How I did with Scrum in September
My Taskboard on Oct 1
My Scrum Taskboard
In September I wrote several posts about using Scrum to manage my art career. In the last post I wrote about taskboards and explained how I was using it to track all the work I wanted to complete in September.
Quick refresher - the colored cards are the goals for the month (user stories) and there is 1 per row on the board. Each of the white cards are tasks that need to be completed for the bigger goals. The first column are tasks not yet started, the second column are tasks in progress and the final column are completed tasks. The colored cards on the right are goals I’m tracking but not actively working on.
Comparing the board from today from the board closer to the beginning of the month:
You can see I got a lot done. Certainly not everything but that big pile of cards in the completed pile indicates I did a heck of a lot art business and marketing this month. Probably the most focused and organized I’ve been in a long time, if not ever, for the business side of art.
This very visual indication of what I want to get done is a huge incentive for doing things. So I’m calling my first initial trial with scrum to be a big success.
Blocked Tasks
One thing I will add to my board is a 4th column. This is where I will put tasks that are blocked and in need of an external event for it to move forward. Such as waiting to hear from juried shows, or to get a return email, etc. I’d like a way to distinguish these tasks from the tasks I am actively working on (in column 2).
If a task is blocked for a long time it might mean I need to check in with the progress, or reevaluate the tasks and maybe find another solution.
Most of the goals (the colored cards along the right hand side of the board) are user stories where one of the tasks is currently blocked so once I add a new column these have a more natural home on the board.
Real Sprints
In scrum the goal is to put up on the taskboard only the work for a single sprint (I’m doing 1 month sprints). I obviously have much more work on my board than that so am not really sticking to that aspect of scrum.
There is a lot of value in seeing all (or at least most) of the work completed after a sprint completes so I’ll eventually get there but I’m not worried about it right now since my house is a big priority. We will hopefully begin building in a few weeks. I’m trying not to set too high of expectations during the building process.
Making Art in September
Although not managed through the scrum taskboard, september was a really good month in my studio also. One of my goals is to make art every day. Between work and kids and the house, it’s my escape and it helps keep me centered.
For September I worked in my studio 25 out of 30 days for a total of 55 hours. I completed 2 new pieces in my Structures series (#98 and #99) and made several small textile paintings.
Yay. That puts a smile on my face.
October Goals
So now it’s a new month and time to set new goals and maybe put some new goals/user stories up on my taskboard. I have some projects that ave been languishing on my todo list for months as I feel I’m still not quite caught up after moving in June. These are completed in October, I’m sure of it!
The first big goal for Oct will be to write and email my September studio newsletter. Then I’ll turn to a few misc tasks and then finally, I’ll tackle my website redesign project. I excited to get back to it.
Posted by Lisa in: Goals
Tagged: art business, art career, goals, newsletter, scrum, tasks, user stories
Cheryl McClure said,
October 2, 2008 @ 3:39 pm
Don’t know a thing about SCRUM and no time to research it right now. However, first thing that came to mind when I saw the image is that can be a fantastic painting…………just squint your eyes.
Shirley El-Rez said,
October 3, 2008 @ 1:39 pm
A very visually effective way to handle several ‘goals’ at once……and an incentive to move the ’stories’ along. I like it. Thanks for drawing attention to the potential for artists and especially for the follow up assessment at the end of the month and the revised taskboard with the ‘blocked’ column. Interesting.
Vivien Zepf said,
October 4, 2008 @ 5:37 pm
I’m trying to figure out how to become more organized in tracking and making art and your taskboard is a good idea. Thanks for writing about it.
On a separate note, what’s your newslettef about?
Trisha Findaly said,
October 4, 2008 @ 7:54 pm
I like this idea. I will have to read your instructions several time to get it I am sure. The idea of seeing progress and making it happen visually is great. Thank you.
Paul Nguyen said,
October 27, 2008 @ 3:27 pm
I like your use of User Cases and Scrum to your art career. I work for a technology company that just started using these techniques. I am also an artist and it never occurred to me that what I was doing at work could also be used at home.
Thanks Lisa.