Manage Projects Better – 4min Scrum Overview

By Aamir - Apr 7, 2023 - External | Skills | Toolkit

Achieve predictable results in productivity, customer success and personal sense of accomplishment

Methodologies covered: PRINCE2 – Agile – Kanban – Scrum & Tools

You are already a project manager!

Too much to do?

In today’s modern world, life happens everywhere. We have to manage our personal lives and professional spaces. Goals, tasks, to do lists and objectives have become so large that we have to manage them separately. All coming under the umbrella of customer service, productivity, providing value which in turn increase our personal self-worth and self-esteem.

Constantly Firefighting?

The beautiful thing is, all these need to be done now – we have to jump from one thing to another then back, then another email or phone call comes in, ‘this is urgent, we will lose the client’.

Making a cup of coffee/tea is a project…

One of the first lessons I remember when learning about project management was ‘everything is a project, even making a cup of coffee is a project’.

Programme: Life Hacks & Well-being

Project: A delicious cup of coffee (or tea)

Product: Coffee

Stakeholder: you and/or guests

Resources: Coffee, water, heat device, filter, cup

Technique: Product/Work Breakdown Structure

The best cup of coffee in the world! I’ve put a link below in case you’re curious on how it’s achieved in 4 minutes:

Project Management Methodologies

‘OK, so… which one cures cancer?’

There are many tools and techniques out there that you can use and get overwhelmed by, the trick is to keep it simple and apply small changes to what you already do. Completely overhauling your systems, while can be a project in itself, is not the most effective way to manage and deliver on expectations.

Some well known methodologies/principles:

PRINCE2 Developed in the early 1990’s and commonly adopted in the UK & Europe, often compared to the US equivalent PMBOK
- After becoming a PRINCE2 Practitioner in 2005, I quickly learnt that every customer organisation and situation is different
- A few key fundamentals remained with me, which include: business case, risks, baselines, scope, timelines, product, project deliverable’s, – Time, Cost, Quality
- In addition the the above, I recently realised I subconsciously use Product Breakdown Structure and Product Flow Planning tools from Product Based Planning all the time
Agile Developed in the software development space to be more adaptive, flexible in delivering products to the market faster whilst maintaining quality.
Kanban and Scrum

These guiding principles led to/influenced the development of many lean methodologies and frameworks that we are familiar with today.

Kanban Overview

Kanban is a lean approach that visualises the workflow and makes it easier to see the where things are and what needs to be done

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Kanban_board_example.jpg

Kanban Metrics

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanban_(development) Team velocity – How many tasks a team can deliver in a given time Lead & Cycle Time – Average time to complete a task Actionable Agile metrics – How much time it took to complete 50%, 85% and 95% of tasks

Scrum Overview

Why Scrum or Hybrid-Scrum is my favourite

Having spent 20 years in the IT space one if its beauties and at the same time pitfall is that the speed of change is intense, as a result in 2018 I decided to update my skills in project management

After exhaustive research and consultations with professionals in various industries, I along with a project manager friend chose to learn Scrum

This time however, I went in with a different mindset. With PRINCE2 I was younger and looking for a complete solution. With Scrum it was more from a point of consolidation, what can I learn and adapt to my life = what will it give me that is not only useful, but be effective

What is it? Does it work? Could I apply it with minimum resistance to benefit my clients and me? – And of course, it had to be simple

Scrum Methodology Mindmap

Scrum Methodology

Designed to manage complex work in a lightweight and simple to understand manner. It separates the artefacts (Product/Sprint Backlogs) from the events (Time Boxed, The Sprint, Sprint Planning, Scrums, Sprint Review and Sprint Retrospectives) from the team (Product Owner, Team, Scrum Master)

Roles – Who

Product Owner

1 person
Responsible for the Product Backlog/Backlog
Understands the customer issues and requirements

Team

Usually between 3-9 persons
Do the work
Can change tasks to DONE

Scrum Master

Works with the Product Owner, Team and Organisation

Artefacts – What

Product Backlog (Owned by the Product Owner)

Prioritise what is needed and when it is needed
Dynamic

Sprint Backlog (Owned by the team)

Derived from the Product Backlog to fill the Sprint time available (1-4 weeks)
Increment – releasable Sprint output
Team members decide on what they can do within The Sprint time-frame, based on their capacity and skills

Events (workflow) – How

The Sprint – time boxed from 1-4 weeks, commonly 2 weeks

START: Sprint Planning
END: Sprint Review & Sprint Retrospective

Sprint Planning

Sprint Goal
What can be done and how will the chosen work get done?
Select items from Product Backlog

Daily Scrums

15 mins held by the team = Not a status report, up to the team to discuss progress and issues

Sprint Review

Demo of completed work to stakeholders
Stakeholder review with Product Owner

Retrospective

Lessons learnt
After sprint review and before next Sprint Planning

Scrum & Agile Friendly Tools

You can setup the below applications with a Scrum dashboard for your organisation, department or team

Product & Sprint Backlogs
Status: Backlog (ToDo) – Doing – Done

Two Free to Use Agile Apps for Individuals & Small Business

ClickUp Powerful with loads of features for individuals and enterprises. It has a nice ‘Programme’ view, you can setup multiple projects and manage them individually
Jira – My favourite for the past few years, doesn’t integrate with google calendar as fast as monday.com. You can use a new Scrum template with Epics for grouping, the backlog then feeds into any Sprints you create