Some of the people on my teams like to play a game called “Tease the Agile Coach by Pretending Everything He Does is Agile.”

Last fall I went on a 2-week vacation with my wife in France.  When I returned, of course, the gag was “Did you run your vacation agile style?”  “Did you start every morning with a scrum?”   I love playing along, but as I thought about it, to my horror, there was a lot of “agility” to my vacation, and maybe their teasing wasn’t so far from the truth.

As an example…

We spent three days in Paris and the rest of our time roaming around the country in a car.  It was essentially a sightseeing vacation.  I maintained a big list of things that we intended to see.

A Backlog.

Much of the time, we woke up in one town and the only real objective for the day was making it by nightfall to a town where our next reservation was.

Sprint goal.

While we might have several things we wanted to see and do every day…

Sprint backlog.

…there were always things that got in the way of our plans, like unexpected traffic or bad weather.  Sometimes we simply left a little late having spent extra time savoring our croissants and café au lait.  As a result, we might have to drop the least important excursions.

Continuous prioritization.

We wouldn’t always have a clear idea of exactly what we wanted to do once we arrived at a new destination, but we usually had no problem coming up with a plan.

Grooming the Backlog.

At one point, we found ourselves in the Alps with inclement weather.  My plan to take the cable car up to the top of Mont Blanc fell apart because they were having snow and whiteout conditions at the top of the mountain and high winds closed the cable car.  So we changed plans and headed south to the Riviera one day early.

Sense and respond.

At the end of the trip, during the TGV ride back to Paris, we reflected on our trip.  I asked my wife if she were to plan the trip all over again, what would she do differently?

Retrospective.

I don’t know whether to be embarrassed or proud.

At least the inside of our car wasn’t covered with stickies.