On June 1, 2007 my wife and I had our first child, named Luke. He came home from the hospital with us on June 4th. Of all the adjustments people have to make to a new baby one of the biggest is the sleep schedule. We are lucky that he sleeps in roughly 3.5 to [...]
On June 1, 2007 my wife and I had our first child, named Luke. He came home from the hospital with us on June 4th. Of all the adjustments people have to make to a new baby one of the biggest is the sleep schedule.
We are lucky that he sleeps in roughly 3.5 to 4 hour shifts, where most newborns sleep in 2 to 3 hour shifts. My time that is baby free and distraction free gets cut down to 4 hour increments and based upon what I’ve found out so far: It is possible to get more done in less time.
One of the biggest keys I think in getting more done in this four hour time block is the concept of sprinting which is introduced in the agile development methodology of Scrum. While I’ve not embraced this methodology 100%, I’ve found the concept of sprinting to be quite intriguing.
Sprinting revolves around user stories which are requirements in end users language. For example take this user story from a project I’m working on now (names have been changed for illustration purposes)
Joe of AcmeWidgets needs the currently existing search function on his website to have an option to filter by size, color, and weight.
Now that we’ve got our user story let’s look at what we need to do by creating a quick task list:
- Size should be a select box containing: S, M, XL, LG
- Color should be a select box containing all available widget colors
- Weight should be 2 radio buttons, weight ascending, weight descending
The next part of our sprint involves hardcore coding as hard as we can for a set period of time (In my case roughly 4 hours) to get as much done as we can. What I’ve been finding is that the less time I have the harder I code and get alot more “in the zone” time.
Yes, you could have a task list that simply says: Add new search fields, but the thing I like about keeping multiple shorter lists is that it breaks them in to more sustainable chunks and lets me check off multiple items which gives me a sense of accomplishment instead of dread about the current workload.
This methodology doesn’t only apply to programming, suppose I turn my household chores into a sprint, or creating a new site design section by section.
2 Responses
I have been using a similar model for about a year. I find the whole project moves much faster when a small number of small milestones are worked vigorously early in the project. It provides a great opportunity to go back with a more detailed time/$ spec for the client and to develop a timeline that is much more achievable than the initial consultation. Thanks for helping me recognize what I was actually doing
Congrats on the new baby!
Scrum/Agile methods in general really have tried to institutionalize this idea of shorter feedback loops, and story-driven development (versus doing a bunch of tasks).
I think the key is the small steps help keep the team motivated by getting quick wins. I’ve got a blog entry on this here: http://www.extremeplanner.com/blog/2007/03/small-wins-agile-psychology.html