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I am so excited to introduce you guys to today’s topic. For those unfamiliar with Scrum and the Agile method, they are basically a productivity methodology used in many organizations, particularly on technology teams. There are four main “ceremonies” or meetings that are a part of Scrum: sprint planning, daily scrum stand-ups, sprint review, and sprint retrospective.
I was first introduced to Scrum and Agile when I was at my first internship with Best Buy. I found that the methods and activities taught in Scrum / Agile were extremely effective to keep teams and individuals on task and after leaving my internship, I was able to apply the same methods to my personal life and schoolwork. Let me show you how you can use Scrum and Agile in your daily lives and become a productivity master!
- Set a sprint length. A sprint is a set period of time where you will complete a certain set of tasks. At my internship at Best Buy, we had one-week sprints while at my Nordstrom internship, sprints were two-weeks. I would recommend starting with one-week sprints if you are new to the methodology just so it is easier to manage!
- Planning ceremony. Find a 30-minute chunk of time in your calendar every week for this time to plan out your sprint. Sunday is a very good time to do this! How planning works in Scrum is that you will track your tasks through a progress board. To set up your board, you will divide the board into 5 columns in this order: backlog, to-do, in progress, in review / waiting, done. I recommend using Trello, a physical corkboard with sticky notes, or a whiteboard to do this. What you will do in this session is list out all the tasks you need to complete in the following sprint. Each task will go on one sticky note. During planning, all sticky notes go in the backlog column on the very left. As you progress in your week and start making progress on your tasks, you will move them to the appropriate columns until all (or most) tasks are in the done column!
- Daily stand-ups. At my internships, all members on my team had to do a 2-3 minute update on their progress. This includes current blocks, progress, and what they plan to accomplish that day. In your personal life, that could mean a quick 5-minute check-up with your group project teammates. Or that could mean a quick review of your planner and list out specific tasks you are going to accomplish that day. Whatever you do, take a few quick minutes out of your day every morning to get clear on what you need to find out / resolve, and what you are going to complete that day.
- Review ceremony. Schedule a 30-minute block in your calendar at the end of your sprint for this ceremony. What you will do is evaluate how you did during this sprint. How many tasks in total were you able to move to done in this sprint? What is the percentage of completed tasks vs. total tasks for this sprint? Were there any unexpected delays or extensions to deadlines? What are the next steps if there are tasks left in the “in review / waiting” column?
- Retrospective ceremony. Finally, plan a 15-minute / 30-minute block on your calendar for retrospective. I recommend doing this right after the review ceremony! Take this time to reflect on the big picture of the sprint that you just completed. What are the wins for this sprint? What are some improvements that need to be made? What are some new ideas that you want to test out for the next sprint? If you find that it is difficult to reflect on the big picture, you can try doing retrospective once every two sprints or every month.
Let me know if you guys have any questions about implementing Scrum / Agile in your daily schedules. This has been the most effective method for me to manage all my tasks, priorities, and schedules. Seeing all my tasks on a progress board and seeing tangible results at the end of each sprint has been incredibly rewarding.
Until next time, my lovely readers!
Jasmine Wu 