Applying Scrum to your Personal Life
When we learn scrum, we understand how to apply it and transmit it within our team. Over time we see tangible results, reep the benefits and gather information about the team and the vision that this methodology provides us. But, did you ever think about using Scrum outside your work team?
I did it and here is what happened…
Today I want to reflect on what scrum means to me and how I understand Scrum outside the working environment.
You may be thinking,“isn’t Scrum a methodology that only applies to work teams?”
But what about, a football team? Or a couple, or a family?
If we think about it this way, scrum applies to our personal life without even bringing our work home.
How would this work?
To illustrate this I am going to share a brief anecdote that happened to me a very short time ago and what motivated me to write this post, providing me with a vision of the world different from what I was used to.
It all started over the weekend when I was at home with my partner. She noticed that on the table I had left a transparent box containing cards to estimate (a small deck of cards with fibonacci numbers in 4 different colors). Interested, she asked if I could show her how I use them at work. I started explaining how estimates are made and what things should be considered.
Once the explanation was finished, she seemed eager to try what she had learned! But … I had no tasks to estimate … Or so I thought.
That is when I had the idea to consider matters of our personal life and relationship as “tasks” to be completed or to overcome. We thought of things such as personal situations that each one was going through, short-term plans, and everyday situations.
You will ask yourself, how is it possible to quantify these things? Well, to tell the truth, what matters is not the number that is assigned to it, but what that number represents for each of us.
To explain myself better, when making the estimation of a “Task” or particular situation to be overcome by the couple, it was given that one of us estimated with a high value, while the other considered the opposite. When having a brief debate about what happened, we both realized that although the “Task” seemed difficult to overcome, the unconditional support of both managed to give a totally new point of view to the situation. Converting a difficult “Task” into something much more enjoyable.
This is very similar to when the project team estimates a task in a “Pocket Planning”, deferring in its estimates and balancing its criteria. We managed to see how the “Tasks” can be more or less expensive- debating about them and even dissipating the uncertainty in them,allowing for the whole team to have a complete understanding about it.
After a few weeks we had a small retrospective at home, evaluating the events, the achievements and our focus. The results were more than satisfactory for both. From that sporadic estimate, where we understood what we needed, what we had and what we expected, many things became clear, achieving a stronger union and support of each member of our “team”.
You will understand that applying scrum in life is not necessarily calculating metrics and estimating tasks, but seeing the world and the people around us, our teams of life. Understand your needs and motivations, and use this tool to improve each day and approach each stage of life in the best way possible!
Use the estimate to know the other’s vision, make retrospectives as a way to open up to dialogue and evaluate the state of the “team”, highlighting things that one is doing well and poorly, that are not being done or that should continue to be done. The important thing is to understand your team, your family, or your partner and strengthen human relationships always go in search of the best results.
