Scrum for Wedding Planning - a Unique Use Case for Scrum

In this episode, Dave West is joined by Julien Deray, a fellow podcaster, Scrum practitioner and author of the book, How I Planned my Wedding with Scrum. They discuss what Julien learned while planning his wedding with his wife and how Scrum helped them stay organized and plan their wedding incrementally. Listen in for this fun discussion about using Scrum for complex work outside of software. 

Transcript

Lindsay Velecina: 0:03

Welcome to the scrum.org community podcast, a podcast from the home of Scrum. In this podcast we feature professional scrum trainers and other scrum practitioners sharing their stories and experiences to help learn from the experience of others. We hope you enjoy this episode.

Dave West: 0:20

Hello, everyone, and welcome to the scrum.org community podcast. I'm your host, Dave West CEO here@scrum.org. And today I have somebody with me that really is a very interesting user of Scrum. Julien Deray, author of the popular book how I planned my wedding with Scrum, which is, which is a really interesting read. A great way of learning a scrum in a different context. Welcome to the podcast, Julian.

Julien Deray: 0:54

Hello, Dave. Thanks for having me.

Dave West: 0:57

You're very welcome. And Julian is French, but lives in Lisbon. And so we're all a little bit jealous this time of the year when it's so fabulous there. So thank you for stepping out of the sun. Take your time to talk to us. Alright, so let's, let's let's begin at the very beginning. Before we get into wedding planning, which is a really interesting topic. Obviously, Father, the bride is one of my favorite movies of all time. Okay, so before we get into the wedding example, Julian, I'd really like to understand a little bit about where you came from. In terms of Scrum. When did you first experience Scrum.

Julien Deray: 1:43

So I went to software engineering school about 10 years ago, and that's where I, I got into contact with crown. Okay, as you knew people were talking about project management and agile but never really got into the details. And then I had a class about about Scrum and refactoring. It's interesting already back in how they started to mix Agile and Scrum with also some software engineering and kind of showing us that it was not just about the methodology, it was about the mindset, it could be applied to like many aspects, actually, of our jobs and potential of our lives. And I've started to work in startups. So in startups, you know, you start coding, you start shaping up the product, I'm talking a very small startup, like first engineer, start. And before, you know, you have a team of 10 people and you try to make sense out of it, and of what you're doing. That's how I slowly but surely became a scrum master is my certification, learned a whole lot of things and started to lead to lead the team and try ends and so on. There were six years ago and get a grew quickly a passion for agile methodologies. In general, that's, that's, that's how it all started. Yeah.

Dave West: 3:01

So what what was what was scrum so attracted to you, you know, what, why did it sort of resonate? So, well?

Julien Deray: 3:09

It it kind of made sense to me like before like, because in like in startups, as I as experienced them, like very early stage, you just just start with with your gut feeling, you know, you just start coding start doing things and then well, the priorities change and like everything changes all the time, you just cope with it, but when the when the teams start to grow, it becomes more complicated to adapt to the new context all the time and of course, in startups, it is on a daily basis that the context changes, the scrum methodology opened my eyes on a lot of practices, that that I could see that I had started to kind of put play in my own way. And and then a framework, I thought, Well, that makes a lot of sense, like it just I have been doing a lot of things wrong, a few things kind of right happened organically, but then this sense. So at least now we can start to coordinate to to focus, sprint by sprint, to communicate to have this this this feedback loop, this continuous improvement, mindset. And a lot of things made a lot of sense and I could also some version about the personal organization and so on, and other things resonated as well. For me with with this, you can actually take a lot of things from person organization to Agile methodologies and vice versa. So I could I could see how it could be used in manufacturing, it made a lot of sense because it was was really what I was trying to do. Like as a as an individual, that to be more organized with 10 years of my life and this showed me a way to apply that to Software Engineering first. And then I started to play a bit with it and start to apply to other aspects. So

Dave West: 5:07

I guess that leads us nicely into into the, into the wedding idea did you sort of decide to use Scrum then find somebody to marry you, or I assume it was the other way around. So tell me a little bit about why you decided to use Scrum to plan your wedding, Julian.

