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I'm sure <a href="https://www.thefastlaneforum.com/community/members/80/" class="username" data-xf-init="member-tooltip" data-user-id="80" data-username="@LightHouse">@LightHouse</a> will give you his answer. However, I find it interesting that you should ask this question, as I have been thinking about writing some articles around how Agile software development methodology parallels and can enhance your business management processes. (I believe Trello got its start in life as an Agile tool.)<br />
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In Agile, there is a Backlog, a Release (sometimes), and a Sprint. Plus there are daily Scrums.<br />
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<b>The Backlog</b><br />
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The Backlog is that list that you refer to, and how I think many people may be using their Inbox. The Backlog is basically a dumping ground - the whole shebang - big items, little items, important items, unimportant items. Everything that needs to get done. As you noticed, they can vary quite a bit in how much time they take to complete as well as the type of work to be done (similar to the task switching that Lighthouse refers to).<br />
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In Agile, there is a process to go through to actually size the work to be done. I'll skip Releases for now and just talk about Sprints. A Sprint is 2-4 weeks of work with a small team. Your goal is to release a usable feature at the end of the sprint, no matter how small that feature/functionality may be. This helps the team think in terms of value to the business - if we work on this for 3 weeks, what will it do for the business? You should be asking the same question. What do I want to accomplish in my business over the next X weeks? If I do x, y, and z, what is the impact going to be to my business?<br />
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I'll use a landscaping business as an example.<br />
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Your Backlog might have:<br />
<ul>
<li data-xf-list-type="ul">Come up with a plan to increase sales by 20%</li>
<li data-xf-list-type="ul">Go prune Mr. Smith's gardenia bush that got missed</li>
<li data-xf-list-type="ul">File the business taxes</li>
<li data-xf-list-type="ul">Fix that typo on the website</li>
<li data-xf-list-type="ul">Fire Brenda, who was pruning</li>
<li data-xf-list-type="ul">Find a replacement for Brenda</li>
<li data-xf-list-type="ul">Cold call 5 new potential customers</li>
<li data-xf-list-type="ul">Find a VA</li>
<li data-xf-list-type="ul">Answer today's emails/customer service</li>
<li data-xf-list-type="ul">Check accounts receivables for outstanding balances</li>
<li data-xf-list-type="ul">Send second invoices to unpaid customers</li>
<li data-xf-list-type="ul">Figure out how to break into commercial landscaping</li>
<li data-xf-list-type="ul">Write a new landing page</li>
<li data-xf-list-type="ul">Split test the new landing page</li>
<li data-xf-list-type="ul">Research billing automation solutions</li>
<li data-xf-list-type="ul">Create a 1 hour training on pruning</li>
<li data-xf-list-type="ul">etc.</li>
</ul><br />
<b>Sprint Planning</b><br />
<br />
When you create the Sprint, you first spend a few hours doing Sprint Planning. During the planning, you choose the most important items from the backlog together, in a collection that makes sense to deliver a usable feature. So you wouldn't necessarily, for example, put firing and hiring in the same sprint with growing sales. You might, for example, choose to build a sprint out of cold calling, increasing sales, and breaking into the commercial business (from our backlog example, above) since those are all related to increasing sales. However, as you do the sprint planning, you will decide whether to add more backlog items to the sprint or take some out of the sprint and return them to the backlog.<br />
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One of the ways you figure this out is, during planning, you create tasks for each of the backlog items that you chose as potentials for this sprint. And then you estimate the time/effort it will take to get those tasks done. Now you have a list of <i>potential </i>backlog items for this sprint, a list of tasks, and time/effort for each task. I'll walk you through this.<br />
<br />
In the landscape business example:<br />
<ul>
<li data-xf-list-type="ul">You decide a sprint should last 3 weeks.</li>
<li data-xf-list-type="ul">You set aside 4 hours for planning at the beginning of the next sprint.</li>
<li data-xf-list-type="ul">You look at the backlog and decide you want this sprint to deliver business growth. So you eyeball what's on the backlog and think you may be able to get cold calling, growing sales, and commercial business done in the next 3 weeks.<ul>
