Despite my work schedule not really changing summer always feels like a time of slacking off. I guess that explains the lapse in my blog posts. Plus the fact that my favorite person to experiment on has been away at sleep away camp for the last 4 weeks.  As you can see here, she’s been enjoying!

However, I have not been completely idle. I was lucky enough to have an extended visit from a teacher friend and we had several interesting conversations about applying agile practices in the classroom. She took away some ideas to try and now that school is starting up she has promised me some feedback on how they are working for her. Specifically she is going to try a retrospective format for teaching teachers a new way of getting reading concepts across. And she’s going to try some Scrum ideas with a video production class she’s starting up. I can’t wait to hear how these work out and sharing with everyone.

I’m also exploring some ideas I have on managing personal goals. The Bullet Journal is a great tool for this, but I am finding it needs some more structure. More to come on that as well.

Hope everyone is enjoying the rest of the summer!

 

 

I’ve been using, or trying to use, my bullet journal for almost 3 weeks now.  Like any change in routine, it has been really good, but it also has its challenges. And without further ado, I will jump into the bullet points.

The Challenges:

• Before I got my bullet journal I was using 2 notebooks and I haven’t been able to give either of them up yet so now I am carrying around 3 notebooks. That is at least 1 too many notebooks.
• At work I tend to use my notebook for notes and to do lists and whatever else I need to write down. My bullet journal is too “fancy” and too specifically organized for that. I fear I will never get away from having at least 2 notebooks
• I haven’t yet found the future logs to be very useful. Maybe that will come with more time?

The Good:

• I’ve combined my work and personal life to do lists in my bullet journal and that has definitely made me more efficient. If there’s a small thing on my personal list it is right in front of me when I’m eating lunch or something and I can just get it done instead of forgetting it.
• This type of journaling provides a delicious sense of accomplishment
• I’ve gone onto to YouTube and looked at some videos of the really creative things people are doing with their bullet journals. Wow, some people take bullet journals very seriously! While I am not up to design themes for each month or much artwork I have added a few other trackers into my journal and I am enjoying seeing my progress in those areas too

Like any good Agile practitioner, I will keep on refining my process with the bullet journal.

My first goal is to get down to no more than 2 notebooks.

Have you heard of a Bullet Journal? If not, the Bullet Journal site will explain it all to you in detail, but here is my summary:

A Bullet Journal is a personal version of Scrum.

If you are familiar with Bullet Journals or have one yourself you may already have realized the goals and potential benefits of keeping one, but if you’re also a Scrum Nerd like me, you may have also realized how the techniques also line up to The Scrum Guide and the Agile Manifesto.

The Scrum Guide’s statement on Scrum Theory says:

Scrum Theory:

Scrum is founded on empirical process control theory, or empiricism. Empiricism asserts that knowledge comes from experience and making decisions based on what is known. Scrum employs an iterative, incremental approach to optimize predictability and control risk.

Three pillars uphold every implementation of empirical process control: transparency, inspection, and adaptation.

-The Scrum Guide

Transparency, inspection and adaption is exactly the process one follows when keeping a bullet journal.

Additionally Scrum is described as being:

Again, I would say this is all also true of Bullet Journals.  It is a simple concept that takes time and refinement to employ in a way that is truly effective on an individual level.

Bullet Journaling is described as:

Bullet Journaling lives at the intersection between mindfulness and productivity. A system that adapts to your life every single day. The Bullet Journal is a customizable and forgiving organization system. It can be your to-do list, sketchbook, notebook, and diary, but most likely, it will be all of the above. It will teach you to do more with less.

– bulletjournal.com

Let me explain my thinking:

• Rapid Logging is the first instruction in getting started with Bullet Journaling. Rapid logging is the technique used and it consists of four components: topics, page numbers, short sentences, and bullets.
  – In other words it contains just enough information as is needed.
• Future Logs and Monthly Logs are used to help establish the daily log
  – Sounds like a Product backlog and a Sprint backlog to me
• The Daily Log and Migration – the daily log is established the night before for each day and tasks or items from the day before are migrated to the new day.
  – Daily Stand Up anyone?
• Refinement – the process of bullet journaling requires constant refinement. Indexes and symbols and habits need to be established over time to make it work on an individual level. This requires practice and reflection regularly.
  – Refinement of the process is an important goal of the retrospective
• Goals – Just like a sprint, Bullet Journals help users establish and keep track of their progress towards defined goals. Those goals are personal.

