterday?
Is there anything that must be done before something else is possible?
Is my goal for the week still attainable? If not, set a more reasonable goal.
Now, make a new plan for today.
Think about which things are most important - this may have changed since yesterday. If you’re working with a group, everyone should share what they learned the previous day. That new information could impact choices other team members have to make.
You’re going to do this everyday, so you’ll get pretty good at doing it quickly.
REVIEW
Listen To Those With A Stake In Your Outcomes
Every project has its stakeholders, even if you don’t know who they are.
And it’s important to hear from them about what you’re doing. Only with honest, collaborative feedback from the people who have the most to gain or lose can you really be sure you’re working on the right things.
So spend time thinking about who your stakeholders are, and speak to them every week to get feedback about what you’re doing, and what is important to them.
Trying to improve your cooking skills? Ask your kids (obviously the toughest critics), or host a dinner party for friends as your Review.
Scrumifying your wedding plans? Check in regularly with your fiancée, and probably also parents, bridesmaids and groomsmen.
Looking to lose weight? You are your most important stakeholder, but don't forget to talk with your doctor or trainer to make sure you're staying healthy at the same time.
Create an environment of trust and collaboration with your stakeholders to ensure that the feedback you receive is honest and actionable.
RETROSPECTIVE
Reflect On Your Wins And Failures
Everything worth doing is worth celebrating.
My family goes out to eat together every Friday night. It's our opportunity to talk about how the week went and reflect on how we can do better in the next week and what is most important to us.
We celebrate even if we didn't meet the goals we set for ourselves at the beginning of the week. We still made progress, and that deserves recognition and reward. Plus nobody has to cook.
It’s also a chance to understand how we did what we did.
Take time each week to think about not only what went well and what went poorly, but why. I recommend journaling if you’re working alone, because sometimes the insights don’t hit you until much later. Use these revelations to come up with experiments you could try to improve the way you’re working on your project.
Try at least one new experiment each week, and see what sticks.
Then you can celebrate accomplishments toward your goals, and accomplishments in finding better ways to achieve those goals.
That’s twice as many reasons to break out the champagne.
III. SCRUMIFY YOUR BIG MOVE
At this point, you should start to see the power of adding structure to all the small things you have to deal with in your daily life. When they're easier to deal with, you're less stressed, and you have more bandwidth to plan better for your Big Move.
But for something big, complex, and full of unknowns, you can't just dive right into week-long sprints.
Instead, use the first week to conduct your own "project kick-off." You can tackle this all in a single day, but results will probably be better if you spread it out over the whole week.
Here's what you'll do in your kick-off.
Lay out your vision of the future.
Determine who will be impacted by your work.
Lock in your values so they can't be betrayed.
Set some medium-term goals.
List all the work you think needs to be done.
Find your shortest path to value.
It is normal to find yourself jumping backwards a lot as you're following these steps. You will often learn or have something revealed to you in one step that makes you want to go back to change or add to something you created earlier in the process.
Don't fight this urge. Iteration is useful.
KICK-OFF
1. Articulate Your Vision
To figure out your Vision, you have to understand what problems you're trying to solve. But you don’t naturally start with the problem. You start with your big idea.
So think about your idea, this thing you want to accomplish. Then work backwards to determine what problem (or problems) this idea endeavors to solve. Take note of any problems you become aware of that your idea won't solve, or might even cause itself.
Sometimes the problems we find are so well separated that we need unique solutions for each one.
Once you've defined the problems, it's time to write your Vision. Try to describe what the world (or your world) will look like after your product or idea has solved the problem it addresses.
Your Vision should not be about the specific solution you've imagined. It should be about how life will be after your problems are solved.
For instance, I started my Big Move by thinking “I want to move to California.” I identified the problem as “I want my child to have a safe, quality education,” and settled on my Vision as “When my child starts school, we won’t worry about quality or safety.”
In the end, we wound up moving to France, a better solution that more completely satisfied my Vision.
KICK-OFF
2. Define Your Stakeholder Personas
Stakeholders are the people who are invested in the outcomes of your work.
User Personas are short but detailed descriptions of the people you expect to use your product. Your users are always stakeholders.