Julien Deray: 5:29

So back in the days I was with, we were friends for seven years in London, and we got engaged. We were very happy about it. But we, for us, it was not a big deal. You know, we were doing that for ourselves. And we, we told our family, our four parents were in the same room for once visiting us in London, we announced them and we were super happy. And we started to like, of course, they were happy for us, but they kind of started to, to freak out with like, all that. Have you thought about the where it's going to be and how many people and and they started to ask all those questions. Because we had had, we hadn't been in a wedding at a wedding for for many years, we kind of forgot the the ceremony around it. We didn't really think about it. We're just saying, Yeah, we're getting married. And then we realized that we were actually ahead of like, in front of a huge mountain. And things would probably be complicated. So we we freaked out for a bit. And then realize that well, we needed to plan and, and thankfully, I was already a scrum master back in the days. And I thought, like what framework do I know to organize that complicated high stakes project with a set deadline and a wide remote team? Well, let's use Scrum. And so of course, we were getting married in France, and we were living in London. So everything had to be done remote it was, there's so many aspects of this wedding that it was complicated to kind of feel that and get some control on the project. And also put a bit of myself into it and make it fun because it will have foreign men training my fiancee to scrum was also going to be interesting. And she was obviously hoped for it was the way for me to share a bit of what I do at work and what I'm passionate about with her. So it was also a nice way to keep going on this journey together of of growing together and sharing most of

Dave West: 7:32

that sounds awesome. Actually, I just want to lean in a little bit on that, you know, your fiance, I guess I'd always assume that maybe she already knew a little bit of Alaska. And maybe he'd already infected her with the virus that is Scrum. But she was she was new to it. So how did that go? How did that process go? You know, when you said, Hey, let's you know, we've got a clear product goal. Let's let's break this down. Let's break it into small chunks of work, etc. How did that process go?

Julien Deray: 8:04

It went quite naturally. So of course, I wasn't passionate about my job. So she knew about Scrum and about what I was doing at work. But when I when I asked her if she wanted to use tools go with it interesting that you point out, we had an actual conversation about it, because the bringing work into our like the deepest level of personal life is not necessarily a good idea. So we had a very, very honest conversation about it. And we thought that probably a good shot and decided that well, we can at least try and if it doesn't work, or if it if it makes it not as fun or we'll just stop and it's okay. Already, the idea of being agile was there, let's start the first iteration that started not a commitment, and all the way go back. But she was she was actually relieved, also that we would have a plan. Because back in the day, things were very, very messy in our head. We had no idea of of what we didn't knew. So at least putting everything on the table. Even it was not to pursue with Chrome, but at least like write down all the user stories was already a good first step that would be useful in case. Yeah,

Dave West: 9:22

so the So number one, that the value of transparency is something that you sort of highlighted, I can you know, I've been involved in two marriages. I have to say that transparency was one of the biggest issues particularly for somebody like me, I was a stakeholder that liked to think I was involved but really didn't give it the time, appropriate time. So, you know, when there was a deadline, suddenly I would be all over my wife or my fiance then saying, what are we doing here? How's it you know, and it would have been so much nicer, just To look at a Trello board or just see some some sort of transparency to make me feel more confident that, that everything was in in hand. Did you find so you found transparency to be one of the most important elements? Right?

Julien Deray: 10:16

Absolutely. Why NCDs is, of course important to scrum team and important. Relationships. So

Dave West: 10:26

yeah. And, and I think it never as we've talked about this a little, I think one of the things that I think is also really important, which is a value of Scrum as well, is that, that everything's on the board. Do you know what I mean? It's not just because there was so many things, you know, whether it's flowers, whoever it's organizing those little, we, you know, met for me, many of my family, it was a destination wedding as well. So organizing those little bags that they got in their hotel rooms, too. It was just so many things, booking tuxedos for other people that weren't local, you know, organizing nights out for the non local people, you know, et cetera, et cetera, all those things. You Yeah, we've never written down, you know, getting them written down, I think makes it makes it so powerful. And that's true of Scrum teams as well, right? That there's so many things that are affecting the team that nobody really knows about, but that nobody's ever put in one place.

Julien Deray: 11:30

Exactly, to it brings so much clarity, like, especially when you start a new project, you know, from the beginning that you will receive from someone that you know what, you know, kinda, but you don't know what you don't know. And, and this, to me, this is the scary part. So I have to go and try to get as much knowledge as possible, get the full picture. And then we can start, we can start planning, but anything done before that is potentially a waste of time, a waste of money, and a waste of priority. So it was very, very important for us, especially because it was something that we had no idea that like most people, when they organize their first thing would have no idea how to plan a wedding. So we really needed to put everything on the board and know what we were getting ourselves into.

