How I applied Agile for my own Wedding.

In my initial stage of learning Agile, I always thought that Agile is primarily designed for software development projects/products. During the course of my Agile journey till date, I began to understand the true purpose of Agile. This was why last year, when I was planning the biggest event of my life, my wedding, I decided to apply the Agile mindset to it.

Agile can mean different things to every individual but the consensus is that Agile is focused on delivering value in small increment with collaboration being the key to delivering the right thing at a consistent pace. 

So how does this relate to a wedding preparation? Well I decided to think of my wedding day as a product which I am about to launch in Dec 2018 (1 year back) and I am the proud product owner! [Along with my wife of course] 

So like any good product owners, we needed to identify the following:

1. Vision of our product aka Wedding Day
2. MoSCoW of our product (Must-Haves, Should-Haves,Could-Haves & Wont-Haves of Wedding)

We came up with this:

The Vision of our Wedding: To have a stress-free wedding where we can enjoy our time with the guests yet without overspending.

Some of our "Must Haves" include:

1. A hotel ballroom with no pillars, able to hold around 22-25 tables of guests

2. Fit within our budget

3. Good food which guests will enjoy

4. Actual Day photography and videography coverage

Some of our initial "Should Have" includes:

1. 2 Gowns for wedding day

2. Fresh flower bouquet

3. High-end White Bridal Car

Bear in mind, these were thought of one year ago and in fact as we progress, some of these "Should have" moved into "Could Have" and even "Wont Have" 

Case in point- a white bridal car. Upon realizing the significant cost of renting a nice white bridal car for a mere few hours (Few hundreds bucks), we realise that it just wasn't worth it to us to get a car just for the few seconds it appears on our video or the few shots we took with it.

In the end, I borrowed a car from my best men and we even did the floral decorations ourselves.

Second example- 2 Gowns for wedding day 

Having tried on various white and evening gowns in a couple of bridal shops, we came to a consensus that she looks absolutely stunning in her white gown and no evening gown can even come close to it. 

It became a question of why are we spending more money to get an outfit which looks less beautiful on her? This, along with the fact that, with a second change of gown, we actually end up having less time to spend with our wedding guests. It simply didn't make any sense to us so we decided to go with one beautiful white gown in the end. 

As you can see, similar to how product development works, we have to understand which features are truly valuable to us and is aligned to our vision. What works for others may not necessarily work for us.

" When we realize having additional gowns didn’t contribute to our vision, we removed it right away. As product owners, we have to constantly identify what links back to our product vision. "

Instead of daily stand-up with the team, I have nightly calls (haha) with my wife to ensure we stay on track and tackle the highest priority items first in our backlog (Which we maintain using Wunderlist)

In essence, Agile is simply a way of thinking that enables you to make better decisions. Methodologies such as Scrum, Kanban etc are just ways to incorporate the agile mindset into how we work.

So the next time you encounter any big event/project in your everyday life, try applying an Agile mindset to it. It forces you to know your priorities and focus on delivering them. I know it has helped me and my wife tremendously.

Will be writing a part II for this Agile wedding planning we did. Stay tuned if you like what you see! 

Happy Lunar New Year Holidays in advance to all! :)