Since working solo often means users and other stakeholders are not available to give feedback, write Personas to describe them too.
You are almost always your own biggest stakeholder. But you likely have many reasons to be interested in what you’re doing. Break out your own motivations as separate Stakeholder Personas.
In your Review, ask questions of yourself on behalf of your Stakeholder Personas. Make sure you're thinking about how they would respond when you review work at the end of each week.
If one motivation you have is to improve your career, and another is to move to a city you love, then you'll create a persona for each one. In your Reviews and your Planning, you'll use these to consider whether all your personas would be happy with your choices or if one of them wants you to choose differently. Each persona inside of you comes to life and gets its own voice.
You don't want to ignore the voice in your head that keeps you on track. Give it a seat at the table.
KICK-OFF
3. Write Your Personal Working Agreement
Working Agreements are how teams keep their values intact when things get hairy.
They are documents that record rules the team agrees to follow with one another, like “be respectful even when we disagree with each other.”
Make a Working Agreement with yourself that helps you stay true to your character and your motivations. Think of things like I will take Saturdays off no matter what, or No skipping Junior's baseball games to work. It’s also good to include lines like Pay a fair wage to anyone whose help I need or other things that might align with your ethics but could be easy to ignore when you have to make tough choices.
Your Working Agreement can also be used to specifically lay out your boundaries so that you have an easier time abiding by them. Don't forget to include things that are less about your ethics and more about the way you prefer to work, like I will set aside 2 hours for focused work each morning. They are just as valuable.
Review your Working Agreement when you retrospect to be sure you’re not getting too far away from what your idealist self thought you should do.
It's normal to add to or amend your Working Agreement as you go, so that you're keeping yourself honest. But it's not normal to start relaxing the rules with each change, so take care you aren't compromising your values.
KICK-OFF
4. Set Medium-Term Goals
Set realistic Goals that are hard to hit. Yes, both things can be true.
Complex problems often require multiple angles of attack. Think of at least three separate things that, when accomplished, will bring your Vision closer to reality. Keep in mind not only your Vision, but also your Stakeholder Personas and your Working Agreement when writing these Goals.
Keep in mind that a good Goal is measurable, but not time-constrained.
Your Goals should not be something that you can easily achieve in a week or two, but a little more long-term. Something you estimate can be done in the range of four to six weeks of focused work is a good starting point.
But don't include that time constraint in the Goal itself. Your estimate could be wrong, or other priorities could push it down the list.
Lose 10 pounds is a great Goal.
Lose 10 pounds by the end of the year is not so great. Don't add deadlines.
Once you reach a goal, you may pivot to another goal, or adjust the goalposts so you can continue working in the same direction. For instance, once you've lost 10 pounds, why not go for it and try to lose 20?
KICK-OFF
5a. Prepare Your Backlog
The first thing you did when you had your big idea was start building your to-do list.
Finally, you get to bring those items in and start organizing them. Lay out all the things you think you need to do in front of yourself. You can use a list, or note cards, or a digital tool if you prefer.
It’s totally fine for a to-do item to be vague, or for you to have no idea how to complete it yet. It’s also okay to have items that you’re not sure you have to do.
Group your items by the Goals they serve. If an item serves a Goal, then indicate that in your notes. If it doesn’t, one of two things has happened:
You’ve missed an important Goal that this item brings you toward. Go back a step and define that Goal.
The value of completing this item is questionable, and maybe you shouldn’t do it at all.
Once you have written as many tasks as you can think of that you need to do, try to remove unnecessary work or duplicate tasks. Look to simplify your list by eliminating tasks that are just sub-tasks to another list item.
At the same time, be willing to break large, too-complex items into smaller pieces so you can tackle them a bit at a time.
KICK-OFF
5b. Write User Stories To Clearly Name The Problems. Your Solution Should Be Flexible.
Don’t fall into the trap of thinking you immediately know what you need to do.
Instead, use this User Story format to have a conversation with yourself about what really needs to happen.
As a (description of a person)
I want (something)
So that (some reason)
Usually, when we have an idea, it’s the “I want” line first.