Dave West: 12:22

Even though I ran an alpha for my wedding, obviously, before the real one came along. The ice still didn't learn it was it was absolutely challenging and very, very stressful. Alright, so, you know, I've got some obvious questions. So you broke it down into sprints? How did this how did this sprint sort of work out with respect to the wedding planning?

Julien Deray: 12:47

So we did use sprints, but we started to ask myself, what, what is going to work with Scrum, like beta the book that we do in most of the time in IT projects and and in real life? Like what's the Delta what can I use? What can I use when he's gonna fly? So we use ends we started with one month Sprint's because we were we had our full time job next week and so on. And we we had 12 months. So it was 12 Sprint's and, and we and we started to by putting all the users together, then we called our respective parents, people who have got married before I did our real research to try and have a maximum of user stories. And we, we, we started to then have a like a refinement. So we took us three four refinement sessions before going through all the all the user stories, but we wanted to have a lot of them already kind of ready for to at least sort them by priority, and, and salt and salt, and then by complexity, but the knowing the priorities and knows the timeline, like some things you you want to do them at the very beginning, but you can't. And some other things is gonna be you're around some things that you know that they're going to take a long time, you're not going to fit them in a sprint. So sometimes you try to split them, it doesn't make so much sense. Anyway, so one month sprints and we had 3040 User Stories something like that, I give quite a lot of examples in the in the book, but very simple things like as an definetly, personnels and so on. So as a as a as

Dave West: 14:41

a groom for instance, or as a bride or as a wedding guest or as a father of the bride or whatever. Yeah.

Julien Deray: 14:52

As as a groom and bride we want rings.

Dave West: 14:57

So actually the rings one is a great example. That's something that I just assumed would just pop into one store and just buy. My fiancee, my, my lovely wife had had a very different perspective on rings and the whole process. Also, you have to have a lead time that they don't just fit, which I just assumed they'd have a collection of different size rings, and you would pick up the one but apparently, so that conversation I wish we'd had. So that's a good example of transparency. And if we did put it in an earlier sprint, because of the risk around sizing, who knew? It probably would have been it would have worked out quite well.

Julien Deray: 15:38

The key the this process forced us to look carefully at every at every use of story and just just the refinement process forces us to think okay, so we need we need the ring. So what could go bad? What could go wrong? How do we do it? What is the expected man? How complex is it? So just this just triggering the conversation, you know, you don't even need to find all the answers right away, but you will find the questions and then it runs in the background of your mind for a few days. And then you think of new things. And just again, like forcing us forcing ourselves to do to ask ourselves all those questions was, was very, very interesting in its help, you can talk to us, again, feeling in control of what was going on. In

Dave West: 16:25

control. I think that's that's a great word to phrase to use when talking about Scrum. It does provide that and, and sometimes that's a little scary, because you have to actually take control. And that's that's always interesting. So sprint reviews. Did you invite the inlaws to your auto, the parents, both sets of analogs as it were to sprint reviews? Or did you? Or did you avoid that challenging stakeholders? I'd love your take on that Julian.

Julien Deray: 16:57

As they were obviously part of it. So in terms of roles, so I was kind of the scrum master by default, I can say, I said, we're kind of the main, the POS, but also the main stakeholders, kinda

Dave West: 17:12

product owner Scrum Master, what about stakeholders.

Julien Deray: 17:17

So we were kind of the main stakeholders to like, we were defining what we wanted in the end. And we would have the final word on everything, and be the most the main users and requests. But we also, we defined our parents more as development team. And then us too, because we really need them, we needed their input, and we needed them to actually do some stuff on yield, in France to, to help us. So we did most of the things ourselves. But they were also kind of cult, it's that that's what, that's what I was saying that sometimes you have to twist a little bit scrum to make it Virginia in such a specific context. But we did invite them to the first sprint review. And it was it was mind blowing, because we showed them the plan created a big mind map with all your stories, some of the subtasks for whenever we needed subtasks the complexity and when we showed them that so it was it was more of a sprint review about the first sprint, you know about like, what, what are we? What do we understand right now about about the context of the project. And, and they they chipped in on a lot of things, a lot of details that we that we did it we didn't know or they said oh LTC, you think it's complicated with trade simple. And that that is you think it's simple, or complicated. Or it's very pricey or so we, they they gave us so much insight and they've added a lot more user stories, or things that that you can't don't really know. So we got married in a in a castle. And it sounds romantic, but it was in my fiance's family castle that was built like in 14th century. So back in the days, it didn't really think about electricity that much. So we had to find the generator to find like the the complexity exploded very quickly. But it was all under control. Because we at least we knew, so that that first bridge was was interesting. And then it's something that we kept doing with them on a regular basis to just check in, let them know, what what was the state of the of the, of the organization and, and also, they could chip in to say, hey, we could help with this. We could help that. So it was a it was a blessing to have them in the sprint review.

