Personal Scrum E-Book

Simon Kneafsey

• Herausgeber: WS
• Kategorie: Ratgeber
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 122

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

Creator of the Personal Scrum System, Simon Kneafsey explains how to use the secrets of the big tech companies to achieve your goals and lead a successful life.

The Personal Scrum System is based on Scrum, the revolutionary approach to project management and team building that has helped to transform the world of work. 

Life is complex. The Personal Scrum System will help you find success by setting and achieving goals. 

- Do you have the desire for a better life?

- Are you unsure or unable to get to where you want to be?

- Do you struggle to find the time to make progress towards your goals?

Use the Personal Scrum System and discover how to:

- Set goals and plan how to achieve them.

- Stay focused and avoid distractions.

- Make the time to work towards your goals.

- Achieve the success you desire.

What Readers Say

“This book is all about helping you personally benefit from the battle-tested elements of Scrum. If you are happy with the status quo and your current level of impact and satisfaction, don't read this book.”

- Peter W Schibli

“Great personal productivity book, Simon brings together a lot of common productivity advice into the guide and links it well to provide relevant tips. There is no fluff or rambling, text is short and to the point”

- Mr. A. Harris

“To read how to use the [Scrum] framework for personal goals was amazing! I really enjoyed this book and I have recommended it to work colleagues but also friends that do not use Scrum as I think it will help them as much as it helped me.”

- lucy

Leseprobe

The authors and publisher have taken care in the preparation of this book, but make no expressed or implied warranty of any kind and assume no responsibility for errors or omissions. No liability is assumed for incidental or consequential damages in connection with or arising out of the use of the information or programs contained herein.

All rights reserved. This publication is protected by copyright, and permission must be obtained from the publisher prior to any prohibited reproduction, storage in a retrieval system, or transmission in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or likewise.

Copyright © 2022 No Limits Media Solutions Ltd

ISBN: 9781739163808

Contents

Chapter One - Introduction

Chapter Two - Success

Chapter Three - Goals

Chapter Four - The Personal Scrum System

Chapter Five - Practices

Chapter Six - Getting Started

Chapter Seven - Appendix

Notes

Guide

Cover

Contents

Start of Content

CHAPTER ONE

Introduction

ORIGINS OF THE PERSONAL SCRUM SYSTEM

The Personal Scrum System is simple, and it works! It can help you achieve your Goals, whatever they might be. The effort will come from you, but the system will help ensure you direct your efforts correctly and maintain focus over the long term. Big Goals take time to achieve, and the Personal Scrum system will allow you to work towards them in small and meaningful steps.

Some people drift through life without direction or Goals. They are directed by the forces and people around them. Some people are happy like this. Others are not. This book is for those that are not, those who want to take control of their lives and achieve something that requires dedication and effort. Personal Scrum will enable you to use a set of tried and tested practices to help you achieve success.

To do this, you will need to decide what you want to achieve, set Goals, and then work towards them. Doing this will ensure you move forward in life with intent, and the Personal Scrum System is designed to help you accomplish this.

It has helped me do this throughout the ten years I have used it. During this time, I set and achieved the following Goals:

Become a leading authority on Scrum as a Professional Scrum Trainer with Scrum.org.Built a successful global training business - TheScrumMaster.co.uk.Conducted training courses for Google, NASA, The United Nations, Coca-Cola, Toyota, and many more.Taught 10,000+ people about Scrum.Grown TheScrumMaster.co.uk by partnering with Associate Trainers all over the world.Created resources used by hundreds of thousands of people to learn about Scrum.Written and published this book, with more to come.

The Personal Scrum System is based on the Scrum framework created by Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland. Although inspired by Scrum, the Personal Scrum System is not the same and is intended for a different purpose. It is further influenced by concepts and practices from Agile, Lean & Kanban.

A big thank you to Ken & Jeff. Their work has changed the world for the better and helped millions of people in so many ways. They should be household names like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates!

