Life categories
I feel that a good planning system would not be complete without some colour-coding. A good level for this is to use different colours of paper for different types of tasks. In cor
The Standard of Standards and the Sword of Ambition: thoughts on two types of goals (and how to set good ones)
Even at a job, work is not just one type of thing. This is even more true at home, where the work of life can vary wildly. So it can help to think about what we want to get done (o
Burn-up charts & story points: the weird world of intrinsic motivation
Capturing a task for your Scrum board is as simple as grabbing a small scrap of paper, jotting the task down, and putting it on the relevant place on your board. This is all that i
“It’s like Lego” – Why Home Scrum works well (especially for neurodivergence)
It’s like Lego: modularity, atomisation and externalisation Something that makes a Scrum board different from a to-do list is that every task is written on its own, discrete piec
Some Home Scrum board layouts, from simple to overly complex
At the heart of the Scrum framework is the Scrum board. It’s best to use a real, physical board, although it doesn’t matter whether it’s a cork-board or white-board, or even
How we began using Home Scrum
I started my first day as a trainee software developer in July 2017. However, for the first three days the company didn’t teach us about coding; they taught us about Scrum. I
How to find a good space for your Home Scrum board
The very first decision to make when getting your Home Scrum system set up is where you should put your board. It needs to be somewhere where you will see it frequently. If it
Stuff to get for doing Home Scrum
Gathering your equipment You don’t need much to do Home Scrum, and you likely could improvise solutions from what you already have. But you may want a bit more in the way of equi
Our team dynamic with Home Scrum
Like many couples, Francis and I aim to be equal partners in life. However, that doesn’t always translate into equal effort in every endeavour. When it comes to Scrum, in general
“A sense of poisoned rationality”: our standards and ways of working are emotive, not objective
Ways of working are emotive Over several years of thinking about ‘ways of working’ at both a corporate and a personal level, I’ve come to the conclusion that people care a lo
Feeling safe with others is a tricky business: power dynamics and drama triangles
When Google did some research on teams, the main, and really, only common factor among high-performing teams was a sense of ‘psychological safety.’ This meant that all team mem
Who to choose for your Home Scrum team
How to choose your team You need at least one other person to do Home Scrum. You can have more than one—the official Scrum Guide states that a Scrum team should be small, “
Paul’s Home Scrum story with his son Charlie
One example of successful use of Home Scrum with a child comes from my friend and colleague, Paul. He has young twin sons, Evan and Charlie. Charlie has autism, and struggles a lot
How to ask for help using Home Scrum (with scripts)
What you are actually asking for It is a good idea, and a sign of respect, to ask for specific help when approaching someone. So, what are you actually asking someone in your Home
Why accepting help is hard
During my final year studying Music at Cambridge University, I was riddled with perfectionism and careening towards total burn-out. Eventually, I had such a bad anxiety attack that
Why you can’t do Home Scrum by yourself
A major difference between Scrum and other productivity systems is that it is not designed to be used alone. Asking for help from someone else can be a daunting and unappealing pro
The Knowing-Doing Gap
The ‘Knowing-Doing Gap’ is an idea, like Scrum, that I have borrowed from the world of corporate self-help. It is a frustrating human truth that our knowledge does not usually
Who Home Scrum might be useful for
Who could benefit from Home Scrum? Scrum is used to help small groups of people to generate “adaptive solutions for complex problems.” A lot of things fit in the category of a
Why we use Home Scrum
Once you know the difference that it has made in our lives, it is easy to see why we use Home Scrum. A day in the life (now) My husband Francis gets home at 4:30pm and comes straig