Many companies are starting to adapt agile methods to manage their (software) projects. Here is an interesting approach about using scrum principles to manage your personal life.

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To-Do Scrum

• Each day is a Sprint
• To-Do items not due today form the Product Backlog
• To-Do items due today form the Sprint Backlog
• Completed To-Do items are considered Done
• Overdue To-Do items are considered Failed Items and are re-prioritised
• Each morning take 10-15 minutes to do Sprint Planning
• Each evening take 10-15 minutes to do Sprint Review & Retrospective
• When completing a To-Do item take 5 minutes to do Stand Up

I'm also trying out the Pomodoro Technique to help reduce the multi-tasking and focus on single tasks in contiguous blocks. Not sure how comfortable I am with this yet - bit apprehensive about potentially excessive routine which could reduce flexibility. Probably just need to practice it a bit more and find the balance that works for me.

A couple of weeks ago I already posted a nice presentation by Jurgen Appelo on Agile Project Management. Jurgen Appelo is a dutch project management expert and has a very popular blog: noop.nl. Here is another great presentation from him.

This great deck of slides gives an excellent inside into what SCRUM is all about. Check it out, it's good.

Jurgen Apello gave an interesting presentation about agile project management at the “Agile Eastern Europe Conference” in Kiev. His approach is a mixture of complexity theory, agile best practices, some psychology and "soft skills”.

His 12 laws of software development are: 

- Motivate People
- Empower Teams
- Align Results
- Optimize Communication
- Enforce Discipline
- Restrain Growth
- Reduce Risk
- Measure Performance
- Evaluate Feedback
- Acquire Knowledge
- Manage Uncertainty
- Evolve Practices

Those are not only valid for software development projects but for all projects with creative teams. His presentation is good, so check it out.

Eine zwar inhaltlich nicht sehr tiefe Präsentation über das Projektmanagement bei Xing, aber man sieht doch ein bisschen wie agil seine Pojekte mittlerweile managed (bzw. managen will).