Lisa Call

Home #4
©2008
4" x 3"
$35

Plan to Have Energy

My daily schedule:

• 5:30: Wake up
• 6:00: Yoga
• 6:30: Prepare for day
• 7:00: Work in Studio
• 7:30: Breakfast and get kids out the door to school
• 8:00: More Studio
• 8:30: Leave for work
• 5:00: Home from work
• 5:00: Dinner & family time
• 7:00: Studio
• 8:00: Art business/Office Work
• 9:00: Write Blog Post
• 9:30: Read 1/2 hour then sleep

My life isn’t always exactly like this but in general this is what I get done each day. My kids live with their dad every other week in which case family time is replaced with more studio and art business time.

When I first started working the day job I didn’t do anything when I got home other than watch netflix movies. After 6 months to a year of this rather sluggish behavior I decided I’d had enough laziness and I got rid of my TV.

Then I told myself I was not exhausted and that I had plenty of energy to make art. So that is exactly what I did. I’d get home from work and head to my studio and work for hours.

Now I do this daily. On my drive home I visualize myself working in my studio. I tell myself I have a ton of energy and I focus on the positive. I don’t participate in conversations where people complain about being too busy or tired to do anything as I feel it has a negative impact on me.

Having a positive attitude about what I can get done has been a big help in have all the energy I need to do anything I want.

Art For Sale

I stitched Home #4 along with Home #3, posted yesterday, with the thought it would be an ACEO to offer for sale via my studio newsletter in December. But apparently I can not measure and it turned out too big. I haven’t yet mastered the diagonals of these little houses so I do a lot more resewing and recutting than with my Structures and Markings series and they still don’t always turn out as I expect.

So now this little single house textile painting gets to be called Home #4 and is for sale for $35. Please send me email if you are interested in purchasing it. Shipping is $1 in the US and $2 elsewhere. I accept payment via paypal or checks in US dollars.

I was going to point out the stitched doors in the houses yesterday but forgot so check them out on this little piece. Maybe windows will be next as I had a discussion about windows with my builder today. We also talked about all sorts of other things, like bathrooms and keys. We’re getting closer to starting!

Insights

This evening is interview #2 in the Insights Artist Interview series with Alyson Stanfield. I love getting a chance to hear what these artist have to say about their careers. Success stories are wonderful motivation to keep on going.

Structures #72 detail

Time in Studio vs Art Career

Last week I wrote about looking for balance between making art and the business side of an art career. I’m still pondering the issues for myself and thought taking an informal poll of other artists would be interesting.

So I asked: "question for artists: On average - per week: 1) how many hours do spend creating new artwork? 2) how many hours spent on your art business?"
on both twitter and facebook. Below is the summary of the answers (art/business).

- 20/20
- Some weeks 40/0, others 0/40
- 25/30
- 10/30
- 10-25 / 20-30+
- 25-30 / too much time promoting and organizing.
- ideally..20/20..lately 5/15
- 5-15 / 15
- 6 / 10-12
- 7-12 / 2
- 30/20
- 2/3
- 0/0
- 1/2

I pulled out just the numbers and deleted the comments, which were quite interesting, but didn’t feel it was appropriate to repost them here. If you go to search.twitter.com and search on @lisacall you can read the full replies to my query on twitter.

The info I glean from this is that the business side of art is a major commitment. Now that I’ve made that commitment it is no wonder I’m feeling the need to readjust.

Thanks to all the twitters and facebookers that answered the question as it was most helpful.

How about you, blog reader? How much time do you spend in the studio vs. the office?

More PFD Fabric for Sale

I sold 220 yards of fabric but have a bit more Prepared for Dye Fabric (PFD) Pimatex Fabric I’d like to sell. I wrote a post about this fabric here: Kaufman PFD Pimatex Fabric . I’m selling this fabric to keep my account at Kaufman open (they have a minimum purchase amount per year to order from them directly - I’m very close to meeting that minimum).

