Analyzing Blog For Adaptations

Pokemon. I am a pokemon. A water-type, specifically. At least, that’s what I’ve been told by the 4th and 5th graders I used to tutor.

Now, I don’t know much about Pokemon, besides having to catch ’em all, but I assume that they’re thingies that evolve, much like real animals, like the jackalope. So in that sense, this ScrumOfOne-documenting blog has been tracking my evolution, specifically via posts that are tagged ‘adaptation‘.

Let’s see how I’ve evolved my very own ScrumOfOne. Below are the summary bullet points of each ‘adaptation’ post, linked and listed chronologically.

• Split stories smaller via a spike sprint.
• Go to bed at a consistent time.
• At daily stand-up, commit to one thing that will get done today.
• Say aloud at night, “There goes another day of my life, never to return again.”
• Write down goals.
• Set a sprintly goal or press release.
• At daily stand-up, commit to making waves and not having a fine day.
• Reduce personal overhead.
• Use the ‘Hell Yeah Test’.
• Do more of fewer things.
• Use Pinterest for a vision board.
• Reduce input to increase ability to output.
• Sleep more to have more energy.
• Change life areas a few at a time.
• Use multiple product backlogs, one per facet of me.
• Have a happy life by trying to have a happy life.
• Applying the ‘Art of the Possible’ mentality leads to ‘good enough’ solutions.
• Prefer to do stories with a high priority-to-effort ratio.
• Write down goal blockers.
• At retrospective, rate each Scrum artifact and ceremony.
• Accept the change in web hosting solution.
• At daily stand-up, read over Sprint backlog.
• Reduce number of stories within Sprint backlog.
• Add sudden/unplanned stories, with points, to Sprint backlog.
• Halve Sprint time box.
• Reduce planned stories and increase unplanned stories within Sprint backlog.
• Reduce what is planned to increase ability to flow.
• Read whole blog.
• Annie Get Your Scrum

That last one is an idea I came up with for an Agile musical.

Annie is the ScrumMaster, but there’s now a new Product Owner in town for the team, and HER name is Annie. Their passionate personalities are pulling the town team apart. There’s a Jets vs. Sharks dance-off. Nobody’s doing any work ’cause everybody’s singing and dancing. In the rain. Watch as the daily stand-ups evolve into more animated states of disarray as the two Annies catalyze the letting lose of the team’s real selves. Listen as the demos and retrospectives reveal inter-personal conflicts in four-part harmony. Can everybody put aside their egos and celebrate their differences and save the town team in time for the big deadline? Can everybody really sing about software while dancing the fine line between comedy and tragedy? Is finding a working mode for developing code really a metaphor for personal growth? Does anybody truly become comfortable with the deeper Scrum principle of embracing change? Who cares! Find out, in “Annie Get Your Scrum”!

I crack me up.

Anyway, if we look over the adaptations for large themes, beyond how sleeping enough is good for me, we see variations of “do fewer things, and do more of those” (present tense) and “plan for fewer things, and do more in general” (future tense). Within those quantitative themes, there is a qualitative element where the things done are also more important, or otherwise of greater value.

These sound like balanced strategies for focus, while helping me truly become comfortable with the deeper Scrum principle of embracing change.

…

Speaking of ‘focus’, man, I’m having a hard time wrapping up this blog post… I finally have a vehicle for some lyrics I came up with a while back:

It’s a Scrum-but life, for us,
It’s a Scrum-but life, for us,
Our velocity’s not – so – sweet,
But our process can’t – be – beat,
It’s a Scrum-but life!

Maybe I’m in the wrong industry…