Scrum helps teams to do complex work, such as building software. The Personal Scrum System helps individuals succeed in another complex domain - their lives. Life is complex and unpredictable, and we all have to deal with it daily. The Personal Scrum System helps people find success in their lives by setting and achieving Goals.

ABOUT SIMON KNEAFSEY

I spent the early part of my career as a Software Developer working for large consultancies and Media companies. Around 2005, I came across Scrum, and everything changed. The first few products I helped build using Scrum were successful, and I knew I had discovered something special that could also help others.

I then spent years helping a range of organisations adopt Scrum. I made many mistakes and learnt a lot along the way. As part of one role, I had to train people about Scrum and realised how much I loved teaching and training. I decided that this is what I wanted to do for the next part of my life.

Shortly after Ken Schwaber started Scrum.org, I recognised that becoming a Scrum.org Professional Scrum Trainer (PST) would allow me to teach more people about Scrum. I achieved this Goal in 2012, but I only did a little training in the first few years. I realised that being a PST was not enough and that I needed to learn how to build a training business around this capability.

In 2015, I launched my training company - TheScrumMaster.co.uk. Since then, I have travelled the world teaching people about Scrum and have helped 10,000+ people in 35+ countries. As demand continued to grow, I added a group of Associate Trainers and a customer support team so we could service the demand from our clients. I also formalised the mission of TheScrumMaster.co.uk, which is to help 1 million people to learn about Scrum. To support this ambitious Goal, I created a range of new digital products, including Practice Assessments & Video Courses, which have been used by over 250,000 people since.

My most recent Goal was to write this book. I also always wanted to write a book, and this seemed like the perfect time. If it goes well, I may even write some more. I wanted to share the Personal Scrum System I have created, the same system that has helped me achieve my own Goals. Anyone who is willing can benefit from this as much as I have.

All this was made possible by the Personal Scrum System. This was the system I created and used to set my Goals, plan my Activities, and stay focused as I made small, incremental progress. I realised that beyond all the other things I have learned and taught over the years, the Personal Scrum System has the most potential to help other people. Writing this book was a way for me to share this with a broader audience. I hope you will learn about it and use it, and I am sure it will help you as it helped me.

ABOUT SCRUM

Scrum is a lightweight framework that helps people create value when doing complex work. It helps people develop products where there is a high level of uncertainty and change. Scrum in a nutshell:

A Product Owner orders the work for a complex problem into a Product Backlog.The Scrum Team turns a selection of the work into an Increment of Value during a Sprint.The Scrum Team and its stakeholders inspect the results and adjust the plan & process for the next Sprint.Repeat.

Scrum is simple to learn and use. It helps people to work iteratively and incrementally using an empirical approach. Empiricism encourages increased Transparency, Inspection, and Adaptation. It exposes issues and real progress as early as possible and encourages people to make changes to increase their chances of success.

Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland created Scrum in the 1990s. Scrum was initially used to build software, but is now used by tens of millions of people worldwide to help solve complex challenges, and this number is growing rapidly. You can read the Scrum Guide for the official definition of Scrum.

I have been working with Scrum for over 15 years and have helped hundreds of organisations and thousands of people to use it to improve their ability to deliver value. I have seen people build incredible products and help their organisations to improve. I have realised that although Scrum was designed to help teams, it can also help individuals.

Around ten years ago, I began to use a variation of Scrum to organise my life. To set Goals, create plans, and then manage the Activities required to reach them. It seemed logical to use Scrum as I was spending so much time talking about it and helping others to learn about it.

Before this, I had set the occasional Goal and used To Do lists to manage my work. Whilst I had achieved some things this way, I realise, looking back now, that I lacked focus, and the one-dimensional nature of To Do lists was limiting my ability to tackle more nuanced tasks.