I’m selling the fabric to those with US shipping addresses only for $4.50 a yard + shipping. Total cost for different amounts including shipping:

5 yards - $30
10 yards - $55
20 yards - $100
25 yards - $125

If you’d be interested in purchasing some fabric please send me email the amount you’d like to purchase. I accept checks and paypal.

Structures #73

In addition to a couple hours of art business work, I’ve managed to get in 3 hours in the studio today. The first time in months and months I’ve been so focused on art making on a workday. Woohoo. Course it’s an hour later than I would like to be going to bed but I’m making good progress with the surface stitching on Structures #73. It takes me about an hour per square foot so I have maybe 6 or 7 hours left.

The above photo is another detail show of the textile painting.

Structures #72 detail

In The Studio

A few weeks ago I included an image of Structures #99 in my studio newsletter (you can see it here: Lisa Call’s October Studio Newsletter). Completing this textile painting was fun - only 1 more and I’ll be at 100. Woohoo. That feels like a big deal.

I haven’t figured out what I want to do for #100 yet. I had an idea it needed to be special in some way and with that kind of pressure, yikes, I can’t come up with anything special that feels right.

So instead I’ve decided to make this a full 100 completed pieces of art. Structures #72 and Structures #73 aren’t actually finished. They are both basted and waiting for me to add the surface stitching.

Both are very large pieces so I originally was going to wait to finish them until the new studio was built. Then this week I changed my mind and brought out #72 (detail above) and am working on it. I had started it during my move preparations earlier this year so I only have about 1/3 left to go. My goal: the stitching is finished by the end of the week.

Home Remodel

Speaking of my new studio, I got some excellent news today. My house (with addition) appraised for an excellent price so the bank approved my construction loan and I got a great interest rate to boot.

I close on the loan on the 24th and will start building hopefully the 27th. We should have the permit from the city some time next week. Everything came together nicely.

Yay!!! I’m getting closer.

Pretty much it worked out way better than I might have expected, which is so often the case.

Resources

A few artist resource I want to recommend. First are some artist interviews that Alyson Stanfield is presenting. I signed up for all 5 of them. I’ve found listening to artist talk about their business and their choices is a huge benefit to me so I’m looking forward to hearing what they have to say. I missed the first one but the great deal on these is you can download the mp3 to listen to over and over again at any time. If you are interested here’s a link: Insights - Artist Interviews with Alyson Stanfield.

In addition, Alyson is taking applications for another artist breakthrough program that starts in November. I participated in one this spring and it was excellent. I am thinking I might do it again later next year after my studio is finished also as it really great to have some group energy to keep a project going. Here’s a link for that: Artist Breakthrough Program

For truth in advertising, these are both affiliate links, which means I get money if you sign up through one of these links, which is nice, but it’s not why I’m recommending them. I’ve recommended Alyson’s stuff long before this program was in place because I believe in it very strongly.

I’ve known Alyson for years and have taken several workshops and classes with her. I can honestly say if it weren’t for her I’m not sure I’d be very far along on the art business path. She’s makes it all so clear and obvious. She’s the best so I’m always happy to send business her way.

Structures #53    ©2006    41" x 66"

Busy

The last few months I have been doing a bunch of art marketing work. All of the art and scrum stuff really helped me get focused and motivated on that part of my art business. It feels great to feel all the resulting forward momentum. I’m in love with my art career and know it is going to work out great.

Previously I would often find myself busy doing stuff but not really accomplishing much. Doing things isn’t very productive if they aren’t the right things to be doing. I’d fall in the trap of filling up my time with activity that doesn’t move me closer to my bigger vision.

Space

I’ve also taken a lot of time off to relaxed recently. Spending time in the mountains with Jim and not doing art stuff. Long hikes, excellent meals, fun conversations. I could lose myself in doing nothing. It creates a space in my life that I treasure and Jim is wonderful.

Unfortunately with all this space and all the activity around the art career something had to give. And that thing was creating art. Yes I’m actively working in my studio each day but an hour a day only adds up to 7 hours a week. With the weekend away for my show I’ll end this week at 4 hours of studio time. Not much after years of working 20 hours a week on my art. I can feel my inner artist screaming "I want to make more art!"