Build out the “As a” part (who wants this thing?) and the “So that” (why do they want it?) to complete the story. Then try to come up with a better “I want” line that satisfies the person and the problem they’re trying to solve, but is not so prescriptive of how you'll achieve it.
For instance, I might say "I want a pizza oven." I could then expand that into a User Story like "As a person who likes pizza, I want a pizza oven so that I can have a pizza whenever I want."
But this is rather prescriptive. A pizza oven might be too expensive, or too big to fit in my home. I should change my want to something like, "I want to make delicious pizza at home" so that my implementation is flexible. This allows me to adjust, for example, to a pizza stone for my oven, or a larger freezer to have my favorite frozen pizza at arm’s reach.
KICK-OFF
6. Create Value Fast, Then Improve On It
Once you have something valuable, you no longer have to create something anymore.
You only have to improve it.
Try to create something of value that people will be able to use, read, feel, touch, or experience as quickly as you can. It doesn't have to be very valuable, but it has to be a little bit valuable. And then give it away to the people who will care about what you're doing.
In business, we call this a Minimum Viable Product, or MVP.
As soon as you can reach this point, you will have created a feedback loop that will tell you how to improve your something going forward.
This book is a good example of an MVP. My goal for the future is to write something that is longer and goes into more detail. I want to include personal stories and illustrative examples for each point that I make.
Ideally, I'll publish the book and charge for it.
But my MVP is this - one page on each point making clear what I'm trying to communicate, with no fluff. I make this available for free to whomever wants it, and use reader feedback to make decisions about future versions.
IV. PRINCIPLES & VALUES
The key to getting the most out of personal Agility is not just to put in place a structure or tools and processes.
Agile's strength is its mindset. And that's a mindset of values, principles and soft skills you can adopt that will be applicable to a wide variety of situations. Get familiar with these ways of thinking, and you'll start to see situations in which they apply everywhere.
Consider each of these points as advice you might give yourself anytime you pause to think about what you're doing.
Adjust Your Scope, Not Your Deadline
Before you started Scrumifying Your Life, you were probably using traditional Project Management techniques to get things done.
Like saying “I need this thing done by this date,” and then rushing to get it done in time.
How many times have you found yourself scrambling to finish something at the last minute, because time was running out and you'd committed to being done by that deadline? How many times has the time run out, and you thought to yourself “I would have done a better job if I’d had more time?”
It's not the deadline that did you in.
It's the scope of your work. Just choose to do an amount of work that you are positive you can get done by your deadline at a high level of quality.
Using a one-week cadence sets your deadline in stone - it's always going to be Friday. But because you know your deadline each time, and you also know it's not the final, final, FINAL deadline, you can adjust your scope down until you are 100% certain you're only committing to what you know you can get done. You can spend the necessary time to ensure quality work, and still not risk going past the end of the week.
Be Willing To Change Directions When You Learn Something New
Ever planned out the route to someplace you wanted to visit before you got in your car?
Of course you have, because having a plan is really beneficial. You can estimate how long the trip will take and leave at the right time. You can be aware of any complicated directions before you start.
But what if you’re cruising along on your planned route, and you hit an unexpected traffic jam?
You’re not just going to sit there and wait. That wouldn’t make any sense. You have new information that changes the situation, and you are going to use it to adjust your plan.
You might have to exit the highway and take a frontage road. You might have to backtrack a little bit to find another route to your destination. Or you might even decide that it doesn’t make sense to go to your original destination anymore, and instead go someplace else.
Every time you learn something new is an opportunity to adjust your plan.
Maintain A Sustainable Pace
Two men leave their home at the same time to go to a store 10 miles away. Tony walks at a pace of 3 miles per hour. Terry takes off at a full sprint, running at a pace of 6 miles per hour. How long does it take for each man to reach the store?
Tony made it easy - it’s 3 hours, 20 minutes.
But what about Terry? If you asked him before he took off like a bolt, Terry would have told you 1 hour, 40 minutes. But how long can he keep up that pace?
Maybe he can run at a full sprint for nearly 2 hours and makes it on time.
Maybe he slows down over time, and it take 2 hours and 30 minutes.
