Scrum While Stuck at Home
by Aaron Vadakkan, CSM, CSP
I never thought I would say this, but… I miss going to school! Yes, it feels great to sleep in and relax every day, but I even got bored of that. At noon when it’s finally time to wake up, I think to myself: “What am I supposed to do today?” I don’t have a grumpy teacher yelling at me and looking for my homework anymore. It’s easy to forget that we still have grades to take care of and tests to study for. Because of the lack of structure, I tend to forget things and get distracted easily. I have found that using Scrum can provide us with the structure that we need!
What is Scrum? (1)
In general terms, Scrum is defined as a process framework. There are 3 roles in Scrum: The Product Owner, the Scrum Master and the Development Team. In our house, the Product Owner is the all-powerful, all-knowing decision maker. She decides if something is important or not. And you guessed it right, our Product Owner is my mom! I am the Scrum master. The Scrum Master is the protector of Scrum, and he helps everybody with how to practice Scrum. In our home, he is a member of the team as well as the Scrum Master. The team does the work. So who’s left for the team? My brother, my dad, and I.
In Scrum, products are built incrementally in short timeboxes called Sprints. For us, the Sprint is always one week long. It starts on Sunday and ends on Saturday. Scrum helps me to do the right things, do the things right, and get things done faster. This structure comes from a Scrum expert named Henrik Kniberg (2), and that's how this article is organized.
To get a complete description of Scrum, please visit the Scrum Guide at http://www.scrumguides.org/
Doing the Right Things:
Using our Scrum board and the spring planning meeting help us to do the things right. Because our sprint starts on Sunday and ends on Saturday, we have the sprint planning meeting every Sunday afternoon. In this meeting, we identify things we need to do for the week. The Product Owner and the whole team must be present at the meeting. The Product Owner helps to identify the work and the priorities for the week. For example, she might want us to vacuum the carpets or mow the lawn. Additionally, my brother and I get a list of assignments from our teachers. My dad might write down something about saving puppies from burning buildings, not picking fights on Facebook like he usually does.
Then we write them down on individual index cards. These index cards are kept on a board on the wall, divided into 3 columns, named “To Do” “Doing” and “Done”. The cards can be moved throughout the columns during the sprint.
In general terms, Scrum is defined as a process framework. There are 3 roles in Scrum: The Product Owner, the Scrum Master and the Development Team. In our house, the Product Owner is the all-powerful, all-knowing decision maker. She decides if something is important or not. And you guessed it right, our Product Owner is my mom! I am the Scrum master. The Scrum Master is the protector of Scrum, and he helps everybody with how to practice Scrum. In our home, he is a member of the team as well as the Scrum Master. The team does the work. So who’s left for the team? My brother, my dad, and I.
In Scrum, products are built incrementally in short timeboxes called Sprints. For us, the Sprint is always one week long. It starts on Sunday and ends on Saturday. Scrum helps me to do the right things, do the things right, and get things done faster. This structure comes from a Scrum expert named Henrik Kniberg (2), and that's how this article is organized.
To get a complete description of Scrum, please visit the Scrum Guide at http://www.scrumguides.org/
Doing the Right Things:
Using our Scrum board and the spring planning meeting help us to do the things right. Because our sprint starts on Sunday and ends on Saturday, we have the sprint planning meeting every Sunday afternoon. In this meeting, we identify things we need to do for the week. The Product Owner and the whole team must be present at the meeting. The Product Owner helps to identify the work and the priorities for the week. For example, she might want us to vacuum the carpets or mow the lawn. Additionally, my brother and I get a list of assignments from our teachers. My dad might write down something about saving puppies from burning buildings, not picking fights on Facebook like he usually does.
Then we write them down on individual index cards. These index cards are kept on a board on the wall, divided into 3 columns, named “To Do” “Doing” and “Done”. The cards can be moved throughout the columns during the sprint.
Picture of our Scrum board in our hallway.
The board helps us in several ways throughout the sprint. For example, sometimes, the Product Owner (mom) gets evil and signs us up for more than we can do. So, when my mom tells me to do an extra thing, I show her the board so she can see that we already have enough work for the week. But it can also work the other way. My brother and I can’t pretend to have too much work because the product owner can figure it out when she sees a nearly empty board. Because we don't have school to attend and teachers to tell us what to do all the time, the lack of structure makes it easy to get distracted and not get anything done. Using the board helps me to remember that I still have homework to do and tests to study for, even though I can sleep in every day.
Doing the Things Right
Scrum also helps me to do the things right, with the Definition Of Done and the Acceptance Criteria. The Acceptance Criteria is specific to each card on the wall and is different for each card. For example, one of the cards on the wall was a health project where the outcome was to find out how unhealthy meals were at restaurants across the US. The things I needed to do on that project to get a good grade on it were to find the nutritional facts for the original recipe from a restaurant, make a new recipe, and contact the restaurant for more information.
So that’s what we write on the card, numbering each step 1, 2, 3 respectively.
Doing the Things Right
Scrum also helps me to do the things right, with the Definition Of Done and the Acceptance Criteria. The Acceptance Criteria is specific to each card on the wall and is different for each card. For example, one of the cards on the wall was a health project where the outcome was to find out how unhealthy meals were at restaurants across the US. The things I needed to do on that project to get a good grade on it were to find the nutritional facts for the original recipe from a restaurant, make a new recipe, and contact the restaurant for more information.
So that’s what we write on the card, numbering each step 1, 2, 3 respectively.