As I work towards turning the art career into the main source of money in my life I know that means I will have less time to make art. Now that it is happening I’m feeling a bit of rebellion, which is probably natural. I need to process it and make sure it’s all going in a direction I’m okay with.

Balance

Basically I’m in search of balance. Course aren’t we all. I’m not one that believes that balance means that every day or week or month I’ve got it mastered and everything falls into place perfectly. I do think there is an ebb and flow to activities, but something has triggered my "you are out of balance" meter and I’m finding myself a bit on edge and in need of adjustment.

As a start, this morning I went and had acupuncture, which I absolutely love and find it does wonders to restore my sense of well being. Not to mention the huge physical benefits.

Next step in understanding my needs is to take nothing with me to distract me from myself on my trip to Ohio this weekend. I usually have a list of todos when I go away. I can’t help it sometimes. I’m a 3 on the enneagram and my natural state is that of doing and achieving. But even I can get sick of myself and all my activity sometimes.

So this trip there will be no quilts that need beads or other stitching. No papers to shuffle or magazines to get through. No todo lists to make or organize.

I am bringing one book with me to read, I Will Not Die an Unlived Life: Reclaiming Purpose and Passion by Dawna Markova, and my journal.

For those not familiar with this book it starts with this poem by Dawna Markova:

I will not die an unlived life.
I will not live in fear
of falling or catching fire.
I choose to inhabit my days,
to allow my living to open me,
to make me less afraid,
more accessible,
to loosen my heart
until it becomes a wing,
a torch, a promise.
I choose to risk my significance;
to live so that which came to me as seed
goes to the next as blossom
and that which came to me as blossom,
goes on as fruit.

I’m looking forward to seeing where I find myself at the end of the weekend. I don’t think I’ll have a lot of time to be alone, as there are many friends to see and the museum show opening, but instead of thinking I need to do something in the down time, I plan on doing very little so I come home rested and ready to get back to life with a better sense of what I want next

Structures #53 at the Butler

The above piece will also be in the Butler Museum show that opens this weekend. This is one of the first pieces I made with the very thin lines and it’s still one of my favorites. I will be on an airplane flying to Ohio to see it at the Butler Museum around the time this post appears on my blog. Can’t wait to see it in the museum!

And a Clock

As a final note, artist Paula McCullough from self taught artist is doing a fun promotion for her first 10 piece edition of her found object clocks. She’s got an ebay auction going with a chat box on her blog to follow along. Lots of fun to interact with an artist in this way. Check it out!

Paula’s Art Clock Auction

Paula’s blog is one of the first blogs I read when I see she has a new post. Her writing is wonderful and her honesty about her life as an artist is refreshing and informative. I always come away with something to think about after reading her posts.

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.

Why More on Twitter

Clint Watson offered for me to write a guest post on his blog over at Fine Art Views after my previous post about twitter.

This is that post - I’ve sent it to Clint to post but am also posting it on my blog, which is probably against some blogging etiquette rule but I write best in wordpress after all these years of blogging (I know - kinda weird huh) and it seems silly not to hit publish for my readers, as my experience is few people actually follow links in a post. Although I do recommend Clints blog as he as some interesting opinions about marketing art. So check out his blog here: Clint Watson’s Fine Arts View Blog.

Why Tweet

My top 10 List of reasons I might think writing a tweet for twitter is a better use of my time than creating art in response to Clint’s comment on his blog:

Why ANY artist would think that sending a “Twit” is a better use of their time than creating art is totally beyond me.

