{"id":4524,"date":"2019-06-21T15:26:16","date_gmt":"2019-06-21T20:26:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/etereman.com\/remanu\/?p=4524"},"modified":"2019-06-21T15:26:16","modified_gmt":"2019-06-21T20:26:16","slug":"the-tale-of-the-sprinting-hippo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/etereman.com\/remanu\/2019\/06\/21\/the-tale-of-the-sprinting-hippo\/","title":{"rendered":"The Tale of the Sprinting Hippo"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\nSome people call me the \u2018The Sprinting Hippo\u2019 and I don\u2019t mind it at all. I coach and play for a softball team during the summers, and, just like the noble hippopotamus that can reach top speeds of 30 mph (it\u2019s true, look it up!<\/a>), I am much faster than you might assume just by looking at me. I\u2019m not sure how to write out the sound that a hippo might make, but rest assured that I have attempted it several times as an on-field cheer (and it never fails to elicit a laugh \u2013 but no one has ever said, \u201cThat sounds just like a hippo!\u201d).
\nMy success with sprinting doesn\u2019t end on the softball diamond though, nor does it even end with running. I have found it to be a very effective way to manage the work that my team and I do. If you have a lot of work, or a long way to go, it\u2019s often daunting to try and look at the end as the goal. Instead, I like to think of it as a series of small distances I need to go.
\nMy team subscribes to a method of work management called \u2018Scrum\u2019. Scrum has a lot of different principles (which are covered in this very excellent book<\/a>), but the fundamental tenet that I like most is that you plan your work for relatively short periods of time called sprints. Sprinting at work has dramatically improved our throughput and may be exactly what you need to get through your own large project load.
\nAt its most basic, a sprint is some period of time (we use 2 weeks, but typical sprint lengths range anywhere from 1-4 weeks). At the beginning of each sprint we decide, \u201cWhat are the most important things on our list to accomplish during this sprint?\u201d We select those items, discuss generally how they should be executed and then go to work. Each member of my team knows what\u2019s expected from them during that time period, knows what success looks like, (Did we finish all of our objectives for the sprint?) and knows where to go next without needing me to guide or direct them. In short, it creates autonomous flow and keeps us having small successes.
\nInstead of looking at our entire workload as a never-ending pile of features to build, integrations to create and automations to\u2026 well, automate, we just look at it as a series of 2-weeks-worth lists of projects to accomplish. Our to-do list decreases down to empty as the sprint comes to an end and who doesn\u2019t love the feeling of accomplishing everything on their list? What\u2019s more, the relative importance of items on our total list changes pretty frequently. By only setting our list for 2 weeks, we have the ability to reprioritize every 2 weeks which keeps us agile and responsive to what our business needs.
\nNot everyone has the same kind of project list, I get it, but setting sprints for yourself has plenty of applications:<\/p>\n