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Monthly Method Podcast is a show for solopreneurs, creators, and artists who have a burning desire to launch a project. The project your best life depends on.
Your host, Polina Bee, is a certified SCRUM master. She brings a proven record of launching successful projects, both professional and personal.
You will hear about tested techniques that lead to calm, consistency and results.
Subscribe to turn your idea into reality one month at a time.
So you say, I'm convinced, and I want to try this Agile framework. How do I do it? So let's start with the quick overview of the whole agile cycle, the sprint cycle. I will go into each detail separately in a separate video. Otherwise, it's gonna be a long video.
Polina Bee:I just want to give an introduction. So the agile method starts with the backlog. It's a document where you record all your ideas, all your goals, all your tasks, all the projects that you have to do, you want to do, you were asked to do, all of that. It's just one place. For now, it doesn't have to be organized.
Polina Bee:I use notes app on my phone. So I have an iPhone and a MacBook laptop, and I use notes because it comes already installed in both of these devices, and they are synced. So if I'm out of and about and I have an idea, I record it in my note file. If I'm sitting on my computer and I'm working, I can quickly open it up and record it. You can also use the physical notebook.
Polina Bee:You will see that I am a big advocate of analog system, and backlog is probably the only well, backlog and the calendar are the only things that are digital in this whole system. Everything else is analog. Things you want to do, things you need to do, things you have to do, things you might want to do. Everything goes in there. But you don't act on it.
Polina Bee:It just it's it holds all of it. And then before you first print, you sit down and you look at your backlog. You can organize it quickly. Doesn't have to be anything advanced, maybe a few columns, maybe priority, something like that. And then you look at your calendar.
Polina Bee:You want to grasp the idea of sprint capacity. Again, another video on that is coming. But long story short, based on your calendar, based on your season of life, based on your kid's schedule for the next 2, 3, 4 weeks, whatever your duration of the sprint is. What's your sprint capacity? How much time do you have?
Polina Bee:And based on that, you decide the number of calls that you pick. There's always a limit. For me, the absolute maximum is 5. 5, project based goals per sprint. It can go lower if I'm traveling, if I have a lot of deadlines, if it's a busy season at work.
Polina Bee:It can go to 3 goals, 2 goals, but it never exceeds 5 goals. That's what I found by trying and for the last 10 years so I am pretty confident at this limit but there has to be a limit. Okay. So you looked at your sprint capacity. You decided how many goals you want to do, then you do the sprint planning.
Polina Bee:It's an important step. There are different things that you have to do. You have to pick your goals. You have to write the definition of done, and then put it all on the scrum board. I use a physical scrum board for myself because I found it to be the most effective method.
Polina Bee:It's the simplest. It's the cleanest. It's the one that truly works. I've tried all the digital tools. I've tried all the apps on the planet.
Polina Bee:I can probably give you a lecture on all of them. And the physical Scrum board, an analog Scrum board is the one that works the best for me. And I actually find that for a lot of people who try it, they rarely go bad. You put everything on the scrum board, and that's kind of completes your sprint planning portion of the sprint. And then your sprint starts.
Polina Bee:What is a good duration of a sprint? Traditionally, it's between 2 to 6 weeks. I always say that it should be short enough for you to feel that deadline approaching. So if 6 weeks, it's too far in the future and you don't really feel that little pressure, little nudge, to get things done, then it's too long. You have to reuse it.
Polina Bee:But it should be long enough to actually get something substantial done. We don't want to be at, like, 3 days because you can really do you can really ship anything good in 3 days. A lot of things require a longer period of time because agile is created for the project based goals, finite goals, something that ends at the end of the sprint, something that you can ship to the world. Say, like, I'm done here. I've done it.
Polina Bee:Check it out. You can send it. You can email it. You can, invite people to your home and say, hey. Look.
Polina Bee:I've painted this wall. So this is a finite project. So it should be long enough for you to actually complete it, to move it all the way from to do to done. During this sprint, you have daily stand ups. It's basically everyday it's a ritual.
