Lately I’ve been asked to explain Scrum in less than 5 mins to regular folks, without framework terms.
Here is how I did it
- Have a long term vision or goal of what do you want to achieve (e.g. get fit and improve your health)
- Create a to do list with actions producing results, contributing to the main goal (e.g. run every day for 10 mins, go to gym 3 times a week, sell the car and walk more)
- Have somebody (could be you) prioritise your list – focus on short-term benefits
- Set a timebox to challenge yourself with some of the actions (e.g. day, week, two weeks)
- Commit to actions you assume can do in the timebox
- Check how you are doing every day for a couple of minutes
- In the end of the timebox summarise and celebrate your successful actions
- Review and prepare the actions for the next timebox
- Repeat
Sounds simple? Then why you can’t find many folks doing this naturally?
Some of the reasons
- People usually aim big. This is the worst mistake. Nobody wants to chase 100$ tomorrow but almost everybody will chase 1 000 000$ for many years
- Folks get easily demotivated just doing small stuff. Celebrate and value every success – no matter how small it is
- It is difficult to prioritise. Even more if you are just long-term thinker
- Focus loss or vision change
- Iterations are not comfortable… in fact they are usually stressful
- Folks not comfortable taking full responsibility and leading (even their own life/business)
- People not comfortable with all the transparency of their progress (sometimes it’s simply not looking good)