Comments on: Managing Life Using “Personal Scrum”

By: Jesse Fewell

Jesse Fewell — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 16:52:32 +0000

Margriet, your post made me smile. Yes, life can be a complex endeavor, and Scrum should be a good tool to do that. I think we’d all be curious how long you can make is stick. Send us a blog post at some point, with photos so that we can enjoy your success vicariously

Thanks for sharing,
-jesse

By: Margriet

Margriet — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 20:50:13 +0000

Interesting advanced approach! including the pitfalls…I just started working the Scrum way (as Product owner) and found myself promoting the value of estimating by poker to my colleagues by saying: everybody can prioritize and guestimate the tasks that must be done before going on a holiday: we all know that doing laundry for the packing is more important than cleaning the toilet…why should it be different for a complex IT project?
I realized then that scrum can be used in private life. My home is a mess, and the amount of things to be done stares at me every night when I come home. Today I started with epics (kitchen, bedroom etc), and user stories for the most important epic, simply on sticky notes. And it worked: I prioritized easily, put them on the door, and one hour later, the first user stories were on the ‘Done’ side of the door. Yes, I can still postpone the tough stuff, but the sticky notes will stare at me. At least I can show myself results. Something that never worked with to do lists somehow, not visible and flexible enough I guess. I’m not sure whether it can work for a continuous flow of tasks (like managing a household with children or your daily work) but for bigger projects, this helps me a lot. Next step: implement in my daily work at the office as well (with the tricks from your input).

By: Jesse Fewell

Jesse Fewell — Mon, 04 Jul 2011 09:11:22 +0000

Hmm…you spark an interesting idea: copying Sprint/Iteration tasks from the team backlog to my personal TODO list in Gmail / Outlook / Toodledo.

Curious and innovative
-jesse

By: Josh Gough

Josh Gough — Mon, 04 Jul 2011 04:23:07 +0000

Nice post. I am looking for a tool to do this in GMAIL, as the Gmail Tasks addon is a little bit clunky and requires too many clicks to do this.

At work, we recently introduced some very basic workflow statuses for our TODO items:

TODO
IN PROGRESS / IN REPAIR
READY FOR TEST
IN TEST
DONE-DONE

We do not define “DONE”, because nobody can agree what a “definition of DONE” is, but quite humorously and appropriately, everybody knew what DONE-DONE was without explanation

So, for a personal task log…I can imagine:

BIG GOALS
TODO
IN PROGRESS
WAITING (On other people)
IN REVIEW
DONE-DONE

Something like that anyway
Ma

By: Jesse Fewell

Jesse Fewell — Sat, 22 May 2010 01:15:08 +0000

Maritza, you offer some interesting experiences. Like you, I’m trying to get an agile family. However, my children do not represent fully engaged Agile adopters. So, I’m working on it.

Thanks for the comment,
-jesse

By: Maritza van den Heuvel

Maritza van den Heuvel — Fri, 21 May 2010 22:28:55 +0000

Great post, Jesse! Your comment “itâ€™s much easier to blow off a commitment to myself” is so true.

I started to get our family’s chaotic lifestyle under control by using Scrum about a year ago, but it quickly fizzled when we realized that the structure of Scrum doesn’t work for the continuous flow of life. We have now completely embraced Personal Kanban, and I’ve started documenting our experiences on my Scrumfamily blog.

At work, I now also have a kanban set up to manage my workflow. And although I’m still tempted to put off the big items, I am definitely more in control than before and less tempted to start new things until I’ve finished WIP. And the visual cards really make you feel guilty for not getting around to stuff … hiding work away in to-do-lists is not an option for me anymore!

By: Jesse Fewell

Jesse Fewell — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 13:12:23 +0000

LOL! Great line, Joe. Indeed, I have abandoned using pure Scrum to manage my personal to-do list. I tried using it with my wife to manage the noise/chaos of weekly chores, but it fizzed out after 2-3 weeks. I’m now experimenting with the Kanban system to manage my todo list. It all feels choppy, but then every methodology feels that way in the beginning. The hard part is making it stick…

Thanks for the jibe.

By: Joe Kriskovich

Joe Kriskovich — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 22:16:38 +0000

Jesse. Get a good psychiatrist. Anyone who wants to use scrum to run their life is their own worst enemy.

By: Khaled Hussein

Khaled Hussein — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 16:52:37 +0000

Jesse,
Great post. I really like that other people are trying to use agile in their life.

I don’t know if it NEEDs a whole team to do it. I think that each individual can plan it right, if he is willing to give it the enough time for planning. In my case, this was the biggest problem with Scrum.

http://www.khussein.com/life-management-using-scrum/

By: Timothy

Timothy — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 17:49:29 +0000

ScrumMaster here who uses Scrum in my life coaching. “First tell the truth, then give your opinion.” – Dennis Prager. The truth is you’re right. We are all inadequate… at least on your own. My opinion is that we have all the “team” we need when we let God lead us. Scrum is FANTASTIC at letting us print out a map of where we want to go, but ultimately we have to let God be our navigation… one “walking skeleton” step at a time. And hey! It’s working for my clients! So cheers! And BE BLESSED!