elainegrey

My planning for my 43rd year (which began in March)

( probably posted in February )

It is interesting to contrast my "ten week" goal setting with its irregular blocks of time to SCRUM. One of the repeated pieces of advice is to keep the blocks of time consistent so the teams can develop a rhythm. My "ten week" year is broken into a rhythm that reflects the change of seasons and my summer high: 2 months, 2 months, 4 months, 2 months, 2 months. My time and my planning is wheel of the year sacred personal time compared to secular work time of scrum. It still supports the inspect and adapt function, though, and i think that's been part of the value.

May is here and it is a new start for me. I think the Spring season (which i start at my birthday, mid way between Candlemas and the spring equinox) was mainly focussed on Christine's surgery.

This season we're wrapping up that focus. I expect by the end of June we'll be transitioning into a new household rhythm where the new SCRUM rhythm at my office needs to mesh with Christine's new work rhythms. I think at the end of June we might be ready to begin thinking through a plan to "sell the Honda 900 and buy a very used Jeep." We'll want to get away to celebrate her successful recovery from the surgery.

I think i'm feeling the stress of developing new habits at the same time. The new SCRUM work habits reinforce and amplify the "Conditions of Enoughness." The Satisfaction Finder misses an explicit "inspect and adapt" loop, but the "conditions of enoughness" are a very similar practice of breaking things down into small conceivable chunks.

Adapting to new habits takes energy: getting exercise, changing diet, just as much as a discipline of recognizing a reasonable, possible set of things i could do in a realistic day and be satisfied with what i'd done.

I think this Beltane season needs to focus on Practice, Celebration, and Planning. Practice means instead of doing new things, i can just focus on the new way to enforce habits. Because i'm practicing with what i've got, and that seems Enough, i'm going to say "No" to out of the usual things. I won't go Quarterly or do Bike to Work day, and i won't ask myself to "Virtually Attend" the stack of events in my list of things to do. Practice means adding those events to next year's wheel of the year, though!

Clearly, a big part of my stress is that i'm changing, seeing change, and wanting to be changed. The little steps, i've made just wants me to have more done. For example, i bought little organization baskets/drawers for my desk. I am so delighted with my sense of improved workspace. It's magnificent! And that make me even more acutely aware of junk drawers and stacks of unprocessed letters and papers and so on. Yesterday during a call i cleaned up one of the supply drawers and my 3x5 card kit. There's a part of the urge that feels like procrastination, but i should allow myself this sense of "spring cleaning" that seems to be part of this sense of new process.

I generally find airline miles to be near useless, in part because i'm not willing to play all the games around them (figuring out where to stay to get points, playing with credit cards to get points, etc). I did take a little time to inspect my points early this year, and found that i was actually flying Delta enough that a ticket might be acquired (one more trip east). So i'll actually be loyal to Delta as long as their flights continue to be sensible ones for my travel needs. United, however, keeps writing me with a message about how i am close to a travel reward (i just need to double the points i have). I don't know: that's not my definition of close. On the other hand, United seems to have a way i can spend the points for something other than airfare. I'm sending my Mom a FTD miniature rose plant with points, which is actually kind of cool.

--==∞==--

Training continues to go well: yesterday was a little more easy. I find interesting similarities between the training and Friends' practice: the role of a clerk is similar to that of a SCRUM master, there is a practice of queries. Coding principles like encapsulation might be similar to the testimonies. Quality might be the aspect of the Light visible from this perspective.

There are differences of course: no one comes to a Meeting with a prioritized list of things to work on that is not open for discussion, and time-boxing (setting a hard and fast fixed time in which something will occur) is, to some extent, anathema.

There are enough similarities that make me wonder what would happen with cross pollination. Our HR trainer talked about using SCRUM practices in another project she was working on, creating some new training tools. What in SCRUM practices could be moved to other projects, like relief work? Or political advocacy?

It's probably an exciting thought for me because i can imagine a transition away from software development into other areas with this as a technique.

--==∞==--

I've been thinking about job shifting. My current financial situation makes leaving the benefits the Whale provides very challenging, particularly in the next three to five years. But i could come up with a three year plan, and if part of that is taking SCRUM and translating it for different projects, working with the Friends community to help reshape it into a process that can be translated....

It's an interesting thought.