My list:

1. As an artist if I made art 24/7 and never marketed it I would eventually run out of room in my house for the art. I spend a full 50% of my time running my art business. I think Clint knows this as he advocates blogging, so I will assume his comment meant "why would an artist tweet vs. doing any other marketing activity".
2. I do not view what I do as "selling" my art. Instead I look to just be me. Authenticity is my goal in marketing myself and therefore my art. For me this means having a conversation, not selling. Making a connection is what I’m interested in, not doing the hard sell. Even if not connecting with a real live collector every minute on twitter, it is all a wonderful opportunity for being authentic and writing openly about myself and my art.
3. Twitter gives me a chance to be authentic in a different way than with my blog. With my blog I put a lot of thought into my posts. They tend to get long and can take a few hours to compose as I edit and re-edit a lot. My tweets are much quicker thoughts dashed off in a few moments. It’s basically me, uncensored. Very authentic.
4. I think with twitter, at least the people that are using it to connect and not sell, you get to see the real person behind the art. It’s a fine line to walk between being boring, giving too much information and too much self promotion. I find myself dropping the feeds that are only about selling - it annoys me and adds zero value to my life. I want a conversation with someone that feels like a real person. I don’t watch tv, I block ads on the web via adblock in firefox, I rarely listen to the radio, read no newspapers and few magazines - my tolerance for advertising is very low - if I feel all I’m getting is an ad - I’ll turn it off.
5. I believe social media could likely become a more effective method of communicating with ones tribe than email. I think we are all completely overloaded with email. There is simply too much of it and we need a more efficient way to communicate. I find myself emailing less and less the more I use twitter. I can’t see into the future but I see the present and I see a lot people not liking email so much. At my day job as a software engineer, email has been rendered virtually useless as noone has time to read it anymore. A very common theme I hear from artists is that email takes up way too much time. I don’t view twitter just as addition to email, but hopefully a way to reduce that email so it takes less time.
6. I’ve been online since 1983. Admittedly I’m a geek. For me, one of the most natural ways for me to communicate is online and I’m very comfortable in public chat type forums. This is absolutely authentic for me. I think some people communicate well this way, others don’t.
7. I can completely relate to Steve Pavlina’s comment on his latest blog post about facebook:
   

   No doubt some people will question how Facebook could help me with my business. The truth is that I don’t really care. My modus operandi is to pursue growth experiences and mold my business around that, not the other way around. So all I’m looking for on Facebook is to make new connections that can lead to interesting growth experiences. I don’t center my life around a profit motive.

   There is more to being an artist than making cash from the art. Connecting with other artists is incredibly valuable on both a personal and professional level. Where will it lead? Let’s find out.

8. I find some really great information on twitter that helps with with my art career. References to articles and tools that other artists are using. While this might not be a direct sale of art to a collector, who’s to say that an opportunity I learn about via twitter doesn’t? It’s networking at it’s finest for only a few minutes a day.
9. My 16 year old son tells me only old people email. Kids text, they use social media. Email is too heavy weight for them. My son assures me I am far from cool, but at least I’m willing to give this new thing a try.
10. I buy art. I’m on twitter. I found art on twitter I liked. I bought it. I do not believe I am the only artist that buys art. And if I am, well so be it. Hopefully someday I’ll buy one of my own pieces and twitter will pay off.

My Thoughts Without Numbers

Okay - truth in advertising here - this isn’t really a top ten list. It’s just a random list of the things I thought of in no particular order and I attached numbers to the paragraphs because I always wanted to write a top 10 list.

I have no idea what the future of twitter might be and what type of value I might get out of it in the long run. And honestly, I don’ really care, which is why it has taken me over a week to finally sit down and write the article I promised Clint.

The short answer on why it is not beyond me to understand why an artist (me) might tweet instead of make art: Making art is a solitary activity. As a full time software engineer and full time artist, my opportunities for getting out are fairly limited. Twitter is a way to connect with my tribe in a very immediate way. It’s a fairly new way for artists to connect and I have no doubt I am making all sorts of "mistakes" that I will cringe or laugh about in the future, which is a large part of the appeal - testing it out and seeing where it will take me.

A final note. This is my experience. I’m not saying other artists should or shouldn’t hop onto the social media bandwagon. I think everyone needs to evaluate it for themselves and determine if it will fit into their art career. I’m happy to see Clint is actively using twitter now and his opinion in the future will be based on experience.

