I remember a few years ago when I was just first studying agile and scrum, even before I got my scrum master certification, I was trying to read as many books as I could on the topic of agile. And in one of the books, there was an example of someone applying agile towards their home innovation project. A person in this example, this guy. I think he was like a product manager or maybe a software engineer, I don't know, but he knew about agile from work. And then he was building a new house and there was another person down the street who was doing a very similar type of renovation in terms of scale. And this guy, he decided to apply scrum towards his home renovation project. Every day, he would have daily standup with his construction crew. He would ask the usual questions: what did you work on yesterday? What are you planning to work on today? Any blockers? And Job was to unblock his crew. So if someone was missing a tool, he would drive to home Depot and buy it for them. If there was a delay on some part he would know about it immediately and he would fix it. Because of the agile methodology towards this home renovation project, he was able to finish his project in half the time the time that the other guy down the road was able to do his with the traditional, you know, waterfall approach where he was given an estimate of how much this project will take and then life happened. And of course the project ballooned out of its initial estimate. And basically this guy was able finish his renovation in three months while the other guy it took him like six or seven months to finish his, even though the scale was similar. ---- This was the first time I learned about the idea that you can apply agile to home renovations. And so this time around, when we moved into our new house and we wanted to spruce it up a little bit. I decided to apply agile to this project as well, because I applied agile to other areas of my life and got good results. So I was like, okay, why not apply it here as well? Just the disclosure, this is a nice house. We are not doing any major reconstructions where we are moving the walls or adding walls or redoing the plumbing. So most of the renovations that we are doing it's more like decorating, painting walls, buying furniture, making it look nice. So it's very easy stuff. Most of it we can do ourselves. Yes, it is time consuming, but we are not talking about complicated architectural changes. Okay. Just wanted to let you know, so that you can kind of adjust my advice accordingly. Monthly Sprints There are a few scrum principles that I've applied. And the first one is of course embracing sprints. In monthly method, as you might know, we do three week sprints and then take one week off. At first I was just like, okay, I'm just gonna. Once print and then create the scope of work that I can do in the month. And for the first few months, it worked because it was all about, you know, moving, unpacking, buying the most essential stuff. so it was helpful to just keep a general one month at a time sprints. But once we got the basics down and it came time to actually decorating and kind of thinking about each room and how we wanted to make it look like I decided to have one room or one area of the house to focus on for each sprint. because I found if I just keep wide open to the entire house, it gets quite overwhelming. So I needed to narrow down the focus to just one place, one room and focus on this place for a sprint or two, and then move on to the next room and focus on that room for a sprint or two, and then move to the next one. So that's what I've been doing. It's been working really because it makes it less overwhelming again, because you just focus on one room at a time. When you go to home Depot, you only focus on the things you need to fix for this one room. When you are picking colors for the room, you only need to make decision for this one room. When you are buying decorations, again, you are only focusing on this one. So there is not much things that you can distract yourself with and get overwhelmed by because you are only focusing on one thing at a time. it also helps to kind of keep the expenses more or less spread out evenly when you just focus on one room per sprint or per couple of sprints because you're not like buying all the paint at once or all the decoration at once. So it, it really helps with the cash flow as well. Very important. It keeps the mess to one room. So there is only one room that is kind of in this chaotic state. You can keep all the other rooms and other areas clean. I think it's very good for mental health and just, you know, it it's much easier to survive this whole re. Stage, if the mass is contained. Also keeping it to one room per sprint keeps it interesting because your rooms keep changing every sprint every month. You don't really get tired of renovate in the same room all the time. So it only happened to me once when we were working on the garage because of vacation and some other things, it kind of ballooned into three sprints. And by the third sprint, I was so done with renovated in the garage. It was like painful. I was like, I can't even. You know, look at it anymore. I'm so tired. I want to move on and focus on something else. So definitely keeping it to one room and then quickly moving on to the next is what keeps it interesting and fresh. Also because you only have one month or whatever duration you choose. You can only do so much in that period of time. It doesn't allow it to balloon out of proportions as a lot of projects do. Because if you know that right now, you're working on a kitchen and next month you are working on the living room. So in the kitchen, you need to finish as much as you can in one. If you can't okay. Maybe you can extend it to two month, but that's pretty much it. And that brings me to the next point. So I kind of decided to make it the rotational cycle. So this year, of course it's gonna be more difficult because every room requires more renovation, but I divided the house with the outside and the basement and the garage 12 areas. So I decided to focus on one area per month. And then next year I'm gonna go through the cycle again, and then I can, you know, improve these rooms, make it nicer, maybe do deep cleaning or, you know, at Shevin if I didn't have time this time around and. If I stick with this rotation, then every year each room gets some attention gets a little bit better, but at the same time, you don't have to think about every room all the time. So you get to think about your guest room only once a year. For me personally, it's very helpful to kind of just forget about it for the rest of the. The final point with the monthly sprint is that it gives you this extra motivation to get it done, because you only have so much time to do the work in this room, especially if you're strict with yourself, with the timelines saying that. No, no, I