Personal Scrum – My First Week’s Experience
Two weeks ago, I Completed the Google Certificate in Project Management via Coursera. Course 5 on Agile methods was a personal highlight for me.
As a freelancer, my world is VUCA (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, Ambiguous). In the recent past, I’ve lacked clear direction and guidance. I would happily wander off and explore an Alice in Wonderland rabbit hole of discovery.
I’ve looked for systems to use to give order and direction, but they’ve been complex and time-consuming to apply. This is why Scrum spoke to me, its simplicity and its ease of use. When I learnt about scrum it got me thinking, “Wouldn’t it be interesting to use this for personal use.” I felt the principles, values, and ceremonies could be adapted to a team of one. So, my search began for a solution to adapt Scrum for personal use. It didn’t take me long to find Simon Kneafsey’s book “Personal Scrum, the system to set goals and achieve success.” Kneafsey aka The Scrum Master has lived and breathed scrum for many years. The result is that his method has been well-refined.
Kneafsey’s system is based on eight lists and 5 scrum events:
| The Lists | The Personal Scrum Events |
|---|---|
| 1) Ideas List | Weekly Planning |
| 2) Goal List | Daily Planning |
| 3) To Do List | Quarterly Planning |
| 4) This Week List | Yearly Planning |
| 5) Today List | Ongoing Planning |
| 6) In Progress List | |
| 7) On Hold List | |
| 8) Done List |
I thought I would share here some of my thoughts from my personal sprint retrospective.
Digital List Tracking
I still haven’t found a system to log my activities, tasks, goals, and ideas. This week I focused on using paper, I wasn’t sure yet exactly what I wanted to track and how much detail I needed. I also allowed the tech to get in the way of finding a solution. Kneafsey suggests Trello or Miro and offers basic templates for these. I have been thinking of either Lists or Planner from Microsoft. My reasoning is that I am already grounded in the MS 365 space. I spent too much time last week trying to set something up with these four options. In the end, I decided “to heck with it” and do it on paper. With a week of experience behind me, I now have a better idea of what I want to track. I am going to spend some time this weekend looking to find a solution. That said it could be another week of paper and I am ok with that. Experience with implementing IT systems has shown me planning is fundamental.
Weekly Planning
This was an incredibly cathartic experience. I decided to do it on Sunday afternoon/early evening. For me, this has been a tradition that goes back to my teaching days. I would spend Sunday afternoon planning out my week methodically. I began writing down goals for the week and then the activities. For each activity, I then began to break down into tasks. It was a very rewarding experience. I am going to be taking my reflections from this week into Sunday’s session.
Time blocking
I decided to create a time-blocked week. I began with a simple outline. Check e-mails, Focus time, lunch, Flextime, and daily planning. Using a “Personal Scrum Calendar” inside Outlook, I’ve blocked out a daily pattern. This immediately gave me more stability and direction.
I’ve found out that I am not a morning person. I will have to look into how I can either get more focused or re-arrange the timings. I’ve also found that It’s been harder to switch off in the evenings. My mind has been racing until 1 am most nights. This is something I need to address in the upcoming weeks. I would have been as aware of it if it wasn’t for adopting a personal scrum.
As meetings and events come up, I can shuffle my boxes around. My aim is always to maintain a 3-hour focus block each day.
Completing tasks
Overall, I have been generally successful in completing tasks. I’ve found out that I need to try being more specific with direction and planning. A key task this week was to write a blog article, I had a vague idea, but upon starting it I changed direction. Despite my initial underestimation, the time it took tripled. This was one example of a task going wrong. My reflection is that I need to be more specific and maybe think about setting SMART tasks. Planning and setting tasks for activities is an area I need to work on. I’ve set some tasks this week that I didn’t know where to begin. Even trying to break them down, I’ve left thinking “How do I achieve this?”
On Hold
The On Hold List is my new best friend. Learning to do this more efficiently has been empowering. In the past, I would allow roadblocks to derail me. I would either stop all activities and walk away or try to remove the roadblock immediately. Now, I start the ball rolling by removing the roadblock, add it to my on-hold list, and move on. It’s felt like I have forgiven myself for getting stuck, and that I am free and can proceed with confidence. I know that I will revisit it daily until the roadblock is clear and I can then refocus on it.
Next Week and Beyond
As I begin to think about week 2 – I am already mindful of some of the procedural updates I need to make. I need to get more into the planning of ideas. I will think about how I can start to drive ideas and activities forward with less wasted time.
I am also learning more about what I need in a solution to digitize my personal scrum. I’ve also decided that going forward I will add some scrum coaching to my daily scrum (daily planning). My first scrum coaching will draw from Kneafsey’s chapter on Complementary Practices.
For anyone interested in Simon Kneafsey’s Personal Scrum, this is a non-affiliate link to Amazon. If you’d like to know more about Simon check out his site.