How I’m planning my wedding using Kanban
I’m so lucky I have a partner that loves agile almost as much as me. Otherwise I don’t think we would make it to delivery!
For the ones that know me, I love processes and lists, especially on Post-it notes. Since I discovering Trello at work, I’ve used it to manage my life. Best. Decision. Ever. Cross my heart!
I’ve used Trello boards to manage moving house, furniture shopping, garden planning, date ideas, christmas gift shopping, party planning and now, the biggest of them all — our wedding!
So, how did we start?
Before we get to Trello, we used the ol’ Post-it notes on a wall. Well actually a window as our walls are not sticky. I know, worst thing ever.
We started by writing down the main things we had to do. We need a ceremony, reception, attire, stationary and so forth. We found this infographic about the percentage each category should take from your budget. Very soon we realised we need to up ours :( But hey, better at this stage than much later.
Off to a good start.
After lots of exploratory searches for venues with a mindblowing amount of options but very few in our budget, meant we had to do all sorts of compromises . Basically had to go back to the drawing board — in our case whiteboard, no sticky walls, remember? — and write down what’s important for us. What does our MVP wedding look like?
We did here some prioritisation exercises, P1/P2/P3 and others to figure out which of these features are the must haves, the nice to haves and the could do withouts. You can see where this is going.
Then, we put the features in a matrix of which solutions, like getting married in the UK or back home? at the registry office? big house party? Which solution had the most features? This really helped to narrow down the what was till then an exasperating search.
At that point we went on Trello and made lists of locations we liked with all the details in each card to better compare them and cut the list down.
After a long time searching, we narrowed it down to a few options. We did the pluses and minuses on each — all based on our prioritised MVP features. Location 1 had accommodation for our families, but meant more work, whereas Location 2 is gorgeous but we couldn’t add our character to it, etc.
In the end we saw 3 locations: one in my home country, Romania, and 2 in the UK. With our homework done we knew what to look for at the viewings and what to ask to help make up our minds. Luck or logic, the last one we saw, in the UK, was the one that ticked all the boxes and took our breath away immediately.
Whoop Whoop, we had a location and date!
We got home, moved all the cards to done, and started our AJ wedding board properly. Initially, we had ‘To do’, ‘Doing’, ‘Blocked’, ‘Done’ and ‘Useful links’. We started talking about the ‘definition of done’, and how lots of things will be temporarily done, or will need paying for in stages. So, we added “Paid for”. We started adding big topics as cards and slowly started chipping away at them with the deadline of 25 of August in mind.
At some point I had to split the decorations into multiple cards because each had too many requirements and acceptance criteria. I also added photos to better find things and quickly remember what the plan was for each.
In each card I created checklists: questions to answer, to do before, to do @barn, to buy/borrow. Yes, I know. A bit too much? But that’s how my brain works. That’s how I make sense of the world, in logical steps.
At another point I added ‘Ready to do’ column as a few things were ready to pick up, but some needed more… analysis. Again, it’s easier to know that there are no dependencies and we can go ahead and start on it.
It’s really useful to have everything in one place, and I honestly don’t know how people do it otherwise. In a notebook? Excel files?
We joked at the beginning if it should be a Jira board or Trello would suffice, but I think that was a step too far even for my process loving partner. We’re still chipping away a few things a week, but I foresee a time when we will need a more consistent velocity. Maybe I’ll be back with an Agile approach, as the deadline is now less than 6 months away.
And yes, if you hadn’t figured it out by now I’m a bit of a process-crazy lady.
Andreea
