Using Agile Methods for DIY

I’ve been working with agile software development for about 5 years now. I’ve seen it work well and work badly. The great thing about agile is when it does work badly (or just not perfectly), everyone involved gets a chance to analyse why it didn’t go as expected and change some things to fix this for the next time. This ensures that the next 'sprint' will go a little better and if this is repeated every sprint, eventually you have a team that is working at optimal efficiency who are both focused on the task(s) at hand and responsive enough to deal with curve balls.

It's hard to get used to, involves a lot of teamwork and commitment, but once you start seeing features roll out most people agree that it is well worth it. Personally, I love agile.

I've read several posts about people who have experimented with applying agile methods to other uses which I found very interesting. So, back in September when my fiance and I found out our 2nd baby would be arriving earlier than expected and we had just one week to turn our old storage/ironing room into a nursery, I decided to use what I had learned from agile software development and apply it to the DIY process.

The Project

The room we were faced with needed to be completely stripped. It then needed new floors, new furniture, several coats of paint new fixtures etc. So I started to make a list of everything that we needed to do. It turned out, there were 21 tasks and 7 days to do them in so it worked out nicely at 3 tasks per day. That in itself was reassuring, knowing that if we finished just 3 of the tasks each day, we would be finished on time.

The Process

I then transferred each of the tasks onto a card and created “To Do”, “In Progress” and “Done” cards to mark the ‘swim-lanes’ to give visibility on the progress of the week. This was our scrum wall. There were no ‘epics’ although some of the tasks naturally fell together e.g. one trip to the hardware store would cover several of the tasks. Each morning we spent 1 minute deciding what tasks we should do that day - this was our 'daily standup’.

The week started quite well, with 3 or 4 tasks being complete on each of the first few days. On about day 3 we added some scope creep with the addition of some new tasks. After all, what kind of product manager would I be if I didn’t do a little scope creeping! Luckily, as we had completed 4 tasks on some of the first days we were able to accommodate without letting the completion date slip.

On day 6, when we should have been getting ready to put together the new furniture and crib, we realised that we had not built in any time for touch up painting or indeed those unavoidable family things that use up your time. This resulted in a big rush on our last day, but in the end we got everything complete and ready for our new daughter to move in a few days later.

The Result

Overall, I would consider my first attempt at using agile for DIY a success. One of the best parts was the lack of stress at the beginning when we realised we only needed to do 3 tasks per day to complete the room in 7 days. Sure we could have worked like crazy and got everything complete in 3 or 4 days, but I was working full time, my fiance was 8 months pregnant and we also had a 4 year old that needs lots of attention.

I’ve decorated lots of rooms and this was by far the most organised I have ever felt. The simple fact of being able to glance at the scrum board and see exactly what is left is very reassuring. The daily standups ensured that we were constantly in sync and this enabled us to plan out other things we needed to do to get ready for baby. 

What I Learned

This approach to DIY suits me perfectly. But the next time I do this I will definitely change some things like adding extra tasks for snagging or building in some time to give a little extra breathing space and ensure that the last day is not rushed. The scrum board was easy to enough to maintain but this project was small and I think next time I would use an online tool like Trello so I can access the board from anywhere and share with whoever is involved.

But, that is the great thing about agile, we continually get to learn from and adapt our process until it suits us perfectly and there is no 100% right way to do it. I’d highly recommend trying this for your next DIY project.

You can check out some pictures of this project on noeltate.com.

I'd love to hear any recommendations or stories from anyone who has tried anything similar or is thinking about it.