But wait, there’s more! There’s also something called the Definition Of Done. The Definition Of Done is usually generic and mostly applies to all cards. As said in the introductory paragraph, the Definition of Done is checklist that both parents and kids agreed on. Before we mark anything done and move its card to the done column, we verify if we have met the acceptance criteria of the particular card and if it is done according to the Definition of Done.
Going Faster:
How does Scrum help me to get things done faster? To get things done faster at home, we use two things: The Daily Scrum meeting, and a special rule we use in our house. We have our Daily Scrum meeting next to the board every day in the morning. This is when we add our cards to the board for that day. In the meeting, we talk about what we’re going to do that day, what we did the last day, and any impediments we had so that our parents can help us remove them. By doing this every day, we get feedback on what work we did, and how much work we did that day. But we can get feedback even more frequently by using the 25 minute rule (3). It works like this: when we start doing our homework, we start a 25 minute timer. At the end of that 25 minutes, whether we're done with the work or not, we look back at what we did. We also also take a break for a little bit. In this way, we get feedback on how well we worked and feedback on the work we did.
I talked a lot about feedback here, but how does this help me do things faster? Have you ever worked really hard on a big project non-stop, and at the end, when you show it to your boss, it turns out to be completely wrong? This problem, as we found out, can be fixed by getting frequent feedback. We use Scrum as a feedback loop, by getting feedback every week, every day, and even every 25 minutes. But getting things done faster doesn't mean that we are working any harder, rather, we get things done faster by finding mistakes earlier and by getting feedback earlier.
Scrum has helped us solve a lot of problems we face at home and at school. We had the problem of not knowing what we should be doing, and it was fixed by using the Scrum board and the Sprint Planning Meeting. We also had the problem of not getting things done the right way, which was solved by the Definition of Done. Another problem we faced was the problem of not getting things done on time, which was fixed by the 25-minute rule and by getting feedback all the time.
We were recently thrown into a situation where we no longer had teachers to stand over us and tell us exactly what to do. This is exactly where Scrum works best, when the team relies on themselves to get their work done. By implementing Scrum into our new relaxed school life, we found that it fixed a lot of problems and that we were able to get more work done. We also used Scrum to assign and split up chores for the week. In conclusion, Scrum helps us to get things done right, get the right things done, and get things done faster.
References:
About the Author:
Aaron Vadakkan, CSM, CSP, is a 16-year-old who currently studies in 11th grade at Grandview High School. He is also an expert on “Scrum at Home” which is the topic he has presented three times at global and regional gatherings. Ratings show that he was the highest-rated speaker at Mile-High Agile in 2017. He has written an article about the topic, which has been published on Scrum Alliance. You can also listen to an episode of the podcast that he was featured in on SolutionsIQ. He had an early start with exposure to scrum, even from age 8, and he has been practicing it at home for about 6 years. If you have any questions regarding Scrum at home, he would love to connect! Find his LinkedIn here.
How does Scrum help me to get things done faster? To get things done faster at home, we use two things: The Daily Scrum meeting, and a special rule we use in our house. We have our Daily Scrum meeting next to the board every day in the morning. This is when we add our cards to the board for that day. In the meeting, we talk about what we’re going to do that day, what we did the last day, and any impediments we had so that our parents can help us remove them. By doing this every day, we get feedback on what work we did, and how much work we did that day. But we can get feedback even more frequently by using the 25 minute rule (3). It works like this: when we start doing our homework, we start a 25 minute timer. At the end of that 25 minutes, whether we're done with the work or not, we look back at what we did. We also also take a break for a little bit. In this way, we get feedback on how well we worked and feedback on the work we did.
I talked a lot about feedback here, but how does this help me do things faster? Have you ever worked really hard on a big project non-stop, and at the end, when you show it to your boss, it turns out to be completely wrong? This problem, as we found out, can be fixed by getting frequent feedback. We use Scrum as a feedback loop, by getting feedback every week, every day, and even every 25 minutes. But getting things done faster doesn't mean that we are working any harder, rather, we get things done faster by finding mistakes earlier and by getting feedback earlier.
Scrum has helped us solve a lot of problems we face at home and at school. We had the problem of not knowing what we should be doing, and it was fixed by using the Scrum board and the Sprint Planning Meeting. We also had the problem of not getting things done the right way, which was solved by the Definition of Done. Another problem we faced was the problem of not getting things done on time, which was fixed by the 25-minute rule and by getting feedback all the time.
We were recently thrown into a situation where we no longer had teachers to stand over us and tell us exactly what to do. This is exactly where Scrum works best, when the team relies on themselves to get their work done. By implementing Scrum into our new relaxed school life, we found that it fixed a lot of problems and that we were able to get more work done. We also used Scrum to assign and split up chores for the week. In conclusion, Scrum helps us to get things done right, get the right things done, and get things done faster.
References:
- Scrum Guide - http://www.scrumguides.org/
- Product Owner in a Nutshell - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=502ILHjX9EE
- Pomodoro Technique - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomodoro_Technique
About the Author:
Aaron Vadakkan, CSM, CSP, is a 16-year-old who currently studies in 11th grade at Grandview High School. He is also an expert on “Scrum at Home” which is the topic he has presented three times at global and regional gatherings. Ratings show that he was the highest-rated speaker at Mile-High Agile in 2017. He has written an article about the topic, which has been published on Scrum Alliance. You can also listen to an episode of the podcast that he was featured in on SolutionsIQ. He had an early start with exposure to scrum, even from age 8, and he has been practicing it at home for about 6 years. If you have any questions regarding Scrum at home, he would love to connect! Find his LinkedIn here.
