One of the most common concerns of those who attend trainings with Agile in Nonprofits is about having a chance to practice their Agile values and framework skills like Scrum or Kanban before they put them into place in their team or organization.

 

The reality is that the opportunity to practice living these values, embodying the principles, and even following a framework are all around you in your daily life.

 

Here are some recent examples from my own life to help get you started on looking for these opportunities in your own life.

 

– During the pandemic, while our children were learning virtually, we used the Scrum framework to help us continue focusing on our family goals despite the unusual circumstances we found ourselves in. We held used the Toyota Kata method to determine our desired state versus our current state and then used weekly Sprint Planning to help us commit to actions along the way toward our larger goal.

 

– When co-coaching a community-based First Lego League team which my husband, Erich (who is an amazing Agilist), we use the Sprint Retrospective and some of our favorite visual prompts with the middle school-aged team after each weekly practice to help them process what went well for how they worked together during practice, what didn’t go as planned in their way of working together, and what they might try doing differently together next time.

 

– Having a personal backlog that you work from. Not simply a to-do list. Rather a prioritized list of the projects and initiatives that you want to/need to tackle. Everything from holiday preparations to finding a new apartment. From planning a vacation to redecorating a room in your home. From changing cell service providers to applying to college. Each has numerous tasks that must be accomplished in order to be completed and each can be prioritized relative to the other. 

 

Where will you try practicing in your own life? Or where have you already tried?

 

Leave a comment and let me know.