Category: tactics

Hello – Is It Me I’m Looking For?

I can see it in my eyes.
I can see it in my smile.
I’m all I’ve ever wanted.
And –

…if we check out the System page of this blog, we see how this whole ScrumOfOne set of practices I’ve forged actually increases my Inner Peace.

Man does that sound awesome – I want me some of that existential goodness.

Sometime before the home settling, the wedding, the move, the move prep, and the wedding prep, I stopped being fully engaged in applying Scrum principles to my personal development. I had been working off of a Scrum-Lite process where, yes, I had a backlog, but it was to keep track of the things to which I was largely reacting. While the days were focused on mostly logistical issues, and rightfully so, what was missing was personal growth, and the accompanying Inner Peace.

Now that things have calmed down, with the state of the home being that folks have been able to stay over without being warned to mind the bear traps duffle bags and to watch out for that tree box, I’ve returned to putting things in a number of personal backlogs, prioritizing them, and siphoning off a few into the current sprint. And just the process of doing all that has felt grrrrreat! The relief has come less from knowing where I am going and more that I am not missing anything. I can’t get all the things done now, but they’re not forgotten, and the most important stuff is getting addressed. Very Scrum. What’s that tingling in my toes? Oh yeah. Inner Peace.

So I’m back on the bandwagon, and man do I not want to fall off and lose my growing Inner Peace… or… get dysentery.

Want more transparency? Fine. I thought it would be enough to tell y’all that I’m wicked pumped to be back in the game, but you’re egging me one… I’ll publish my velocity and the Kaizen story so y’all can learn along with me. There. You’re welcome.

The more important bits of Kaizen will fall into an improved System page – I’ll update that section to reflect what has been practical and repeatable.

First piece of Kaizen (for Sprint 141, which is the number of paychecks I’ve received, with a biweekly schedule that conveniently aligns with the sprintly schedule): Actually read the Sprint Backlog each morning. It’s simple, but this is the piece of adaptation that is independent, negotiable, valuable, ‘estimatable’ (such a clumsy word), specific, and testable that gets Scrummin’ back into my daily routine. And Inner Peace. Let’s not forget that.

Step One or Advice from Years of Chess

(Edit: replaced ‘Decide’ with ‘Choose’ for the emboldened passages – this was the intended word decision choice.)

Step One: Cut a hole in the box. Choose what you are going to do today.

Growing up, I was the chess geek of the city: I was the inter-schools chess champion for 7 consecutive years and intra-mural chess champion for 8 consecutive years, beating kids from older age brackets, beating chess coaches. I’m talkin’ shiny chess trophies, with pictorial evidence of me receiving them, a me with even shinier braces. I’m talkin’ exciting chess stories, of trash talkin’, of being behind in pieces and position yet squeaking out a stalemate (effectively a draw, psychologically a win), of rook sacrifices where I’d invite my opponent to find my trap only for me to unleash it anyway.

(I was so passionate, I’d study the tournament games of grand masters, and I’d cry when I’d lose a game. I’d cry like an early teenage wimp. It was all kinds of not sexy. I remember the first game I lost where I didn’t cry… I was confused as to why I didn’t… somehow… I came to terms with the fact that chess was just a game.)

Yeah – I was that kid.

So let me share with you a chess life lesson – you lucky people, you. Gather ’round, folks! Don’t be shy!

Off the bat, you have white and black pieces, where the white side goes first – this is usually seen as an advantage. Regardless of which side of the board you end up on, most popular opening moves involve securing the center squares, usually by putting pieces there, then defending them – think of it as a strategic land-grab. As you go about controlling the center, you cunning and greedy braces-laden skinny white kid (…with glasses), you end up opening up lanes of mobility for your previously land-locked little change agents.

And this is where the chess-talk stops. (I just shed a tear.)

By choosing to go first, you set the tone of the game your day. You choose where you want to go by giving yourself the mental space to get there (you probably can’t help a quick visualization of getting that thing done), inadvertently preparing the pieces required to get there (your subconscious works on the ‘how’).

Good morning.

Your move.

(I’m welling up here… somebody must be chopping onions…)

Learn Anything In 20 Hours

Not gonna lie… I’m totally lifting this from the description under a YouTube video…

Josh Kaufman is the author of the #1 international bestseller, ‘The Personal MBA: Master the Art of Business’, as well as the upcoming book ‘The First 20 Hours: Mastering the Toughest Part of Learning Anything.’ Josh specializes in teaching people from all walks of life how to master practical knowledge and skills. In his talk, he shares how having his first child inspired him to approach learning in a whole new way.