<li data-xf-list-type="ul">Note that your <i>next</i> sprint may be about, say, improving customer service, which includes replacing some personnel who are not delivering that - but for this sprint, your focus will be increasing sales.</li>
</ul></li>
<li data-xf-list-type="ul">You make a list of tasks for all 3 of those backlog items.<ul>
<li data-xf-list-type="ul">Backlog item #1: cold calling<ul>
<li data-xf-list-type="ul">Use internet search to identify 5 potential new customers</li>
<li data-xf-list-type="ul">Copy their contact information into the database/spreadsheet</li>
<li data-xf-list-type="ul">Call each contact and use the prepared sales pitch</li>
<li data-xf-list-type="ul">Create a form letter to use for follow up, that is easily customized with a sentence or two.</li>
<li data-xf-list-type="ul">Send each contact a follow-up letter</li>
</ul></li>
<li data-xf-list-type="ul">...and so on</li>
</ul></li>
<li data-xf-list-type="ul">For each task, you estimate the effort. You can do this in hours or what's called fibonacci sequences, but I won't get into that. Just estimate it. Guess, if you have to. You may also identify certain team members who must work on certain tasks due to their skills. Maybe you suck at writing, so you put a VA's name or a friend who's going to help you out, on the task for creating a form letter.<ul>
<li data-xf-list-type="ul">Cold calling<ul>
<li data-xf-list-type="ul">Internet search - 30 minutes</li>
<li data-xf-list-type="ul">Add to database - 15 minutes</li>
<li data-xf-list-type="ul">Call 5 prospects - 90 minutes</li>
<li data-xf-list-type="ul">Create form letter - 60 minutes, assign to Allen</li>
<li data-xf-list-type="ul">Send letter - 60 minutes</li>
<li data-xf-list-type="ul">...and so on</li>
</ul></li>
</ul></li>
</ul>Next, you look at the team members and decide how much time each can dedicate to the sprint. If it's just you, do it for you. Subtract planned time off. Also take into consideration the amount of time each person must dedicate to ongoing support of the business. For you, this may mean handling customer service or managing employees - whatever you must do to keep the daily business going. Subtract that time. The time left is what you have to spend on your sprint. (In software development, this ongoing support consists of things like handling urgent production support, such as bugs that must be fixed right away.)<br />
<br />
Now you can match available time with the tasks you had listed for your sprint items. Are you over or short? If you don't have enough hours, then you must remove a sprint item or break it into pieces and do a smaller piece. Let's say in this example, you don't have time to do all 3 sprint items, so you decide to drop the commercial business item and focus on the 20% growth and cold calling. You put commercial sales back into the backlog.<br />
<br />
If, on the other hand, you have more hours to spend, then select another item from the backlog, estimate the tasks and hours, and add it into the sprint.<br />
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When Sprint planning is done, you have a list of what used to be backlog items and are now sprint items that will be completed during the sprint, a list of tasks to get each sprint item done, and some estimate of how long each task will take.<br />
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<b>Sprint Execution</b><br />
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Now the sprint begins. At the beginning of the sprint, all tasks are in a Planned list.<br />
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At the beginning of each day, select a single task to work on and either assign or let your team members chose their tasks. Those task(s) are moved from Planned to In Progress.<br />
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You work on that task and only that task until it's done. Once it's done, you can pick up another task. If you have sprint hours left for that day, go ahead and start on the second task. Completed tasks are moved from In Progress to Done (or, for software development, into quality assurance testing).<br />
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There are tracking methods for this - which is what tools like Trello were design to assist with - including a burndown chart, which I won't get into right now. Some teams use online tools like Trello, and some use whiteboards to track the movement of tasks from Planned to In Progress to Done and who is working on which task.<br />
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Meanwhile, as other items are coming to your attention that have nothing to do with the current sprint, simply keep adding them to the backlog.<br />
<br />
<b>Daily Scrums</b><br />
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Each day, first thing, hold a daily Scrum meeting with the team. If it's just you, it can still be useful. Ask yourself 3 things:<br />
<ol>
<li data-xf-list-type="ol">What did I accomplish yesterday?</li>
