What a Pile of Laundry Taught Me About Scrum

David Bjarnson
Aug 24, 2017 · 5 min read
“Bright clothes in laundry basket, on color background” by Aqua Mechanical Licensed by CC 2.0

I’m not a fan of laundry (quite frankly who is). But there it was, a heaping pile of clean clothes in the corner of the room waiting to be folded and put away. I have been working in the software development space for years so I decided, “well, maybe I can just time box this”. What happened was a parallel order of operations that matched the Scrum framework in a microcosm of its own.

How We Got Here

Within Scrum, the core of all the work is a prioritized backlog. It isn’t just a list of items needing to be done as there is some intelligence and thought put into the items that comprise the backlog. These items are intended to address key risks or bring the most value for the business.

In my case with the laundry, the backlog was already prioritized for me in that those clothes that were washed first and ready for folding were there to specifically meet the needs of the family. And, unfortunately but probably typical of preschool boys, to mitigate the risk of my four year old running the house stark naked as he was out of underpants. Care and thought went into creating that pile of laundry and I wanted to be mindful of that going into my part of the work when planning out what I could do to deliver value as a Dad.

Timeboxing

I had fifteen minutes to do the work. Actually, I had more than that, but I decided 15 minutes of folding, my least favorite thing ever, was the limit of my sustainability for that task. With the time-box set, I then took a quick look at the pile of laundry to assess the pile of work that was facing me.

Sprint Planning and Defining what “Done” means

In Scrum, before you start work, you need to plan your sprint and define what it means to be done. In my case, I took a look at the laundry pile and realized that I had a couple groups — clean towels, underwear, and a random assortment of dark-colored clothes (jeans, shirts, shorts, etc.). I also have a one year old that likes to put underwear on her head (who was currently occupied with her toys in another room). Having her come in here and put underwear on her head would be quite embarrassing in case she decided to go downstairs and show off to the other kids. So mindful of that risk and the risk of my four year old (addressed earlier), I put the underwear group on the top of the to do list. I then realized that I had a lot of towels in the pile. Getting those done would make a huge dent in the pile and would allow me to get a good idea of how much other random dark laundry is left. In assessing the pile of clothes and my time box, I figured that done would be getting the underwear and towels folded would be my goal for the next fifteen minutes. So, by the end of my initial planning, I had the following in mind:

  • I have 15 minutes to get the high priority clothes done and I’m okay with that
  • My definition of done included those items being folded, but not put away in drawers (the older kids can take care of that)
  • The goal was to make a serious dent in the pile of clothes so I had a small pile of laundry chaos to look at rather than a large one.

Ready, Set, Go!

5 Minute Mark

I had all the underwear folded and out of arms reach of my toddler. Having mitigated that risk I was beginning to tackle the pile of towels. In assessing my time left with what was still on my mental prioritized to do list, I realized that I may be able to finish the towels and fold some of the random darks that were in the pile. At this point, I committed to at least finish off the shirts that were in the pile.

10 Minute mark

I had finished the towels and realized that the rest of the laundry pile wasn’t too bad. I figured that in addition to working on the shirts, maybe I can tackle the pants and shorts that were in the pile. So, I committed to those next groups of items leaving the socks (since finding the matching pairs always took a lot of time).

13 Minute Mark

I realized I might actually get all of it done. After the tops and bottoms of the darks were all folded, I could see in the remaining pile of laundry (really just socks) that there weren’t a lot of them there. And, just visually assessing, it looks like the dryer hadn’t eat any random socks so I wouldn’t be wasting time hunting for a matching sock that didn’t exist. I decided I could commit to finishing off the socks and thereby completely folding the load of laundry.

Time’s Up!

I had completely finished the load of laundry. My initial goal, making a serious dent in the laundry pile, was exceeded as my velocity of folding was greater than the quantity of work that was piled up in the room. I suppose I could have shown the folded laundry to my spouse, but that seemed a bit gratuitous. So I opted to skip that “demo” if you will. I also skipped the retrospective as I suppose I could have assessed my folding technique as well as addressed how not to have a heaping of pile of laundry waiting for me in the future, but I decided to skip that as well.

So What?

You may be asking yourself, why does this have any relevance to me at all? Well, if you are a Scrum practitioner, this shows you how Scrum scales to a team of one and can be used in other areas outside of software development. If I can use some key principles from Scrum, or tackle a tedious chore with agility, what is stopping you from doing the same? What or where in your life can you do the same thing? I think the more important part of this is that at some point, Scrum either becomes a part of how you do things, or it naturally taps into how we naturally get things done. Either way, it is worthwhile to figure out what principles can work for you and your team — whether that is a team of one or many.

___________________________________________________________________David Bjarnson is a Certified Scrum Practitioner (CSP) through the Scrum Alliance and has worked in the software development space for over 6 years.

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David Bjarnson

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Business Analyst by day, cartoonist by whenever else.

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