Maybe he’s running so hard that he injures himself and never gets there at all.
Maintaining a sustainable pace in your work helps you avoid burnout, which is a real possibility, especially when you’re working on a passion project by yourself. You don’t want to turn an enjoyable hobby into a job, and then turn a job into a burden.
But furthermore, working at a sustainable pace makes things more predictable - and that means you can estimate when you’ll be done.
We knew just about when Tony would arrive at the store. While we might like him to get there faster, being able to plan around this more reliable estimation is worth a lot.
Stop Trying To Do Everything At Once
You are just no good at multitasking.
It's not you, though. Nobody is good at it.
We can't make our brains think about two different things at the same time. In fact, we humans are so bad at multitasking that we're even bad at going back and forth between two different, unrelated tasks. Studies have shown that you lose about 20% of your capacity to do productive work just to the effects of context-switching if you have two different things to do. If you have three things to do, it's about a 40% loss!
So stop trying to do several things at once.
Instead, commit to following through on your top priority until it's done. Even though you might think “I have three things that all have to get done right away, so I have to work on all three at the same time,” you will actually complete all three faster if you just focus on one at a time. It sounds crazy, but it's true!
Determine your top priority, and see it through before you work on the next one.
Make A Decision. Any Decision.
There is an interesting double truth about tough choices.
First, these choices are difficult because whichever choice you make, there will be big effects. But second, and often overlooked, is that the potential of each choice is not that much more or less than the potential of the other choice. So when you reach a decision point and you really just can't choose, automate it.
Take the decision out of your own hands, and flip a coin.
At this point, you can resolve to go fully down the path that your coin chose for you. Don't second guess it, just consider the decision made and move forward.
Alternatively, you can take baby steps down this path, see what you learn, and be able to adjust quickly if it reveals itself to have been the wrong choice. Don’t forget that with your short one-week cadence, you’re evaluating your position and your priorities very frequently.
Organize Your Work Visually
Sometimes you just need to see more about what you’re doing.
Kanban boards are a fantastic tool for visualization.
You can make one with a stack of sticky notes and a blank space on the wall. Create 3 columns labeled “To Do,” “Doing,” and “Done.” Now add sticky notes for all the things you need to get done to the To Do column.
As you start working on different things, you’ll move their sticky notes to the Doing column, and then to Done once you’re finished.
This is a giant step up from to-do lists that don’t track status, and this visualization can help you make decisions and understand exactly how much you have to get done.
You can also take great advantage of this technique by giving yourself a limit to the number of sticky notes you allow in the Doing column. This helps you build focus and concentrate on getting things all the way done.
You can create digital Kanban boards you can access on your smartphone at trello.com.
Journal Your Way To A Changelog
Journaling is a powerful tool that can unlock deeper thinking and insights.
And journaling about your Scrumified project can both enhance and simplify the rest of the framework. Consider either separately, or as part of your Daily Check-in, these journaling prompts:
What did I do and/or accomplish in the last 24 hours?
What did I learn in the last 24 hours?
How does this change the context of my project?
What’s coming up?
Writing out your answers to these questions will help you make solid decisions about how to amend your plan regularly. And they’ll also give you a running log of all the things you’re achieving. This is incredibly practical for referring back to when you’re speaking with your stakeholders.
It’s also highly motivational when you fail to meet your weekly goal or feel like you’re spinning your wheels. Reflecting on all the progress you’ve made can keep you going.
Put Your People On Your Team
If you’re working on something you’re really passionate about, you're probably something of a Specialist in that subject.
You know it at an expert level, and you have the authority to speak, teach, and operate at that level too. But because you’ve spent so much of your time and energy getting good at that one thing, you’re probably not that great at some other things you might need to know.
In Scrum, your team should be cross-functional, meaning it has all the skills needed to add value in every Sprint. So if you’re using Scrumify to work on something by yourself and you need a skill you don’t have, then you have to make a choice. Either pick up that new skill, or add someone to your team.
Nine times out of ten, you should add someone.
This means farming out things you’re not good at. If you’re turning your side hustle as a motorcycle mechanic into a full-fledged business, focus on motorcycles. Don’t spend a bunch of time learning about tax law so you can pay taxes now that your hobby has become your profession. Just hire an accountant.
