Lisa Call

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.

Chairs #16: Canyon Layers - Tonto Platform
©2003    6.5" x 6.5"
Private Collection

Chairs #17: Canyon Layers - Red Wall
©2003    6.5" x 6.5"
Private Collection

 
The last 2 evenings have been a bit frustrating for me as I’ve worked long hours trying to write my first studio newsletter. I can sit down and write out a blog post in just a few minutes but for some reason the text for the newsletter isn’t flowing as easily. I’ve clearly psyched myself out thinking it needs to be different or perfect.

Instead of writing the text I’ve been tweaking the formatting. Email applications like outlook, eudora and thunderbird aren’t browsers but they have to act as one when an html formated email arrives. Then there are the browser based email applications such as gmail and yahoo. They strip out all of the header information in such emails. All styles have to be inline and css positioning doesn’t work well, so lots of nested tables and repeated style tags making the source file hard to read.

Basically it’s a bit of a pain to get things to look good in an email and one can spend hours and hours perfecting the layout so it works in all browsers, email programs, etc. Normal people would use a template or software program and not worry about this, being a software engineer I hand code all of my html and css, which clearly at times is a very big liability.

While that was maybe a bit technical the point is I’m wasting my time and getting sidetracked by technology (something I find very easy) instead of concentrating on the content of my newsletter.

Solution - tonight I’m going to just work in my studio and forget the newsletter. After a day or 2 break I’m hoping I’ll find the right focus again.

 
I realized when I posted the series of Grand Canyon quilts last month I forgot the 2 small studies that I made during that period. The two pieces above could easily be in my Structures series but back in 2003 they ended up falling into my Chairs series, which I will post more about someday.

Chairs #16 is in a private collection, traded for a wonderful piece by another textile artist, but Chairs #17: Canyon Layers - Red Wall is available for purchase for $75.00. is sold.

These two pieces were some of my very first pieces working with thin lines. The start of something I still haven’t tired of 4 years later.

Structures #23    © 2003    34″ x 28″

 
This is the last of the five Structures quilts in my Grand Canyon grouping. More of my brick shapes from this period in the Grand Canyon colors I dyed. This time outlined in black for the lowest layer of the canyon, the vishnu complex made of schist, gneiss, and granite.

The last morning in the canyon I woke up very early and hiked out to an overlook on the tonto platform to watch the sunset. The weather didn’t cooperate so I didn’t get to watch the colors return to the canyon in a glorious blaze. In fact as I recall it was amazingly window and a bit unpleasant, but in my mind this quilt reminds me of that morning. I’m not really sure why.

Structures #22    © 2003    32" x 50"

 
Watching the sun set across the Grand Canyon is wonderful. As the sun moves across the canyon the colors and shadows change on the rock walls.

I could sit and watch every day as each one is different.

Structures #17    © 2003    31" x 77"

 
Another Grand Canyon inspired piece. This is the most personal of the quilts. In the background are the Grand Canyon layers and colors. In the foreground the dark and light figures - the dichotomy of good and evil. While the trip was the most amazing experience it was also a challenging personal experience with some unpleasant interactions with the men in the group. I can’t remember many details of the stress but I well remember the magic of the canyon. I don’t think I’ve ever felt so alive.

I haven’t spent time hiking in the past couple of years and I think I’m really missing it. I need to resolve to get back into shape and get back in the mountains and canyons.

 
As I’m looking at these older pieces I’m reminded how much I really enjoyed making these brick wall type shapes. Each piece was cut by hand and sewn together so it’s a rather time consuming process but I love the results. I have thought recently of doing some work similar to these but every time I face an empty design wall my thin lines appear instead. Maybe in time I’ll circle back, or maybe not and I’ll just keep moving forward. Either way I don’t ever seem to run out of ideas I want to try.

Structures #16    © 2003    48" x 35"

Another piece informed by my backpacking trip to the Grand Canyon. Although the title of this piece is the usual Structures #something I always think of this quilt as simply "layers".

One of the things people that visit the Grand Canyon like to discuss and study are the types and ages of the different rock layers that make up the canyon. The hike down into the canyon is a trip through history through some very ancient stones. Each layer has distinct properties and how these layers shift throughout the canyon is interesting geology.

This website has a brief introduction into the different layers of the canyon. This page shows the layers in order. The guys on my backpacking trip spent a lot of time determining who knew the most about these rocks.

Coconino Sandstone, the Kaibab, Vishnu Schist, the Tonto Platform: these are all terms I heard over and over again.

When I came home I dyed a batch of new fabric in the colors my mind remembered the canyon and made a group of pieces to capture my experience.

The above quilt is all about these layers, and it apparently bears no resemblance to reality. I showed this completed quilt to one of the guys that went on the trip with me and he pointed out I got the layers not only in the wrong order, the wrong size but even the wrong colors. When I tried to explain that it was the concept of the layers that I was looking to capture and not the real layers he was not impressed. Abstraction is definitely not everyone’s cup of tea.

I realize yesterday’s and tonight’s post are quite a departure from my recent pondering about the direction I want to take my art career. Selling, markets, goals, etc.

I have a zillion ideas swimming around in my head. All of your comments were incredibly helpful, so thank you all. There were some specific comments and questions that I want to respond to but I need some more time to think. So I’m taking a breather and posting what I call my "grand canyon quilts" this week while I try to clarify my thoughts further.

Structures #19    © 2003    39" x 40"

 
In October 2002 I went on a week long backpacking trip in the Grand Canyon organized by the Colorado Mountain Club. I was the only female in the group with 5 or 6 men. The trip was an interesting experience. I loved the canyon and I spent quite a bit of solitary time enjoying the magic it had to offer. Sadly the guys turned out to jerks, who I did not enjoy spending time with. The good far outweighed the bad as I was able to stay away from the guys and their never ending oneupmanship. Backpackers apparently have huge egos. Who knew!

The juvenile behavior of the men has long faded but the beauty of the canyon will always be remembered. As I mentioned in a previous post - I have a collage of pictures from the grand canyon trip in my studio. I will always find them inspirational. I love the canyon walls, how the stones crack and pieces of stone fall away to reveal new layers underneath.

Structures #19 was made in response to this trip and this photograph specifically: