Travel Planning is a nice metaphor to help explain many agile ideas
Scrum, XP and Kanban concepts illustrated with a city break
Scrum teams work on complex adaptive problems together, and groups of friends plan trips together. As a Scrum Master who has just returned from a short trip, it struck me how the two activities have quite a lot in common.
Travel planning can also act as a useful metaphor to help explain some agile ideas from Scrum, XP and Kanban.
In this post, I’ll compare activities involved in planning a city break to some ideas and practices that can be found in Scrum and XP. Let’s take a trip!
1. Complex Adaptive Problems (Scrum, XP)
This recent trip was to Seville, and none of us had visited the city before, so it was like a complex problem we needed to solve together.
Scrum teams do this all the time.
Scrum (n): A framework within which people can address complex adaptive problems, while productively and creatively delivering products of the highest possible value. (Scrum Guide)
2. Quarterly Planning (XP)
One of us started a WhatsApp group to help with planning. In the group, we started to make decisions. We limited the airline choices (only one available) and looked ahead to find a weekend that involved a bank holiday so we all wouldn’t need to take much annual leave from work.
We compared calendars and found a weekend that suited all of us.
3. Self-Organising, Cross-Functional Team (Scrum), Whole Team (XP)
Ownership of booking the flights was decided, and someone agreed to book an Airbnb. We were already getting ourselves organised.
In our WhatsApp group, we learned that one of us spoke a little Spanish, which felt helpful, and one of us already had the Seville guide book. Great. We had skills in the group that we could leverage. We looked a little more like a cross-functional team.
4. Planning (Scrum) Weekly Planning Cycle (XP)
Before venturing on your travels, there’s an important question for any group of travelling companions: how do you get value from your travels? Maybe you want to see as many sights as possible in the time available, or maybe you would like to relax? Perhaps you’d like to get a balance of both? Aligning on these choices, or deciding what you would like to achieve from your trip, will help you make plans as a group.
5. Product Backlog and Refinement (Scrum)
On arrival in your destination, it’s good to have a list of things to see in a city, and these are typically easy to prioritise each day. Which one is nearest to where we’re staying? Which one do we all want to see? What do we want to do first? Are there any ‘must dos’ here?
Interestingly, when planning our backlog of sights to see, there are things we will know, and things we won’t. We won’t have every useful fact before we start. There is something about a trip that makes us more willing to step into the unknown and discover by doing…
6. Daily Scrum (Scrum)
With everyone’s list of ‘must dos’ for the trip understood, we generally start each day with a quick chat. This conversation will typically involve coffee or breakfast, because… well, nobody likes planning before coffee :)
Decisions are made on the to-do list for the day and logistics for the chosen options are reviewed. This also helps inform our plans for the next day, as typically on any given day we don’t get to do everything we all want to do. We often end up with a preliminary idea of the backlog for the next day too.
Once all questions are answered, we set off for the day with our roles and responsibilities understood.
7. Empiricism (Scrum)
Tomorrow, we take today’s outline of a plan to our coffee chat, but that’s tomorrow! We still have to get through today first… and who knows what surprises it might bring! Travel is about discovery after all.
Tomorrow, we might take a second look at that plan and change it... For example, I might wake up exhausted after the hill walking today and confess to the group: you know what? I could not be bothered seeing that cathedral today: let’s do the Vineyard Tour instead!
Transparency is about situational awareness and openness to learn about what is happening. Inspection is taking a closer look at your plan and adaptation is tailoring it to suit your improved situational awareness.
This is Empiricism and it’s at the beating heart of Scrum: travellers do this every single day. (Psst: Scrum teams do this every single day too.)
8. Sustainable Pace (XP)
I generally don’t try to see everything when on a city break. I get diminishing returns from trying to see more and more each day.
Eventually ‘monument fatigue’ kicks in, even if the sight I’m seeing really is monumental!
Also, if I do a lot on day one of the trip, I’m less likely to maintain the same pace on day two. If I try to maintain the same pace, I’m even less likely to get value from the sights I’m seeing, no matter how noteworthy they are.
I like to start with a modest plan of one sight to see per day, because it might take longer than we think... Logistics could go awry, or there could be queues to slow us down: there are many unknown unknowns when planning an adventure in a foreign city.
I get more value from seeing sights at a steadier rate, rather than trying to cram them in. The cram approach puts me under too much pressure, and I end up enjoying the trip less as a result. Over time and with many trips, I’ve discovered my own sustainable pace.
9. Limiting Work in Progress (Kanban), Daily Planning (Scrum) and Emergent Design (XP)
Starting the day with modest ambitions to see one important thing, and then taking it from there seems to work for me. It’s good to also have some flexibility to allow plans to emerge as the day continues though.
For example, maybe we’ll arrive at that castle and see a nice park nearby that wasn’t mentioned in the guide book. Or maybe we’ll pick up a good recommendation for lunch. Would we want to pass up these opportunities for discovery, in favour of sticking rigidly to a plan? Holidays are a great way to experiment with discovery and emergence.
10. Slack Time (XP)
Slack time in a foreign city is hugely valuable to me. I love sitting in a comfortable cafe or bar, watching the world go by. Relative to sight-seeing though, it can feel like a low value activity. Some might ask: why would you visit a city and just hang out? Don’t you want to see stuff?
The amount of slack time you need on your trip is entirely contingent on how busy you’ve been in the run up to the city break. Indeed, sometimes slack time helps you to regroup and attack the next day, so it can help you achieve higher value activities like tomorrow’s sight-seeing.
A good holiday plan will include some slack time though, and the need for that will become clear: your travelling companions will tell you if you’re doing too much, and need to slow down and just get a coffee!
11. Values and Psychological Safety (Scrum, XP, Radical Candor)
Have you ever travelled with someone and had a difference of opinion about what you wanted to do that day? When you are less familiar with your travelling companions, it can take courage to speak up and potentially disagree over plans. It takes openness to listen to a travelling companion who has different ideas to yours, but I believe this kind of courage and openness strengthens relationships. It’s also a good demonstration of how psychological safety can be built in a group. Shout if you want to change the plan: it’s ok!
You’re entitled to go see the other museum if you want, and your travelling companions will respect that. They are not obliged to go with you by any means, but the story of your visit might convince them later. Divide and conquer, regroup and share experiences. Learn from each other.
12. End of Iteration Review (Scrum)
If you travel well with your group, and you see sights at a sustainable pace each day, with just slack time to suit everyone, you’ll look back on that trip with fond memories. You might talk with your travelling companions about what sights you saw, and the ones you didn’t. Any regrets, or things we missed? We share photos or videos from the trip, and talk about the next one. All these discussions fuel what we do next, kind of like a review.
13. Retrospective (Scrum)
We might also talk about what we liked, and what we didn’t, or what we would do differently next time, kind of like a retrospective.
Maybe we’re leaving this city with a feeling of things undone, that there is more to see and we need to come back. On the other hand, we might also be completely done with this city and have another venue in mind to explore next time instead.
Maybe we have uncovered new ways of travelling together.
To recap, travel can act as a useful metaphor to help understand a whole range of agile ideas from Scrum and XP, and how they play well together.
As individuals and in Scrum Teams, we’re all on our own learning journeys. In addition, we all have complex, adaptive problems to solve with our teams and organisations.
The desire to travel and discover is fuelled by every trip we take: in the same way, scrum teams move forward with each problem they solve together.