<li data-xf-list-type="ol">What got in the way (if anything)?</li>
<li data-xf-list-type="ol">What will I work on today?</li>
</ol>The daily scrum helps you stay on track so that you don't get to the end of the sprint and go, holy cow, I got nothing done. In Agile, there is a Scrum Master who takes away the answers from #2 and helps remove roadblocks. If it's just you, this process will help you understand what is interfering with progress on your business, so you can decide whether you need to make some adjustments.<br />
<br />
When teams are involved, the daily scrum meeting is held <i>standing up</i> to ensure it doesn't last more than about 15 minutes. You don't do problem solving during this meeting - only identifying and reporting out to the group. It also serves as accountability to ensure progress is being made.<br />
<br />
<b>Sprint Review</b><br />
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At the end of each Sprint, you take a little time to review. What value did you deliver to the business, how well did you execute against what you'd planned, what got in the way, how did your estimates stack up against reality, etc. Over time, your estimates get better and better, so that you are able to understand how much you can really get done in one sprint.<br />
<br />
So basically, set aside time every day to work on business development, taking into account the minimum time you will need for every day business support. Then plan your sprints around where you want to take your business next with your sprint hours.<br />
<br />
<b>Conclusion</b><br />
<br />
So that's a very long answer to your question - but you could essentially add in one new list - the sprint plan. If you'll actually do the sprint planning, explode items into tasks, and separate your backlog into ongoing business support v. business development/improvement, it will help you get away from doing the easy, quick items, and focus on what you really want to accomplish.<br />
<br />
The items would move from Inbox (your backlog) to exploded tasks in Planned (your sprint focus for the next x weeks) to Today (your 3 things) to Done. That was a lot of text to read through, and it may sound complicated at first to those who are new to it; but like any system, it's in the doing and trying that you will learn the power of it. If you currently own a business, it may be helpful to separate your ongoing support tasks v. your business development tasks.<br />
<br />
<div style="margin-left: 20px">Incidentally, I used to coach small business owners. This was among the most frequent problems I saw. If you never take time to work ON your business, you will be stuck forever working IN your business; and it very often leads to massive overtime, massive burnout, and business failure. Also, it is "creating your own job" as MJ describes in his book. It comes from a) not implementing systems and b) unwillingness to take the next step into delegation.​</div><br />
Do I use it? Yes, I do. You can see some of this in my progress thread in the form of a sort of weekly Scrum. I keep my planning in One Note, broken into phases (which you can see in the first post of my thread). Each week, I am deciding an area of focus (my own 1 week sprint), keeping in mind that my first goal is launch. I refuse to work on anything that is listed in a phase later than Launch, even though many of them would be easier or more fun - all my activity comes from tasks I've listed in the Launch phase. As I add tasks, I carefully consider whether it's really critical for Launch or whether it goes in another phase. (These phases are really like Releases, which I didn't get into.)<br />
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There are other nuances I won't get into, such as how to use a burndown chart, how to add in missed tasks you realize are necessary to accomplish the sprint items, and the role of business (i.e., your) signoff. I'm really just throwing this down on paper, so ask questions if I can clarify anything. Also, I'm sure others here have plenty of experience with Agile as well and can chime in.<br />
<br />
I'm stuck at work while software is being installed, so I had the time to devote to this. And I'm a fast writer. <img src="/community/imgs/emoticons/em-smile2.png" class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":)" title="Smile :)" data-shortname=":)" /> I hope it's helpful!
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Great post, I'm going to implement my daily personal scrum tomorrow morning.<br />
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I think what you're getting at with the planned sprints is kind of what <a href="https://www.thefastlaneforum.com/community/members/80/" class="username" data-xf-init="member-tooltip" data-user-id="80" data-username="@LightHouse">@LightHouse</a> was going for with the goals column on the left. You couldn't include a checklist of tasks inside of the goal cards, and wouldn't have to really modify his system that much.</div>
