Tackle Life Together

A blog by Sally Waters

sally [at] homescrum .co.uk

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HOME SCRUM

Tackle life together

For neurodiverse families, couples or individuals who need a way to stay on top of life.

scrum board diagram

Scrum is:

  • a team of people trying to get organised
  • a board on the wall, with tasks on separate post-it notes, that you move through columns, such as ‘To Do’, ‘Doing’ and ‘Done’
  • a set of four repeating events (the ‘Daily Scrum’, ‘Sprint Plan’, ‘Sprint Retrospective’ and ‘Sprint Review’) that help the team check in

Home Scrum is:

  • doing Scrum at home, rather than the office
  • using Scrum to organise your life, not just work
  • well-suited to households, couples or families who feel overwhelmed
  • a great tool if you want to help a loved one to stay organised
  • a good way to ask for structured, external help from someone you trust
  • effective for neurodivergent people
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Is Home Scrum for me?

Check the flowchart below for an indication of whether Home Scrum might be useful for you. You may also like to listen to the talk embedded below that, where I talk about how Home Scrum has helped my husband and me cope better with his ADHD, and how Paul helped his son Charlie to manage better with autism.

I wrote this blog because I want other neurodivergent households—couples, families with children or teenagers, housemates, students—to be able to use Home Scrum too. Unlike most productivity solutions, Home Scrum means tackling life together, as a team. If your attempts to get organised by yourself haven’t been enough, it just might be a good fit for you.

Is Scrum a good fit for you? Flowchart. (Note: 'you' can refer to anyone in your household) 1) Do you genuinely struggle to meet life's demands? E.g. chronic procrastination, responsibilities are overwhelming, organisation never 'sticks'. If no, Do you read a lot of self help? Are you constantly striving for self-improvement? Are you a perfectionist? If yes, then Be careful Scrum isn't just a distraction (Perfectionism is often masking deeper anxiety) If no, Scrum might be overkill for you if you don't have a clear need for extra structure. (End of first branch) From start: Do you struggle to meet life's demands? If yes, Do you like the look of Home Scrum? If no, Is that because you're not sure it'll work? (Perhaps you don't think you'll stick to it?) If yes, Consider a trial period (e.g. one month) to see if Home Scrum works for you. If no, perhaps Home Scrum just isn't appealing for you, and that's fine. (End of second branch) From 'Do you like the look of Scrum?' If yes, Are you willing to ask for help to get organised? (Are you struggling enough to risk the vulnerability of asking for daily support?) If no, then Home Scrum won't work well for you; it needs to be used with other people. If yes, Do you know one or more poeple who would spend 5-10 minutes a day helping you? (Either to use Home Scrum alongside you, or to support you using it?) If no, Home Scrum could still work for you - you can find a partner for it online, through our Slack or subreddit. If yes, Does that person live with you? If yes, Home Scrum could be a great fit! Start immediately by mentioning it to your potential team member. If no, Could you call the person every day? If yes, Scrum could be a great fit! If no, consider finding someone to partner up with online instead.

How to get the most out of this blog

This blog was designed like a book, which means that most of the posts are not completely independent from each other. You should start here to pick a reading order to follow, from just two summary posts, to the ‘table of contents’ for the whole blog.

Home Scrum in a nutshell

Now that you have some idea of what Home Scrum is about, you can take a deeper dive into how it works by looking through this overview diagram. If it’s too dense and off-putting, feel free to skip it!
Diagram of how to do Home Scrum. First section: What you'll need 1) At least one other person (could be online) 2) An empty wall you see often 3) A board, post-it notes, and (for a whiteboard) blu-tack or (for a cork board) pins. Second section: Board layout Adapt this layout to you, or start simple with columns for To Do, Doing, and Done. Divide columns with ribbon, string, tape, or strips of newspaper. Use different colours for different life categories (e.g. Health, Home, Work, Hobbies). Each task should be on a single post-it note of the appropriate colour, with a specific, do-able next step written on it. In the top corner you can write a number in a circle, which gives the task points. Points represent effort, and we often use the following scale: 0.5, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 20, 40, infinity. Suggested landscape board layout: 1) 'Backlog' first column, far left, groups tasks by life category 2) 'This Week' top half of second column; fill this with a realistic number of tasks from the backlog 3) 'Regulars' bottom half of second column; 'Regulars' are repeating tasks, e.g. housework. 4) 'Today' third column, potentially split further into columns for each person's tasks. Could add a 'Morning' heading at the top of the column and an 'Afternoon' one halfway down, to indicate when you'll get to a task. 4) 'Done today' top third fourth column. 5) 'Burn-up Chart' middle third fourth column, this can just be a simple graph to show how many tasks you've done, but can be adapted later into a fun game. 6) 'Done This Week', bottom third fourth column; read the tasks from here again before discarding them, to celebrate your achievements. Third section: The Scrum Events 1) The Daily Scrum: - maximum 15 minutes - stand up if possible - move tasks to 'done today' - count total points done - record points on burn-up chart - move tasks back to regulars or into 'done this week' - plan tasks for next day (move them to 'today') - do *every day* 2) Retrospective ('retro') - 5 to 30 minutes - Discuss improvements to your system - Pick an idea to try for the next week - Use little games to make it more fun - Air your feelings - Weekly or fortnightly 3) Planning - 15 to 45 minutes - Remove stale tasks from backlong - Break down larger tasks into smaller steps - Decide which tasks from the backlog to move into 'this week' - Pick fewer tasks than you think you can do - Weekly or fortnightly 4) Review - Clear out 'done this week' - Remind yourself of all your progress and celebrate

Who I am

My name is Sally Waters, and I’m the author of the Home Scrum blog. You will learn quite a lot about the experiences of my husband Francis and me by reading it, but in short, all you need to know is that Francis has ADHD and I have perfectionist anxiety, and we both struggle a lot to get things done and to coordinate as a team in our household life. I have found taking the Scrum framework and applying it at home has really helped, and so Home Scrum came to be.

I started writing this in the summer of 2020 (because a pandemic wasn’t enough, I just had to make use of that ‘free time’ by taking on a huge project…). I thought I was writing a book. I had fantastic support from Dave West, the CEO of scrum.org, with regular check-ins and access to people like Kurt and Sabrina, who provided excellent editing and logo-design, respectively. But by the time early 2022 came along I was buckling under the idea of how much there was left to do to publish a book, and how after that I would still be tied to the project in unending promotional efforts.

Turning it into a blog has made finishing it seem marginally easier. To be clear, this blog is finished as-is, and it’s unlikely that I will add more posts in the future. Now that it’s out there, I have decided to limit my involvement with the Home Scrum movement to being available to contact through email, the subreddit or the Slack workspace. I will also consider speaking opportunities (especially paid ones!).

I am happy for others to build on the Home Scrum concept with their own projects that can take this movement further. For this reason, I have given the blog a Creative Commons license, which means that you are allowed to build on this blog in your own projects, as long as you credit the blog and me as the source. See the very bottom of the page for the credit line to copy into your own projects.

If you do find this blog helpful, and would like to offer a ‘tip’ or buy me a cup of tea, then please check out the payment options in the menu on the left or on my contact page.

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