Still More

After writing this I can see I might have another post about twitter in the future. About how I actually use it. I think that might be of help of those that want to try out twitter but aren’t sure what to write about. Look for that post some day in the future. Not sure when.

 
PS - You can follow me on twitter here: Lisa Call’s Twitter Profile.

PSS - You can friend me on facebook here (just note in the request you read my blog): Lisa Call’s Facebook Profile.

PSS - Clint always does a PS so I felt I should follow the tradition for this post.

Managing the Work

In my last Art and Scrum post I talked about tasks, which are basically todo lists for each of the stories.

As we all know there are many ways to maintain todo lists. I’ve tried all sorts of different methods of managing them and some work better than others.

For a while I was managing the project and task lists from Getting Things Done with a spreadsheet. [as an aside - I find the project lists and task lists from GTD very similar to stories and tasks from sprint - very similar - just different names and slightly different descriptions as to what they are]. There are also several software programs that can help project teams maintain their tasks lists. I think they are overkill for what I’m doing with my art business.

I didn’t much like the spreadsheet as I’m not big on putting lists online. I much prefer to hand write my lists as there here is something more satisfying about the writing process than typing. I also find online lists get out of date quickly and lists online are basically obsolete as soon as they are printed. I’d make notes on the printout and then weeks later I’d give up with the online list.

So I’m going with what many scrum experts claim to be the best way to do this: a task board.

The Task Board

A task board is a whiteboard or corkboard or some such thing that can be divided into columns and rows. I’m using one of my smaller portable design walls and have it attached to my wall as shown above.

I’ve written each story on a notecard and these are all in the left hand column. Acceptance criteria are noted on the card along with deadlines or any other notes I think are important to remember. Only stories for the current sprint are placed onto the task board.

Each task for each story is written on a white index card (sticky notes work great with white boards). There are 3 columns where a task card might be placed:

1. Not Started: The tasks all start in the second column on the left. This is the column for tasks not yet started.
2. In Progress: When a task is started it is moved into the next column over - this is for all tasks in progress
3. Completed: When a task is completed it is moved again to the next column - for all tasks completed.

By moving the tasks physically on the board I can see in one very quick look how the sprint is going. As you can see in the above photo, I had just started this sprint as almost nothing is done and just about everything is in the not started column. As the month has progressed I’ve been moving cards to the right. At the end of the month I’ll take another picture and show what it looks like.

The Daily ToDo List

I find that having this huge pile of tasks to tackle can be overwhelming and I can start spinning my wheels. This board is really pretty and cool but I can’t use it on a day to day basis.

So each night I evaluate where I am and I move tasks cards around as they change status. I then pick 2-5 tasks that I want to work on the next day and write them down on a piece of paper. My favorite - little scraps of paper that I can carry around as I move through my day. And I get to cross stuff off. Who doesn’t love crossing stuff off a list.

This little todo list allows me to put the big task board out of my mind (so I can avoid those "oh my gosh I have way too much to do how will I ever get it done" thoughts). I just focus on just a few items knowing that they are steps that make sense that will move me forward towards my larger goals.

A Few Notes

You’ll notice some yellow and orange story cards on my task board on the right hand side. These are for stories that I’m not actually working on right now but I don’t want to forget about. Things like juried shows I entered and I’m waiting for results, or commission projects that are on currently being approved, etc. I know I won’t have to "do" anything this month on these stories but I don’t want to forget about them either.

You’ll also note there are not tasks for the last 2 stories on the board. That’s cause I didn’t have them written when I took this picture. I now have tasks for one of them and am working on tasks for the last one (the update of my website). This is not good scrum. I’m not sure I care.

The Rest of the Stories

The stories on this board are just the stories I want to work on for September. All of the rest of the stories (in scrum called the product backlog) are also written on index cards and they are stored on a shelf next to this board. Every once in a while I flip through them to make sure I’m not missing anything important.