Everything changed once I started to use Scrum to organise myself. Each year I achieved massive amounts and made real progress toward my goals. We often overestimate what we can accomplish in a week and underestimate what we can achieve in a year. By monitoring and tracking my progress, I started to see just what was possible, and everything changed for me.

In a few short years, I became a leading authority on Scrum and built a successful training business. I have realised that perhaps the most significant potential for Scrum in the future is to help individuals as it helped me. What I developed from the Scrum framework I have called the Personal Scrum System, and this book is my effort to share with others what worked for me. The guidance it contains has been tried and tested over many years. Whilst it is an adaption of Scrum, it is still based on the Scrum framework, and much remains the same.

ABOUT THE PERSONAL SCRUM SYSTEM

The Personal Scrum System is founded on Empiricism. Empiricism states that knowledge is based on experience. It emphasises the use of experiments and is the basis of the scientific method that has led to the human race's most significant advances that have changed the world.

Life is complex, but taking an empirical approach to your life can give you "superpowers". By practising an empirical approach, you will increase the transparency of your current situation. Regular inspection of what is happening in your environment and frequently adapting to things will help you improve your life in the manner you truly desire, and the best method to do this is using the Personal Scrum System. It will help you determine, set, and achieve Goals, whatever your Goals may be.

Many people do not take the time to stop and think about what they want, what success would look like for them, and what Goals they need to set and achieve to get that success. This is a mistake. If you drift through life without Goals and a strategy to reach them, it is far less likely that you will get what you want. You will more likely be at the mercy of others and will spend your time helping them achieve their Goals and helping them become successful.

The Personal Scrum System will change that. It requires that you decide what success looks like for you, set your Goals, and then start working towards them. Your definition of success and Goals may change, but the critical thing is to have some Goals and start progressively working towards them.

CHAPTER TWO

Success

WHAT IS SUCCESS?

The purpose of the Personal Scrum System is to help you achieve your Goals and be successful. But what is success?

The short answer is that success means different things to all of us. We are all influenced by the culture that surrounds us, so success often includes some of the following:

Having a good jobAchieving fameGaining money and wealthBeing healthySupporting a family

Many of us will value some or all of these things, but at some point in our lives, we may realise they are not enough. We may re-evaluate and change our view of success. Here are some alternative views of success:

Starting and building a business.Moving forward and being open to self-growth.Having quality relationships and being able to spend time with people you love.A sense of giving back to the world and making a differenceMastering something.

We each need to define what success looks like for us. It is OK not to know the answer or for our definition to change over time. But we should not ignore the question. If you do not know what success looks like for you, then you will not be able to work towards achieving it. And if you don’t even know what success is, you will probably never achieve it.

SUCCESS != HAPPINESS

“What is the ultimate quantification of success? For me, it’s not how much time you spend doing what you love. It’s how little time you spend doing what you hate.”- Casey Neistat.

For many people, the definition of success is to be happy. But happiness isn’t a Goal you can reach and be done with. It is a constant pursuit that requires continual re-evaluation and Activity. The Hedonic Treadmill1

is the observed tendency of humans to quickly return to a relatively stable level of happiness despite major positive or adverse events. According to this theory, as a person achieves more success, expectations and desires rise in parallel, resulting in no permanent happiness gain.

Pursuing a Goal (which will likely include your current definition of happiness and success) and regularly setting and reviewing your Goals is vital. What makes you successful and happy today may not be the same as tomorrow. Failure to recognise this and adapt may result in failure and unhappiness.

CHAPTER THREE

Goals

WHY SET GOALS?

Setting clear and measurable Goals and working towards them each week is the basis of the Personal Scrum System. Successful people set Goals. People who set Goals will often write them down and work toward them. If you do not set Goals, you are adrift, and external forces and other people will direct your work. Those people will not have your best interests at heart. Their Goals will become your Goals.

When I started working as a Junior Software Developer for a large Consultancy in the late 1990s, I had no clear Goals for a long time. My only Goal for my first year at work was to survive in the role and not get fired.