can only work on this room for one month then you're like, yeah, I gotta get it done because otherwise I will not come back to this room till the next year. And so it turned out that having this deadline, having this next room waiting to be addressed is quite helpful because it helps me prioritize, focus on the things that are the most essential and get those done. And yeah, so you can definitely use it for extra motivation. So that was the first principle I've applied from scrum is to break down the work in sprint and focus on one sprint at the Evaluate sprint capacity The second idea that I have adopted from scrum is to evaluate each sprint capacity. So before I commit to a new goals or decide which room I'm working on for the upcoming sprint, I look at my calendar. I look at my commit. At the appointments meetings, workload any upcoming travel, any other projects that are happening and realistically evaluate how much time I have for this renovation project this upcoming month. Sometimes I have more time. Some month I have less. Summers are definitely busier with commitments and travel and all of that, but come fall or winter or sprint, I'll have more time and that's okay. So look at your calendar and pick the room or the project for the upcoming sprint that fits with the amount of free time that you have available. Definition of done the third idea is probably one of my favorite ideas that I've learned by being a product manager and by learning about scrum is the definition of done. Guys, if you are not setting your goals or your tasks with the definition of done in mind, you are doing yourself and great disservice. So a definition of done is basically a statement that shows you when you are done. This is done to avoid various subjective tasks and goals. What I mean by that is when people say that I wanna make it better, or I want to make it nicer, or I want to increase, decrease, improve. It's like, what do you mean by that? How do we know when it's nicer? So the definition of done is basically a statement that 10 people around you can look at this statement and they can agree that this goal is completed and your project is done. So for example, instead of having a goal of, well, I want to make my living room nicer, the definition of done will require you to include some very objective criteria of what it means. So maybe it's paint the walls, hang some wall art, put a new carpet and maybe bring some fresh pillows and blankets. Okay. So that's a very clear definition of what a nicer living room will look like. And if you and I come to your living room tomorrow, and I look at this definition of Don, I can say, yeah, I can see the new pillows. I can see the new collar of the walls. I can see the carpet. Yeah. Your goal is achieved. Good job. so basically with the home renovation project you need to make sure that your sprint goal has a clear definition of done. If you're not sure about this concept and want to learn more. I've done an episode on it. Let me check the number. it is episode number 15. Go check it out. Moving things to done The next scrum principle that I've adapted is to focus on moving things to done and limiting the number of tasks that are in. In good scrum team there are some sort of a rule of how many tasks are allowed to be in progress column. So if you've ever seen an agile board, it has several columns. The first one is to do, then it's in progress, then it can be QA or code review, and then it's done. As a developer, you are supposed to take one sticky note or one task and start moving it from one column to another. And then when you moved it all the way to done only, then you can take the next sticky note and move it to in progress. and as a team, if you ever end up in a situation where you have 10 items in, in progress column, then basically the first person who is finished with his or her task, instead of picking a new sticking note or like a new task they're to. People with the tasks that are in progress so that this task are moved to done as soon as possible. And so the same principle can apply with the home innovation projects. Just focus on task at the time and finishing it and move it to done as soon as possible. And by done, and that's important by done. I mean that the tools are cleaned up. They're put away all the supplies are put away everything, you know, it's like done. You have no trace of this project being left undone. Let's take an example of painting the. So you painted the walls, then you need to put away the paint, clean your brushes, store them in the place that you decide to store. And only then can you take the next task, which is, maybe assemble furniture and then you go and assemble F. . If you try to paint the walls and assemble furniture at the same time, it becomes very overwhelming and quite inefficient and just again, a mess. So just keep it one task at a time and focus on moving it to done. If you work with someone, if it's a partner. If it's your child or someone, so each of you pick a project and focus on moving this project to done or focus together on one project on one task and focus on moving it to done as soon as possible. Daily standup And the final agile idea I can offer you is to embrace the idea of daily stand. Of course it works really well if you are working with someone, but even if you work by yourself, it might be quite helpful. Maybe you can journal it out. Maybe you can write it on a sticky note, but just have a daily five to 10 minute session. What did you do yesterday on this renovation project? What are you planning to do today? And are there any blockers? And this third question about the blockers is. Helpful, in my opinion, especially if you're working with someone, because then they can unblock you or maybe they can give you a tip or an advice that you haven't thought about. So yeah, just embrace the daily, standup. It kind of ES you, it sets the right tone for the day and you can help each other out. And instead of getting annoyed at each other for the fact that you know, how come he or she is not understanding that it's so difficult or that I've been stuck at this. You get to talk about anything that is blocking you and help each other out. Join September Sprint This is what I've learned and applied over the last eight months. It's working well. Most of all, it kind of keeps at manageable emotionally, even though renovations and moving and all of it can be quite overwhelming and hard. So I recommend it, take it once print at a time. A lot of this ideas I've covered in the previous episodes, go check them out. And if you have a project like that, a renovation project. Maybe it's planning a family trip. Maybe it's starting a site hustle.. Whatever it is, you can come join the monthly method sprint that is starting in a few weeks. All the information is available at monthlymethod.com/enroll. Have a good week. And I'll talk to you next Monday. Cheers.