I also add new stories to that pile when I think of new things I want to do. I used to have great ideas for things to do with my art career but didn’t really have a good way to capture them. I’d write some in my sketch book, some got added to todo lists and many were just forgotten. Now I keep a stack of blank note cards and just jot it down and add it to the list.

 
I find this visual and tactile representation of the goals I’m working on for the month to be really helpful. In one quick look I can see how things are going. Right now I’m thinking this is one of the better things I got out of my scrum training.

New House -> New Cards

Today I designed and ordered new business cards. I’m now a Denver person not a Parker person. My old cards had my real street address on them. Decided to just go with phone and online contact information for this version.

I normally do all my online printing of postcards and such with vistaprint but they didn’t have an option to upload an image for the back of a business card, at least that I could find, so I switched to overnightprints.com for this order. Got a tip on twitter that they were good.

 

Front side

 

Back side

 
I did my last business card with a vertical orientation. I won’t be doing that again. Nonstandard isn’t a good idea for something that is rather standard. It didn’t fit into any of the holders when sitting out at shows.

The past 3 or 4 years I’ve used an image of Structures #35 for all of my branding - website, blog, business cards, thank you notes and even all of my avatars online are this textile painting. I guess I’m getting a bit tired of it so I went with something else for the business card. I think Structures #60 is currently one of my favorite pieces.

Depth and Breadth: Quiltmaking in the 21st Century

The Butler Museum of Art has requested business cards for the show Depth and Breadth: Quiltmaking in the 21st Century, which runs October 12, 2008 through January 4, 2009 with an opening reception on the October 13th.

I’ll be at the opening and will be giving a short artist talk. I believe some of the other artists in the show (Bob Adams, Jan Myers-Newbury, June O’Neil, and Jen Swearington) will be speaking also.

Monday I’ll pack up the 6 pieces for the show and get them to UPS. There will be work from both the Markings and the Structures series at the show.

For those that like to prepare early here are the museum details:

Butler Institute of American Art
Trumbull Gallery
9350 East Market Street
Howland, OH 44485

Structures #24    ©2003    32" x &23quot;

 
Today I finally get to breaking stories into tasks. [See all posts about here: Scrum and My Art Business.]

Tasks - The How

When I summarized the overall scrum process and sprints in my last post I didn’t give much information about how a team goes about completing the user stories. This post starts to address the nitty gritty on how that works.

A user story is a goal. In software the goal is stated as seen from the point of view of a user of the software. For example a user goal for amazon might be "I want to search for books about a given topic".

This is great for understanding what the software needs to do but it’s not much information for figuring out the day to day things a developer needs to do to make it happen. Developers need more technical details that explain how to go about doing something.

So the missing step that I glossed over in the last post was that during the planning meeting for a sprint the team breaks all of the user stories for the sprint into tasks. Small chunks of work that give the developers step by step tasks for getting the work done.

In simple terms:

A user story tells What and Why.
A task tells How.

From Stories to Tasks

Breaking the user stories down into tasks is not a simple process. In software, much of the design of the system is determined in how the work is broken down. Are there tasks to design a database? If so that must mean there is a database in the system.

The same is true when I think about breaking down my art goals into tasks. The user stories I wrote for my art business are big picture types of goals. They are what I want to get done and just like in softwware they aren’t telling me how to go about doing it.

One of my user stories is "Go Live on My New Website". This only tells me I want to redesign my website. It doesn’t tell me how to actually do it. There are several ways I can approach this - these are both reasonable task lists for this story:

1. Get proposals and bids from 3 website designers for my new site.
2. Select designer.
3. Finalize design with website designer.
4. Approve completed work.
5. Tell the world about my completed website.

or

1. Install wordpress for new website design.
2. Design new template for website.
3. Create portfolio pages for website.
4. Create bio pages for website.
5. Create homepage for website
6. Flip the switch and make new website live.
7. Tell the world about my completed website.

Which tasks are selected to complete a goal determine what type of work is really involved in a user story.

