Scrum evolved from the initial product development best practises, which means that Scrum is used far outside software development.
In this post, I will share my personal experience of using Scrum in house renovation.
In the construction industry, accounting for the unforeseeable is one of the main challenges when constructing or renovating a house. Project managers usually use templates, checklists and sometimes models of steps, sub-phases to minimise the number of unforeseeable incidents. Before the actual work has begun, planning these forms of work also takes up considerable resources.
Many people believe that construction and renovation are not like software development. However, the construction is the same as software for building, with a small difference in resources and details.
When my wife and I bought our house a few years ago, we decided to make some bathroom changes before moving. And, of course, It was also important to make other improvements to the rest of the house, including:
- Kitchen redesign
- Add another toilet
- Peeling off wallpaper and painting walls and ceilings
- Replacement of carpets and floor coverings
Can you imagine that I would like to renovate a house as fast as possible?
The project stakeholders change their minds during the project, just like every other project, my wife changes her mind frequently and insists on perfection in the final result. There were also several occasions when before it became the best selection changed.
I ran each idea as a stand-alone project, with a specific goal and time box. Based on this, I applied a small change during the sprint period; thus, I considered each sprint’s duration to be one week only. Every day I had a meeting (Daily Stand-up) with the technical team (Developers) to talk about the work done the day before, the current day’s schedule, and whether they think they anticipate a problem or not. At the end of each week, my wife would review the work is done (Sprint review) during the week and announce if it seemed to change or improve. Besides, every week I had a meeting (Retrospective) with the technical team (Developer) to discuss ways to speed things up and review the problems we encountered to avoid repetition.
This was not a major project, but it was one of the hardest projects I’ve ever had to handle. From this point of view, the problem is that I first had to explain to them the purpose of doing the work in the way (Scrum) I wanted and convince them that this method is applicable.
Now that I look at what I did, I believe that was the best decision I made because using Scrum gave us this ability to quickly respond to some problems, changes and unforeseen cases, including the following without having a significant impact on time and cost :
- Prevent interference with carpet installer, gas fitter and tiler.
- Replacing the rotten of the bathroom floor.
- Replacement of indoor lighting system with 32 LED lamps.
This must have been a nightmare for a traditional plan-driven project manager trying to control all of these changes. Being stuck in the middle between a very demanding stakeholder and contractors who have to deliver the job at a given cost is also very difficult. However, this is a prime example of what Scrum has to do on a small scale.
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