No one wants to live a monotonous life, and no one wants to work without being rewarded for their efforts.
“But the work is the reward.”
Oh, shut up! I’m not at that stage of enlightenment yet.
How do you want to celebrate completing your sprint goals?
The sprints where I’m too rushed to schedule the sprint-end celebration, I regret not having done so.
The benefits of sprint-end celebration
- It allows you to have at least one soul-nourishing event that is just for you. In the Energy Circle of Daily Life, I explained a simple model you can use to manage your emotional resources. This celebration time and a cool-off week should give you enough emotional resources to invest in the next sprint.
- It actively diversifies your happiness portfolio. The reason a lot of us default to cheap dopamine pleasures is that they are the fastest, cheapest, and easiest to access. But a life of junk food and Netflix shows leads to apathy, obesity, or depression (more on overcoming this here). High-quality, happiness-inducing activities take time and effort to plan and organize, but they are far better building materials for constructing a happy life. That’s why we want to invest the time and effort upfront to organize something enjoyable for us before we start executing on our sprint goals. And since every sprint we want to do something different, it makes us explore our interests and preferences at every new stage in life.
- It acts as a solid deadline for completing your sprint goals. When you have something scheduled three weeks from now, you have a better grasp of time. I bet you’re most productive at work two weeks before a vacation. You want to close all the open loops and finish everything before you say sayonara.
- It motivates you to complete your sprint goals. I want to feel fully relaxed and proud of my progress going into celebration time. I don’t want any projects stuck in limbo. I want everything to be done. Sure, I don’t always finish everything on time, but I always strive for that.
- It creates an interesting life full of great memories. If you don’t have enough bandwidth to set “quality of life” goals for your sprint, this ensures that you get at least one great activity per month that you truly enjoy and will fondly remember. That’s 12 great events, get-togethers, trips, or shows a year—outside of regular holidays! Not bad compared to an adult these days.
- It encourages you to be more realistic with your sprint capacity and how many goals you can achieve in one sprint. When you’re eager to go on that trip in three weeks, you don’t want to put yourself in a tough spot by overloading your scrum board. You play it conservatively, which is always a better approach when planning the upcoming sprint.
- It makes Agile-inspired living and working more enjoyable, ensuring you stick with it for the long term. I’ve been doing this for more than a decade. I wouldn’t have been able to sustain it if it was all grind and no play.
Examples of Sprint Celebration Activities
- Weekend getaway
- Getting together with friends for an interesting activity (if this energizes you rather than drains you)
- Spa day
- Attending a show or a sports event
- Attending a festival
- Going on a camping trip or renting a cabin in the woods
- Hosting dinner for friends (if you love to cook and host)
- Making a purchase you’ve wanted for a long time and making a day out of it
- Spending a full day exploring a new neighborhood in town
- Nice dinner and a movie
- Attending a theater play
- Going for a hike somewhere you’ve always wanted to explore
- Attending a fantasy league event
- Going to some hobby-related convention
- Dedicating a full day to a favourite hobby
The chosen activity should excite you. For example, going to a major sporting event isn’t something I would enjoy, so I would never choose it as my sprint celebration activity.
Choose the Opposite of Your Day-to-Day Life
Each season of life will call for different sprint-end celebration activities. Your soul will crave different things.
I’m in my “new mom” stage right now, and all my sprint celebration activities center around getting much-needed me-time.
When I was writing my master’s dissertation using the Agile philosophy and doing it in sprints, I scheduled sprint-end celebration activities that would turn off my brain, get me moving, and bring me around people.
When I was a full-time product manager, I liked going on road trips at the end of my sprints. Long drives calmed my overstimulated, Zoom-infused brain.
If you’re unsure what to choose for your sprint-end celebration, look at your daily life and choose the opposite.
Do you sit a lot at your desk?
Do you work alone or with many people?
Do you spend most of your time at home or rarely there?
Are you always outdoors, or do you barely remember the last time you took a walk?
Is your brain fried from difficult work, or does it need stimulation because you’re stuck in repetitive tasks?
If your current productivity routine bores the life out of you and you’re stuck in the start-quit-start cycle, I recommend adding a sprint celebration and a cool-off week. Celebrating our sprint goals reminds us to find joy in our journey and recognize how far we’ve come.
If you are new to Agile philosophy, you can find the core principles on the Start Here page.
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