Still not lying… this is a punt-post, as I direct you to this awesome TEDx Talk:

The First 20 Hours – How to Learn Anything: Josh Kaufman at TEDxCSU

No fibbing here… it’s 10,000 hours to master something, and 20 hours to learn something new.

Got 45 minutes a day for 1 month? …pants not on fire.

All The Things In Two Minutes

Allow me to apply the wisdom of one article – How to Stop Procrastinating by James Clear – to ScrumOfOne, specifically the building of a Product Backlog. James recommends using the power of the ‘2-Minute Rule’, which has two parts. He starts the article with a reassuring introduction:

Most of the tasks that you procrastinate on aren’t actually difficult to do — you have the talent and skills to accomplish them — you just avoid starting them for one reason or another.

Part 1 – If it takes less than two minutes, then do it now.

Think about the list of stuff on your to-do list / personal backlog… can some of them be banged out in a couple of minutes? For me, some of them actually can! Visualizing their realistic ability to be completed while an 800m sprint is taking place is motivating.

Part 2 – When you start a new habit, it should take less than two minutes to do.

Alright, how about things that take longer than a footrace? Well, much like a footrace, it starts with risking your own beheading as you try to win the heart of the fastest female mortal in all the land the first step. It starts with… starting.

So, back to your backlog… can you start some of those items in a couple of minutes? For me, these larger items seem more manageable knowing that I can get some momentum with a time-boxed amount of focus.

I like this exercise (“Can I do this, or at least get started, in two minutes?“) when thinking about the size of stories, as a factor for determining points (as an estimate of effort). If a story is too large by this measure, might it be too large to drag into a Sprint?

So there: now you only have to focus and really work for two minutes! Momentum carries you the rest of the way, and the things on your Sprint Backlog just got easier. All the things.

How Not To Forgive Myself

Two guys walk into a bar. (Ooh, a joke…) One guy says, “Hey man, good to see you again.” (Alright, so this next part will be the funny part…) The other guy says, “Hey man, I don’t entirely want to be here.” (…well that was hardly worth a chuckle)

That’s what I actually said to him! Was that rude? (Oh, it’s not a joke, Merrill’s the second guy.)

At my Scrum Product Owner training session over three months ago, I met a Product Owner, started talking about my application of Scrum to Personal Development, heard how he was into using Scrum for Professional Development, and then took the conversation back up a couple of days ago. (A man-date?)

So when I told my buddy that I didn’t want to be there (“I was being a wicked rude jerk-face”), it was in the context of how I see a necessary level of forgiveness from the Product Owner in ScrumOfOne. In ‘regular’ Scrum, this is analogous to the practice of building a buffer into Sprints: a reservation of a part of the velocity for things the team or Product Owner decides to get done that arrive mid-Sprint. (You mean you can’t stick to a plan for a full Sprint?)

It’s because you can never plan what opportunities may arise or what fires may suddenly need putting out – and definitely not for a full Sprint. (Oh.) Thus, I almost NEVER fully follow through with what I set up at my ScrumOfOne Sprint Planning meeting. (And what, you beat yourself up for this?)

And I feel bad (oh) because I see these remaining Sprint Backlog items at the end of two weeks, staring me in the face from the glowing rectangle that lives in my pocket. (‘Glowing rectangle’, that’s funny.) This is what I brought up with my buddy. (Did you mention how you talk to yourself in your own blog posts?)

By me grabbing a drink with him, I’m NOT doing something I had already set up for myself. The forgiveness comes in if I ultimately believe that the activity I DO do (tee-hee) is effectively a story that gets me closer to some vision for myself. By chatting up somebody in the thick of promoting Scrum at corporations, I knew I would learn a tonne (the metric ton, good choice) about the various adoptions of the framework, and I think we were able to devise some concrete next steps for getting professional development underway where he is.

(I get it: doing the man-date meant you didn’t do stuff on your Sprint Backlog, but in the larger picture, it’s all good.)

So now here is my struggle: I want to replace the notions of forgiveness and anxiety over not accomplishing carefully prioritized stories towards building the product(s) of me, with the notion of judgement-free doing.

Yes, I’m trying to weave the Taoist concept of Wei Wu Wei (effortless action), or at least a consequence of this idea, into ScrumOfOne.

Suggestions?

(Yeah, he needs all the help he can get!)