It’s the time for it. Christmas presents must be bought, wrapped up and given away. And I have to be happy about it too! And hopefully each christmas gift has some personal touch to it. So what to do when the deadline is absolute, the requirements aren’t set but the quality is important? Let’s go agile shopping!
First of all, my backlog is simple but loooong: all the people that are required a christmas gift. I decide to do this iteratively. Start with the person that’s easiest to buy too. Like my little nephew. Almost anything in the toystore will suffice. After a quick survey, I find a couple of alternatives, make a priority and goes with the best qualified gift. One down, first iteration done. My “tests” are all running green: I met budget, the gift was purchased within reasonable time, the gift was “recommended” for this kid.
Let’s do sprint review: what worked? What can be improved? I make my mental notes and move forth…
As I work myself through the backlog I realize I’m becoming sloppy with the process. I tend to skip my self-imposed gift-tests. As time progress, I seem to go for the first thing that matches any of the remaining people. I must be careful, one wrong decision and I’ll end up with something someone doesn’t want. I’ll get into the awkward situation at Christmas Eve where the recipient goes “ohh…. a new (enter gift type here). How nice… ” and you realize you missed entirely.
I guess the moral of the story’s this: if you decide to go Agile Christmas Shopping, you must be sure to maintain discipline. Learn from the mistakes, test any potential gift to the qualities of a recipient. Something that seems to fit at first glance may indeed be a complete miss.
The alternative to discipline is detailed planning. It works for many, but does it produce the same quality?
I need to answer these questions. I have to find the best alternative shopping procedure. The toughest back-log item is coming up: my fiancè!
December 20th, 2006 at 5:18 pm
How about splitting the backlog items into sub tasks? Like “Gift to mom”, assign to girlfriend, estimated time = 2 hours. Appose to “Gift to mom”, assign to myself, estimated time = 2 days. Or “Gift to [some not so good friend]”, assign to next year, estimated time 2 sec.
December 21st, 2006 at 3:13 pm
Deferrement and delegation isn’t really agile. Everything should really be deferred if possible, potentially after priority. If something isn’t needed before next year, defer it until needed iteration. However, (and an issue agile speaks too little of), absolute deadlines makes planning more important. If I went completely agile, I’d say “sorry, I did not have time to buy any gifts to you dear, but fear not. You (the back-log item), my dear, are moved back in “uncommitted backlog” and will be a priority next year!”. I would fear for christmas peace.
I cannot delegate either. However, the more agile approach is to get someone else to COMMIT themselves into buying the gifts on my behalf! That’s a tactic that works well, for instance if my girlfriend volunteers to buy a gift to my mother. However, I cannot impose this on her (as it wouldn’t be very agile). This brings up another agile practice very little spoken of: “Coach / Scrum Master / Project Management manipulation”. The art of delegating by making the teammember THINK he/she commits out of free will.
So Agile Christmas shopping brings out two practices that’s kind of taboo in the inner agile circle:
1) Absolute deadline backlog handling
2) Management manipulation
;)
Merry Christmas!