Polina Bee:You come and you look at your scrum board and you decide what makes the most sense to focus on today. You kind of, like, move things around. You select again a very limited number of tasks to do. So for me, I usually pick no more than 3 tasks for the day, and then those become my core priorities. And then at the end of the sprint, you do the sprint retrospective.
Polina Bee:It's a whole ritual. I'll do another video on that. But the main goal is to actually review your sprint even if it's not perfect, even if you haven't finished everything, and learn from it. Learned what worked, what didn't, how you can improve going forward. But before you jump into the next sprint, what I implemented, and that's not the part of agile, but that's the part that I think is crucial is I have the cool off week.
Polina Bee:So between one sprint and another. So my sprints are 3 weeks in length. So 3 weeks of sprinting, working hard on my goals, and then 1 week off. Doesn't mean I go on vacation and just spend time on a week. I still work.
Polina Bee:I still do some things. I still show up on my calls. I still show up for my clients, answer emails, and all of that. I even sometimes schedule some chores to to get done during that week. But the main goal is for you to actually kind of, like, take it easy.
Polina Bee:Take it to the maintenance level where it's like you're, like, holding things. You're just, like, doing things on them for maintenance level so the the whole place doesn't fall apart, that your clients don't fire you, that you don't lose your job, that your house is not falling apart. So it's like very bare minimum. You let yourself rest. You let yourself reflect.
Polina Bee:Because again, your brain is not gonna give you all the answers during the sprint retrospective. You need to have some space to actually really reflect on what happened and also some space to plan for your next sprint. To kind of, like, think, okay. What do you want to focus on in the next sprint? It also allows you to rest.
Polina Bee:Scheduled break is the number one recipe for avoiding burnout. I like to say that you will have your break. Your body will force you to have a break. Break. It's it's either you're in control of this break and you schedule it regularly.
Polina Bee:Or your body will force you to take this break via getting sick, going through the burnout, going through some emotional breakdown. It will happen, unavoidably. I would rather be scheduling it on my own terms and giving this break on a regular basis than kind of risking it all and letting it happen in such a bad way when it happens. So after the cool off week, you start this whole process again. You look at your backlog, which you've updated during the sprint because you had new ideas come in.
Polina Bee:You had new requests come in. And instead of jumping straight into these projects, you recorded them in your backlog. And now all these ideas compete for the next sprint. It it's kind of like a competition. All these ideas have to compete for the spot to be on your Scrum board.
Polina Bee:And there are only 5 spots during the best times. Well, for me, for you, it might be different. And so you, again, look at your sprint capacity, decide on the number of goals, pick the goals that are the winners that you think are the best things for you to focus on during this sprint, pick your sprint focus, and do this whole process again. So this is the overview of the sprint cycle. I will go through every step in a separate video.
Polina Bee:For now, if you want to actually start implementing this process, I will start with the backlog. Create a file that is easily synced between your phone and your computer, something that you have easy access to. When you go grocery shopping and something pops into your mind, where do you want to record it? Because your ideas, your best ideas never happen when you're seated at your desk. They happen when you're out and about, when you're walking, when you're doing dishes, and all of that.
Polina Bee:So you have to have an easy place to record these things. Again, I recommend a notes file, a notes document that is synced. Nothing fancy. No apps. No productivity apps.
Polina Bee:Nothing. A simple text file is good enough. That's what I use. And then start recording everything that you think you want to do in the next sprint, you don't have to prioritize now. You don't have to clean it up.
Polina Bee:You don't have to write it in some specific ways. Just start dumping. Dump in all the ideas onto this file and do it for the next week. If you want to start doing this process faster, I've been blogging about it for the last 3 years. I have a website, monthlymethod.com, where I wrote more than 70 articles on this topic.
Polina Bee:Go to start here page and there you'll find links to sprint planning, backlog, daily stand ups, all of that. It's already there. It's just in text format. But if you are not into reading, it's okay. You can wait for the next video, and then I'll walk you through the next step.
Polina Bee:Happy sprinting. See you next time.