Sprint Your Way to Success

INTRODUCTION
Do you tend to make a list of resolutions every year and never achieve them? Do you make glorious plans and never follow through? Do you start a project valiantly, with all the best intentions and then give up at the first bump in the road?

Everyone laughed at me when I developed a flow chart and critical path to plan my wedding – but it worked. That was over 20 years ago, before the age of the Wedding Planner. Now, such things are big business.

Still, I often wonder why more business planning tools have not made it into the “real” world.

I know that most traditional business planning methods are cumbersome and labor intensive and hardly conducive to use in real world. But there are some new, agile trends in manufacturing and technology that make it easier to stay focused and achieve both short and long term goals.

AGILE GOAL SETTING PROCESSES IN BUSINESS
Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland, pioneers of the Agile method in the software industry have found that the fastest and most effective way to reach goals, even big goals, is to break everything down into small 2-4 week chunks called Sprints.

According to PC Magazine: “Each Sprint starts with a two to three-hour planning session that includes a customer, a facilitator and the project team. The customer describes the highest priority items that he or she has in a backlog, or list, of items he or she wants completed. The team then decides how many of the requests they can accomplish in a 2-4 week period. Once everyone agrees on how much work to do, the task list is frozen and the team is left alone to complete it – no additions, no changes until the sprint is done. In order stay focused and keep on schedule, there is a 15-minute meeting every day where accomplishments, roadblocks and tasks are quickly discussed. At the end of the Sprint, the results are delivered and reviewed, and the next Sprint is started.”

SPRINTS IN SPORTS
Sprints don’t exist just in the business world. In fact, the idea was originally taken from the sports world – Rugby, to be specific.
From the Agile Diary: “A sprint in rugby is a distance an athlete would travel from one end to another. Before an athlete or team would sprint, the team would quickly get together and plan how to go about it. During the sprint, an athlete would encounter opposition from the other team and might go ahead with the plan [if the plan still is good] or more likely alter the plan. You can anticipate but not predict the opposition. A sprint tests whether the team is a team, whether they are good or not and their ability to respond to change. “
Runners, too, are familiar with the idea of sprints and what they can do for a training program. While training to run a half marathon, I learned that a great way to build the strength to run long distances was to spend at least one day a week running short bursts as fast as I could mixed with short distances at a slower pace. By doing sprints as part of my training, I was able to build strength in a much shorter period of time.

GETTING STARTED
How do you get started with Agile Personal Achievement?

If you merely write down a long “To Do” list of daily tasks you will quickly get lost in the weeds without a clear vision for where you are going. On the flip side, if you create only a few long term goals and push toward them all at once, you will either get frustrated with a lack of visible progress or overwhelmed with the magnitude of your endeavor.

Achieving your dreams requires both long term vision and short term focus. It also requires that you be ready to adapt to ever changing priorities and frequent interruptions while still moving forward, step-by-step.

Before you launch yourself into a Personal Sprint, you need to take the time to complete these six steps:
1. List your long term goals
Define and outline goals that you would like to accomplish over the next year. Be as specific as possible with each goal.

2. Prioritize
Decide which goal is most important to you. Pick that one to focus on for one month. If you want to be successful, your focus should always be on completing the most important goal and the most important task first.

Remember; keep the scope small for best results. If you have more than one goal, jot the rest down on a future “back burner” list and put it away for later. DO NOT think about them now. Doing so will only slow you down and keep you from achieving any of you goals. Research in Agile methodologies has shown that it is faster and easier to focus on just one goal at a time and complete goals serially, rather than jumping back and forth between goals. Agile Project Management with Scrum

3. Visualize
Next, create a story or vision for what it will look like in five years if you achieve your goal, then one year, then one month. How does it feel? Make it real. Include as many of the senses as you can in your description.

4. Time Box your Goal
Ask yourself, “What can I reasonably accomplish toward this goal in a month?” Be reasonable. In fact, whatever you think you can do, cut it in half for the first round. That way, you will be pleased with yourself if you surpass your goal and won’t beat yourself up or, worse yet, quit if you encounter a couple of roadblocks along the way. You never have as much time as you think you will.

Once you have outlined what your month will look like, decide how much time you can spend each week and each day working to achieve your one month goal. Then go back and look at what you said you wanted to do in one month. Is it reasonable and realistic, or do you need to adjust it? Remember, no matter how well you plan, there will always be some distractions. So, you might as well plan for them.

5. Create your Sprint Checklist
Break down your monthly goal into weekly objectives. Be very clear. You want to be able to monitor your achievements and make quick adjustments if you start getting off track.

Once you have 4-5 weekly objectives laid out, look at what you will need to do each day to meet the objective. Since this is a task list (not a list of no-no’s) be sure to focus on the do’s, not the don’ts. Trust me; it’s much easier to do something than to NOT do something. I know from experience that any time I try to not do something, it’s all I can think of and, in the end, all I do.

Be as clear as possible. Instead of saying “eat healthy” or “stick to my diet,” say “eat 7 fruits or vegetables” or “eat 2 servings, only, of lean meat.” Your daily tasks must be precise and measurable. You need to be able to monitor them and check them off, much like cooking from a recipe.

After you have created your daily tasks, go back and review them once again. Ask yourself, “Will doing these things REALLY get me to my goal?” and “Is there anything else I can do that will get me there faster or easier?” If you are not on track, you must either change your goal or change your daily task list – something’s gotta give.

6. Log It in Advance
Trust me, unless you truly make this as easy as following a recipe, you will have trouble reaching your goal. Write down each task for each day – either the night before or first thing in the morning. If you can, create the list on your computer, so that you can check it off each day and review it and edit it each week.

According to world famous body builder and fitness expert, Tom Venuto, “In this day and age, your schedule will always fill up with something else if you don't BLOCK OFF chunks of time for the most important priorities in your life - one of which is your health. It's not enough to just have your workout "in your head. There is a huge difference between saying ‘I am training tomorrow,’ and writing, ‘I am training chest, shoulders, triceps and abs tomorrow at 7:00 am sharp.’ … This is a really simple discipline, but very powerful.”

By logging what you want to do in advance, you will be making yourself accountable and responsible. Not being clear on what we intend to do is a frequent excuse for failure. You will also be able to easily track your steps toward your goal and see where and when you are getting off track. This will enable you to make quick adjustments before you completely lose your way.

Here are samples of a monthly backlog and a daily burndown. Notice that the tasks get more and more specific.

Sample Monthly Running Goals (Sprint Backlog)
Priority - Goal - Complete by
1 - Be able to run 10 miles - end of September

Weekly Goal & Tasks (Sprint Burndown)
Priority - Specific Goal - Due
1 - Run 5 miles - Monday
2 - Day off - Tuesday
3 - Sprint 5X 1m/3m - Wednesday
4 - Cross Train/Weights–45 min - Thursday
5 - Run hills 45 minutes - Friday
6 - Easy Run - Saturday
7 - Cross Train/Weights–45 min - Sunday

STEP BY STEP / SRINT BY SPRINT
Now that you know what you are going to do, it’s time to do it. Go forth with the knowledge that you have bitten off a manageable chunk and that you have the means to accomplish you goal – after all, it’s only for a month.