Dave West: 19:47

For sure. When that is true, hopefully of all stakeholders. And obviously the objective of Sprint Review isn't just to show your work. It's actually to learn what you're going to do next and to put you in a better position for the next sprint, which is, which is awesome. And Alright, so obviously you I mean getting married in a castle sounds awesome, by the way just as an aside, but obviously it was successful you delivered the wedding that you executed on your product goal and and everybody was happy would your wife interesting question Would your your now wife would she? Do you reckon she'd use Scrum again to plan some massive family event?

Julien Deray: 20:36

It's a good question I should ask her. I suppose. So. The result was was amazing was way, way beyond expectations. The some, some things went wrong, of course, but the system was built with so much resilience that you didn't even notice most of the hiccups. So we had to be a giant thankfully, we were. So I would understood worse than if she if she wanted to use Chrome again for such a such a complicated journey. Excellent.

Dave West: 21:10

And she hasn't become a scrum advocate and taking it to her own job now as well, because you You did such a good job introducing to her and introducing the ideas to her.

Julien Deray: 21:21

She didn't have the chance because she she works in the wine industry. So it's it's this, there's not a lot of things that we can that we can apply, but I'm pretty sure that she she's going to, you know, put a little bit of time here and there.

Dave West: 21:38

That's always good. I was fortunate, Julianne to help a friend, I've got a friend who's a vet in a sizable practice. And she's also acting as a COO. And so I introduced her to Scrum. And it was, it was an interesting experience. I think you can take these ideas and apply them in many different contexts. And they really do. I mean, no surprise, they actually work. And it is so I'm always surprised by how little people have the skills, you know, that we learn in, in agile and with Scrum, and when you introduce them to them, you know, people that haven't seen them before, it's it's really an epiphany. And I'm pretty, pretty awesome.

Julien Deray: 22:26

And it's exactly the idea that, that I had when writing this book, it was not just to brag about my wedding, but it was to, to sit like twofold like to, to present it to people who knows crime already, and show them that this could be used in other ways, not just for it, and also show that we can dig a bit bridge to dig into the pillars, the values into the Agile principles, you because when you tweak Scrum, that much to fit to so so far away out of its comfort zone, you have to go down to the principles, the fundamentals of it, to understand what you tweak and how you can tweak to not break the framework completely. So with this book, I've tried to read dig a little bit into this within the within follow the scrum discount book completely, but this is because it is based on this principle tissue and so on. And I wanted on the other hand to present scrum in to people who would not be be so, so aware of agile methodologies and Scrum, to show them not a boring 80 project, but something that they that they know at least like most people have attended at least a wedding. So it's something that they can really rely rely to

Dave West: 23:58

relate to relate

Julien Deray: 24:00

to something that they can really relate to. And then use this opportunity, this opportunity to show her a little bit Scrum and how it works. So I think it's, it kind of works in in both ways. Either you those Chrome and you want to dig a bit deeper on those Chrome and you can start scratching the surface. Brilliant

Dave West: 24:21

Julian. Well, thank you for sharing your experience today on the scrum documentary podcast. For our listeners, I am here Dave West with Julian DeRay, author of How I planned my wedding with Scrum. If you want to find it, it's on amazon.com. And this is very interesting book. And obviously it will be in the notes to this podcast as well. You can just click on it and find this book. So Julian, thank you for taking the time out in Lisbon. And thank you for stepping inside for a moment. Hopefully you can go back to the sunshine now Well,

Julien Deray: 25:01

thank you so much, Dave. I appreciate it. Right.

Dave West: 25:04

So, thank you everybody. This is the scrum.org community podcast. I'm your host, Dave West. And if you want to listen to a podcast about professional Scrum, professional scrum trainers scrum in practice, or in this case, you might need some help planning your next wedding. We've Scrum, we are the place for it. So thanks for your time, everybody, and I'll see you next time. Bye bye.