Similarly, Scrumify puts the duties that used to be covered by three Scrum roles onto a single person. This can be a lot of overhead that distracts from your specialty, so don't be shy about getting a Scrum Master to help you with the framework.
It will be worth the cost many times over.
You're Never Really Finished
A common misconception is thinking you have to do more with your product before it's worth showing to people.
You know your Vision. You know your product will be most valuable when it’s complete. And you are anxious to get it done.
But the truth is, once you get it “done” there will always be something more you could do to make it better.
Play the long game. Don’t delay showing your product to your stakeholders just to squeeze in one more thing. Every little bit of value added and every single step you take toward your Vision should be viewed as another opportunity to show off your product.
Get the feedback you need. Hear what they think. Don’t wait for your product to be what you dream it will be.
If it’s working, and it's valuable in any way, send it out.
Because you will always have one more little thing you want to add on before you show them, and if you let that get in the way, then you’ll never show your product to anyone.
Maximize The Work Not Done
“Work smarter, not harder” has never been more applicable advice.
You only have limited time to do what you want to do. Either your personal life, or your day job, or your budget are keeping you from putting every minute of your time into your pursuit. So make sure that anything that doesn’t absolutely have to be done is just not done at all.
It’s not worth your precious time.
Every User Story, every feature, every bit of value that you intend to add, every ounce of work you intend to put into your product - slice it up. 90% of the time, you can skip something. Be absolutely certain that the work you’re doing is adding real value before you spend your time on it.
The real strength in Scrumify is combining Prioritization with Stakeholder Feedback. When you lean into these two key principles, you’ll find endless opportunities to not do things you thought would be important. To be successful, you must not do any of the things that don’t contribute to your success.
This doesn’t mean you should take shortcuts and do as little as possible. That’s being lazy.
It means that for every thing you do, you do it to the highest quality possible. That's why it's imperative that you maximize the amount of work that you do not do.
Timebox Everything
This bit is the glue that holds it all together.
Set a time limit for how long you will spend on anything that is not a task. Estimate how long you should spend doing something, and make that your timebox. You can take less time than you’ve allowed yourself, but not more.
Timeboxing guarantees success at every event, because failure is not an option, and neither are endless delays nor procrastination. You must complete the job you set out to do within the allotted time.
You’re already timeboxing your Sprints to one week. Make your Daily Check-In 15 minutes, no more. I suggest setting timeboxes of 45 minutes for Weekly Planning, and 30 minutes each for your Review and Retrospective.
Adjust these as they suit you best, but have timeboxes even if they’re different lengths than I've suggested.
Timeboxing reinforces every rule you’ve already learned.
Quick decision making is a must - if you can’t choose, you’ll have to flip a coin, because you are low on time.
You must maximize the work not done, because you can’t spend time on tasks that are not valuable.
Too much to do in the time you have? Adjust your scope and cut out the parts that are the least important.
Iterate, iterate, iterate.
It goes on and on, and I could point out more great reasons to use timeboxing. But I’ve timeboxed writing this section, so that will have to do.
V. FINAL THOUGHTS
I’d be remiss if I didn’t give you some additional notes from my personal use of this framework, and my use of Scrum itself.
You don’t have to tell everyone that is “on your team” that you’re using this method to organize and simplify your Big Move. When people think you’re “using a system” they often either strongly approve or strongly disapprove. It’s okay to just ask for their support and get their honest opinions.
While I did not include specific recommendations for adoption of the Scrum Values, they are inherent in all the guidance that this framework lays out. Keep focus, openness, respect, commitment, and courage in your heart, and they’ll lead you to the mindset you need to be successful. If you feel like you’re off course, re-center yourself on these values.
The approaches listed in this guide are absolutely not all of the Agile or Scrum-derived ideas that could be useful to you. Read the Agile Manifesto (agilemanifesto.org) and re-read the Scrum Guide when you want more inspiration. Look into other related methods like Lean, Kanban, XP and others. Some will relate to your situation, and some will not.
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This guide is absolutely amazing!