When Do I Have to Know How

There is no reason to know how to actually make a user story happen when it’s written. All I need is a dream or a goal and to write it down. Making it real and making it concrete by putting it in writing.

It’s too easy to forget my brilliant ideas so I try to write them down when I think of them. Now I have a great place to store my art business ideas. In my master list of user stories (which in scrum is called a product backlog, but "list of user stories" works for me). Jotting down ideas and adding them to this list is a great way to keep track of ideas.

When I reprioritize the list I can decide if it’s worth pursuing. The great thing is I don’t have to know how to actually do what I want to do when I write down the goal. I can figure that out later.

It’s only when it’s time to start working on a user story, ie it gets placed into a sprint, that I need to figure out the steps or tasks that will show me how to tackle the project. Than said, I believe spending some quality time working out the tasks is time well spent. A well thought out plan is never a bad idea. I try not to rush this step in planning.

Just Get Started

Some times a story is too large or unknown that I can’t figure out all the tasks. So I break it into pieces and only include the parts I know how to do. I leave the rest as something to figure out later. I might write a task that says: "figure out the rest of the tasks".

As long as I know at least 1 task to get me started that’s enough. The next step will become more obvious when I get the first completed. No knowing how to complete something is no reason not to make it a goal. I really want to quit my job and do art fulltime. To do that I need to sell my artwork.

So I spent some time thinking about the different ways I might want to sell my art and I made a user story around each one to try it out. I don’t know how to do some of them right now but I don’t have to. I can just get started on the ones I understand or at least identify the first step for a big unknown. With Scrum’s adaptive nature I can reevaluate my progress at any point and reprioritize my work.

What is a Good Task?

A few comments on what makes for a good task. In software it is a chunk of work that can be done by a single developer in a day or 2. For an art business it’s maybe not so clear. For me I feel a task needs to be something that I can do in a fairly short amount of time, maybe 3 or 4 hours at most but more often they are 1-2 hour tasks.

If a task is too large I sometimes find myself using it as an excuse not to do it. So I try not to make tasks that are way too big. I also find that tasks that are too small are really not worth writing down so I forget to do them, so I also try not to make things too granular.

I think some of this is personal preference. How much tolerance a person has for doing work without crossing something off a list or getting distracted.

Structures #24

Today I has happy to discover that I had never posted Structures #24 on my blog (or least I couldn’t find it). This made me happy because it gave me an image to include in this post.

This textile painting was the first piece I made after completing the work inspired by the Grand Canyon. While not officially part of that group, it sort of is. It’s maybe a cousin.

 
Next Scrum post will include some task management information.

 
Another post in my series on Scrum and My Art Business.

My last post I talked about User Stories. I was going to write about managing tasks in this post but realized I needed to cover some more basics first.

The Team

In a previous post I introduced the product owner as one of 3 roles in scrum. The other 2 roles are Scrum Master and Team Member.

Each scrum team typically has these members:

• 1 Product Owner - who writes the user stories, brings the vision for the product to the team and prioritizes the work to be done
• 1 Scrum Master - who gets rid of impediments that are stopping the team from getting their work done (more on this role later)
• 5-9 Team Members - who do the work. From design and architecture to coding and testing.

In my art business there is only 1 person to play all roles. The past month it’s been interesting to think about the difference between each of them. I find I excel at the product owner stuff of bringing vision and thinking up things to do. I’m less effective at actually doing it, not because I can’t, but because I get distracted. So I think I could be a better scrum master and keep myself on track better.

This weekend I unplugged my computer and removed it from my studio/bedroom - the result was 16 hours spent making art. Score one for the scrum master on that decision.

Iterate

One of the key features of scrum, and most agile software development processes, is that the work is divided up into iterations. A group of work is selected to be done for each of those iterations. In scrum those iterations are called sprints (because they had to come up with new words for everything).