I made an attempt at bullet journaling about a year ago. To be frank, things in my work life became so haywire that I abandoned a number of practices and am now establishing new ways of working for myself. I have decided to re-start my bullet journal to see how it aligns with my agile practices both at work and at home. I will periodically post on my progress.

Anyone who’s interested in hearing more about Bullet Journaling should definitely visit the website, but also watch this great TED talk by Bullet Journal creator Ryder Carroll.

At the end of week one I held a short retrospective with Zoe.  I kept it simple and asked 3 questions:

1. How do you feel about using the board overall?
2. What do you like about it?
3. What don’t you like about it?

Despite some complaining I got at the start of the conversation when we were setting up her tasks for the next day, her responses to my retrospective questions were largely positive. Here’s my summary of what she had to say.

1. How do you feel about using the board overall?
   She said she really likes it. She felt it made her less likely to procrastinate and helped her avoid having to do everything in one day. She said that as a visual learner and someone who likes hands on, this was was right up her ally.
2. What do you like about it?
   Zoe said she felt it made a long to-do list a lot less overwhelming and more organized. It helped her to plan each day and served as a good reminder.  She also said it was fun and felt good to move the post-it notes over to the done column.
3. What don’t you like about it?
   Zoe’s biggest dislike was she felt it was a little overwhelming and it was hard to know what to start first. She thought she might like it broken down more, but as we talked about it we came to the conclusion that what was missing was priorities. She also felt she might want the board to be online, but as we discussed that further we agreed that having it in the kitchen where we can all see it was better because we couldn’t forget about it.

 

Action items I took away from our discussion were:

• Add priorities to tasks once they are moved into the “Doing Today” column
• Don’t overload the “To Do” column – more stuff can be added as needed
• Press on despite moments of complaining or eye-rolling

 

We started the new week with priorities as you can see…

Zoe also found a creative way to indicate something was partially done – see “Clean Room”

As you can see from the “Done” column, Zoe is off to Cape Cod for a few days. She didn’t bring the boar with her so I guess all these other tasks will have to wait while she’s at the beach. Fair enough.

My 15 year-old daughter is very active and good about getting her homework done, but when left at home for a day with nowhere to be, she can easily lose the entire day in her phone or Netflix. As you can imagine, it drives me crazy when I get home from work and ask: “Did you do your reading?” or “Did you clean your room as I asked?” or even “Did you eat lunch today?” and instead of the “yes” I am hoping for I get “no” or worse yet, a blank stare.

This summer my daughter is going to 3 different camps, but she will have a total of 4 weeks at home with no real plans. She has things she wants to do with that time like start  running, get her summer reading done, get ahead on chemistry for next year. And I have things I want her to get done like cleaning her room and doing her summer math packet. She also, understandably, wants to have time to do nothing.

In the past I have helped her manage her homework and other chores by using a weekend backlog which we prioritize together. This has been successful for us both because we set the expectations and both agree and then I leave her to it. We check in occasionally but I don’t worry that she’s forgetting something and she doesn’t have me nagging her. I will post more on this later. But for the 4 weeks of summer I think we need something more so I am going to try making a Kanban board for her.

I explained it to her today and we talked about a good spot to keep the board and we listed out some tasks. She leaves for her first camp tomorrow and I will get the Kanban board set up while she is gone. Additionally while she is gone I will also be thinking about:

• Ways to estimate tasks
• How many tasks she can reasonably get done in a week (what is a good starting velocity?)
• How we will check in daily (daily stand up)

Hello and welcome.

Let me introduce myself: I am a Certified Scrum Master, Certified Scrum Professional and passionate Agilist. I’ve been using agile methodologies at work for over 6 years and have seen how it leads to better results from happier teams. Frankly it has been a life-changer in my career and I am quite evangelical. I currently work as a Product Manager and lead 2 Scrum teams and serve as and Agile Coach for my teams and a few others in the organization.

In addition to being a Product Manager and Agile Coach at work, I am the mother of a a very active teenager. She is a multi-sport athlete who also attends a special program for science as part of her school day. Both my husband and I have full-time jobs and on most days she needs to get somewhere, get home and get homework done.

A few years ago as my daughter’s activities and homework both increased it occurred to me that some Agile principles could be applied at home to make things easier to manage and to also make my family happier and more efficient.

The purpose of this blog is to share my real-world use of Agile principles both at work and in my home life and hopefully pass along some helpful ideas.