Day 9: Recap, Claps, and Sprint Layout

We made it to Friday!

It has been a busy one but ending on a high note for me personally as we close out our first week as a newsletter with approaching 200 subscribers and also now in Pride ????? month and my homepage is full of even more encouraging stories like LaToya Lyn's!

Our planning week coming to a close and now it is countdown recap time! As far as what we have accomplished, by now we have:?

• 5 (or so) clear overarching values from our user stories that our next position and company need to align with
• 1 Job Search Charter to hone our focus and keep us accountable
• 1-3 specific job titles we are looking to apply to and a clear sense of what those descriptions may look like
• 1 motivation plan for when things go off-kilter to get us back on track
• 1 "Super Resume" stocked with concrete action statements we organized and pulled skillset specific to the titles we are searching for?
• 1 Company Shortlist of companies that we already vetted that meet our values
• 4 guiding principles to keep us in an agile mindset and allow us to sort through and streamline our efforts and time and minimize wasted effort

So much better equipt than my 15.5-year-old self applying to be a caregiver, armed with hope and a nice pen.*? Give yourself a celebratory clap! Already we have done a ton and in the coming Sprints, it is going to pay off. Let's talk about homework over the weekend and then I am going to talk about next week.

Homework:

I am leaving you to do this on your own schedule over the weekend alongside me:?

1. Networking (take advantage of Social Saturday if you haven't)?
2. Specific 1-3 resumes for a specific job title (i.e., Project Manager) to be able to pass out to network connections at a drop of a hat. You should use the keyword lists we already grabbed and harvest your strongest action-based statements that we wrote during that time to use on these.

Next Week:

Monday we are going to do sprints. I am going to encourage you to hop in the comments and start using each other starting Monday if you haven’t already found a partner for your job search project.?

There are two terms that are often interchanged but aren’t necessarily the same. Sprints and Iterations.?

What is an Iteration??

Iterations are a shorter period of time that you focus on getting the work towards an achievable goal done. We are going to do that every week being its own iteration. In an actual project, iterations are done in 2-4 week timeframes. We are going with 1 week because we are wanting to minimize risk (wasted effort) and are going for early game value to help motivate ourselves. We also want to be able to pivot towards opportunities as they come available.?

However, with the shorter timeframe, we are running the risk of being more reliant on automated tools and processes to make up the time game. We run the risk of being absolutely normal and uninspired in the resumes stack if we over automate and depend on resources like LinkedIn EasyApply. We have counteracted this by creating our own database and targets, and by networking to move our resumes to the top of the stack.?

What is a Sprint?

A sprint is a specific iteration in the Scrum framework. Using the term sprints can get a little weird at this point since our main point of the project is attaining something not creating something. It’s a bit easier (in theory not in practice) to actually make a piece of software or design a new landing page, but when it is to obtain a new job and ultimately a better fit for you and your family's needs, it is more….squishy, Or at least it would be if we didn’t take the time to clearly define our objectives as we did.

Sprints break down into five essential parts: Backlog Grooming, Planning, Daily Scrum, Review, and Retrospectives. For any Project Management hopefuls - go google those terms and read broad and wide.?

Essentially for our purposes though, we will be treating them this way:

Backlog Grooming is a sit down with our spouse or mentor (stakeholders) at regular intervals to go through work not done and remove work that isn’t highly productive/necessary. This doesn’t have to happen every week, but the more regularly it happens the better.

Sprint Planning is where we will be selecting the tasks and jobs applications to accomplish this week in order of priority up to an accomplishable amount. Planning happens at the start of the sprint (Monday for us)

Daily Scrum ?is a 15 minutes stand up self-check where we will answer three questions to keep ourselves honest and on task

Sprint Review is where we will discuss progress from the sprint towards the job search and your overall value objectives in light of your Job Search Charter with our mentors. There will be questions. This is where we learn and reiterate.

Sprint Retrospective this is our check-in with our “team” aka family and will address how the Sprint went (hint: good to do with a glass of wine and without screaming kids**). This is good to do in your life as a general principle on any of your life projects, but Job Searches can be particularly stressful on families and this step will alleviate those strains and make your family stronger in both communicating skills and support techniques as you achieve things as individual members.

In the first sprint, I am going to be presenting a more in-depth conversation on each of these points and resources for them. After that with each subsequent sprint, I am going to be sharing more one-off thoughts and personal journey stories as we cycle. Iterate as we iterate if you will.

Till then, I will see you Saturday for #socialsaturdaysquad for networking.?Make sure you look through your company lists and see who is participating already in those companies and keep pen and paper handy for any that sound interesting to do more research into. Aside from #socialsaturday, we got homework to get our 1-3 resumes prepped.?

Then on Monday, we are going to circle back and start our first Sprint. But before you go...

I have a personal favor to ask of you.***

Please share if you are finding this process/journey helpful for you at all. I have gotten feedback from a few of you (thank you?Eric Wanta for the encouragement) that you are finding value in this. Additionally, I am wanting to know if there was another way you would want this info laid out, such as a website or a PDF resource. Let me know in the comments what sort of resources you want!??

Bexs????????

*That said, never underestimate a really nice pen.?

**Speaking with Jeremy Randall yesterday and what living in France was like,? I found out I am overpaying for wine in the US. Seriously considering adding a user story about that.?

*** Speaking of squishy statements... I hate writing things like this. Know that the curiosity on what you guys would find useful is genuine. Also, Dr. Who makes everything better.

Links and Past Posts:

1. Session Zero, Day 1: Getting going with User Stories (check comments!)
2. Session Zero, Day 2: Tracking the User Stories and Getting Main Values
3. Session Zero, Day 3: Plan for Life Event Interruptions
4. Session Zero, Day 4: Get a List of Companies You are Already Connected To
5. Session Zero, Day 5: Job Search Charter
6. Planning Week, Day 6: ... Dreaded Resumes
7. Planning Week, Day 7: Company Shortlist
8. Planning Week, Day 8: Agile Job Search

Templates and Forms:

• Job Search Charter
• User Stories Template