Scrum is a series of sprints, typically anywhere from 2-4 weeks in length, that follow this structure

1. Planning Meeting - The teams select a set of stories to complete in the sprint.
2. The Sprint - The team works on those stories during the sprint.
3. Sprint Review - At the end of the sprint the team demonstrate the complete work to the product owner for approval.
4. Sprint Retrospective - The team holds a meeting to evaluate how the sprint went so they can adapt and do better next round.

Repeat these 4 steps over and over and over without end. Every once in a while the software is released to customers and developers move onto the next release with new functionality in the next sprint.

Planning

At the beginning of a sprint the team sits down and decides how much work they can do during that sprint. The stories are prioritized by the product owner, so the team selects the highest priority stories. Each story is also estimated in size. So the team picks the amount of work, based on the size of the stories, that they feel they can complete in the sprint.

Prioritization and Estimation are black arts in the world of software development and maybe not so different for an artist so I’ll touch on these topics again in future posts.

By doing the planning at the beginning of each sprint, instead of all of it up front at the beginning of the project, it is possible to make better informed decisions about planning as the project matures. It’s a fallacy to think the scope of a software project can be determined up front and locked into place. Scrum allows for a more natural way of planning and prioritizing the work.

I think this fits the needs for an art career well. As new opportunities arise and details of existing ones are made more clear, replanning each month allows an artist to reprioritize the importance of each of the goals.

I’m trying out some of these ideas and have decided on doing sprints of 1 calendar month. At the beginning of September I selected some user stories to work on for the month by looking through all of the work I wanted to do.

Sprinting

During the sprint the team members do the work to complete the user stories. They hold a daily meeting in which each member answers these questions:

1. What did I do today
2. What am I going to do tomorrow
3. What (if anything) is blocking me from doing my work

It is through these meetings, and the amazing power of peer pressure, that the team functions without an authoritarian model. If you had to stand up at work each day and be held accountable to your teammates for pulling your own weight, the theory is you will actually do your work, vs surf the internet and buy stuff from amazon and ebay.

I’ve mentioned before that I have an artist mastermind group that I email every night answering exactly these 3 questions. While we are not a team, in that we are working towards a common group vision, having to say to other people "err - didn’t do a darn thing - again" is huge motivation to keep on track.

I highly recommend this type of group activity. I found my mastermind partners during the Artist Breakthrough Program” I took with Alyson Stanfield last spring. We’ve been emailing almost daily for months now and I know for me personally it is huge.

The Review - And Done

At the end of the sprint the team demonstrates the software they completed. Only user stories that fit the definition of done are demonstrated (see my previous post on this topic of what done means.) Almost done or close to done don’t count.

The product owner looks at what the software does and decides yes or no if it is acceptable. How do they decide? It’s based on the acceptance criteria for the user story (see the section on testing in this post about users stories for details on acceptance criteria.) If the product owner either accepts or rejects the work.

Any story that is rejected or that does not fit the definition of done is moved back to the list of incomplete user stories and is placed in a future sprint during a planning meeting.

I’m about 1/3 of the way through my first art sprint so I can’t report on how this might look but I’m hoping I don’t reject too much of my own work as not good enough.

I’ve been doing planning in iterations for my art career for a while now, and again I use my mastermind group to keep me on track. I’ve tried weekly goals and 2 week goals and monthly goals. Again emailing to the other artists what I hope to do for the month and how that month went. So I’ll continue doing that as a part of my sprint reviews.

The Retrospective

The adaptive nature of scrum is a very important piece of the process so I’ll devote more time to this later also. If you aren’t thinking about how things went and changing behavior based on those observations you aren’t doing scrum. And really, you aren’t being very smart about life.

We’ve all heard the saying: the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

It’s really rather obvious, but it’s also not so easy to implement.

The Rock

The photo at the top of this post has nothing to do with scrum but I like it so there it is. Another photo from hiking in Colorado. The water looks golden because of the pebbles underneath.

Click on the image for a larger picture and more rock details (I love rocks). It looks totally cool with my LED fancy screen on my laptop, which hasn’t yet been color calibrated so who knows what colors you might be seeing.