Imagine the sounds of the summer in the Arizona desert…
Crickets and birds chirping, coyotes howling like excited fans, children laughing and splashing, and also… Keyboards quietly clacking, calendar reminders pinging, and voices kindly chatting, because…
…The quiet summer months are the perfect time for the behind-the-scenes projects that make schools work! All hands still on deck are busier than ever: connecting, helping, enrolling, re-engaging, planning, and making preparations for students and their families.
To all those still supporting students this summer, Thank You!
Here are some agile ideas and scrum strategies to help support YOU and all you do for others.
Features and Resources:
Scrum is a Blueprint favorite, but it is not the only Agile framework that can help you increase efficiency and care when serving students and families. This article offers a quick breakdown of the various agile approaches, so you can see if another one can work well for a project YOU are working on.
- Take another look at the Agile Manifesto, reimagined to reflect the projects and tasks you and your teams take on to support students this summer. Although we can’t do everything, we can focus on what’s more important.
The Agile Manifesto
We are uncovering better ways of developing software (supporting students)
by doing it and helping others do it.
Through this work we have come to value:
Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
Working software (Student successes) over comprehensive documentation
Customer (Student and stakeholder) collaboration over contract negotiation
Responding to change over following a plan
That is, while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more.
© 2001-2022 Agile Manifesto Authors
- Check out all of the Learning to be Agile tools and features, from templates to infographics that support instruction, agility, collaboration, and learning:
Why Agile in Education (even for support staff)?
- “Agile is . . . suited for teams that plan on moving fast, experimenting with direction, and don’t know how the final project will look before they start. Agile is flexible and requires a collaborative and self-motivated team, plus frequent check-ins with . . . stakeholders,” which fits so much of what educators and support staff must do to serve students and families before the school year begins. (https://www.forbes.com/)
- “Scrum is one of the most popular Agile methodologies, as it can bring teams together with a sharp focus and an efficient, collaborative approach to task execution.” (https://www.wrike.com/)
- “Implementing agile methodologies [can] have a direct impact on management style, on teams, on learning environments, and on employee’s mental health.”
[Rad, Dana & Rad, Gavril. (2021). Going Agile, a Post-Pandemic Universal Work Paradigm – A Theoretical Narrative Review. Postmodern Openings. 12. 337-388. 10.18662/po/12.4/380.]
Join us on the journey at blueprinteducation.org/agile.
Author: Marina O’Connell, MAEd, CSM, CSPO, CAL K-12