The list of Julia

Cartman

Lasse stood and gazed at the scrum board that hung on the wall on the other side of the room, and was divided into the following columns: “Todo”, “What we’re doing”, “Dear Lena, please test this” and “Over and out”. He was quite satisfied. The sprint was almost over and most of the post-it notes hung on the last column, except for two, which dangled and waited for Lena, the tester, to find some time and deal with them, and four more notes which were glued inside the “What we’re doing” column. Beside that header, a number was printed. A four. The same as the number of developers. The same as the number of the post-it notes underneath. The same as the number of South Park avatars that were attached, using a magnet, to each note. A developer is merely a human being, Paul used to say, and cannot do too many things at once. Therefore, realistic boundaries must be set up, since one could only work on one task at a time. Hence, a fat red four was visible beside the header, to remind the developers that they were only people. Paul was indeed a scrum master with principles.

Lasse’s avatar was of course Cartman. He liked the sassy and egocentric character, even though he was slightly overweight and showed racist tendencies. Lasse yearned to be a bit sassier. He wished that next time he had to choose a note from the “Todo” column that no one else wanted to grab, then he would speak up. Let lazy Anders take one of those belly-aching notes for once, instead of happening to finish his current task just after Lasse was forced to choose the tedious assignment. Why couldn’t he stand up for himself? Lasse promised himself to try keeping his new year’s resolution to be more of an “alfa”. Next time, he thought. Next time they would hear me out.

Lists

Lasse shared Paul’s liking of Scrum. Both thought that the team was working well together and that they managed to finish most of the tasks they committed to during the sprints. But Lasse’s angle was vastly different than Paul’s. Paul spent his life spreading The Agile Evangelium among developers and other lost souls around the world. He participated in interest groups, wrote articles, and hung posters on the walls. His worse enemy was the waterfall model, which he used as an oath and as closing arguments whenever anyone uttered an idea he disliked. He once said that he seriously considered naming his daughter Lean. In case he would ever have one, that is.

In Lasse’s case, the situation was different. He liked lists, namely. Lasse was certain that all of the problems in the world could be solved using bullet lists, and that scrum was a good example of that theory. By breaking bigger problems into smaller, more manageable ones, the team succeeded in tackling many obstacles. One time, when Lasse was going to bed but could not fall asleep, he was stricken by a thought. The thought concluded all of his reflections so well, that he had to turn on the lamp and write it on his laptop, for the coming generation’s sake. Here’s what he wrote:

“There exists no such problem that is too complex and cannot be solved by breaking it and writing it in a bullet list. Take, for example, dinner. The stated problem is this: what shall I eat for dinner? If one just repeats the question to oneself, one would never find an answer. But converted to a list, the problem takes a simpler form. One could perhaps count their favorite dishes and see which one of them they have not eaten for a while, or try remembering which meals one had dined the last week and see whether one could detect a pattern, or why not count how many healthy and unhealthy dishes one had eaten the last time and try to see which turn it was. If only the politicians used more bullet lists we would certainly have peace on earth. One should talk to someone at the UN and ask them to put down a list of all of the current world conflicts and then we could probably find a way to solve them all, rapidly enough.”

When he was finished with the manifest, Lasse lay down again, and promised himself, with a smile on his face, to spend the rest of his life writing lists. Could one perhaps count lists as a new epic genre, he wondered, or as a new form of poetry? In that case, maybe he could count himself as a pioneer in this field! Before he fell asleep, Lasse composed a list of alternative suggestions to the line “Let me be your soldier”¹, to be used in case one had grown tired of singing the same line again and again:

Let me pet your shoulder
Let me roll your boulder
Let me change your owner
Let me flash your floater
Let this be your closure

Subway

Lasse pressed himself inside the subway on his way to work and thought, as usual, about Julia. Why had she left him, he thought for the zillionth time. Suddenly he remembered what he wrote in the manifest. What was it now? “If one just repeats the question to oneself, one would never find an answer”. And here he sat and did just that! He wondered if it was a coincidence that it was him who came up with this. Could it possibly be his subconscious that was trying to tell him something? “There exists no such problem that is too complex and cannot be solved by breaking it down and writing it in as a bullet list”, Lasse quoted himself again. Juliagate was solvable. He only had to break the problem into smaller chunks and then…then they will be together again. Julia and him. Lasse felt warmth streaming through his body when he thought about her return. Suddenly he realized that his train had reached his station and that he was about to miss stepping out. He pushed his way out of the car and almost fell on the platform just before the doors started closing, accompanied by a long beep. Close call thought Lasse. He had almost lost Julia forever if he did not come up with that breaking problem into smaller ones thing. He thanked his subconscious humbly once again and thought that he now, as soon as he had time, should sit down and detail everything that went wrong in his relationship with the ex and write down a nice-looking bullet list. But now he was on his way to work, so it had to wait for a while. Meanwhile, Lasse composed a list of the most annoying persons one happened to meet in the subway:

the blocking lady — aka BL, an old lady who stands in the way at an escalator or other narrow paths and hinders one from running towards a subway whose driver just announced “doors closing!”
the pole squeezer — a passenger who holds the only available pole in a crowded subway car, not only with their hands but with all of their body, so that one has no chance of reaching for named pole without socializing with that person in a way too intimate fashion
the seat conqueror — people who sit next to one and believe they also possess half of one’s own seat and prove it by stretching their knee, coat, or bag over it

The list of Julia

You selfish swine! I can’t stand your lazy and self-righteous personality and I loathe this sty you call home!

That was what Julia screamed one summer night, about a month ago while she packed a bag and then disappeared forever. Lasse memorized the short speech, but only now realized why. The sentence would be systematically broken down, analyzed, and remedied. That was his plan. Sure, it pained him to have to listen to the accusations, especially when they played over and over again in his head, and in the ex’s falsetto no less, but if one looked at the problem with critical eyes, which Lasse currently did, then all that was left was to roll up one’s sleeves and solve it. When he was finished he would get Julia back. This couldn’t possibly go wrong.

Lasse created a nice-looking nested bullet list. Every point consisted of a header and three points: one or more quotes from the ex’s accusations, an analysis of the problem, and an action plan. Lasse thought that an attempt to maintain an objective and impartial view of the whole thing would constitute a key factor in the analytic endeavor and would contribute to a better result. Finally, he compiled the following list:

Selfishness – Quote: “You selfish swine!”, “ I can’t stand your […] self-righteous personality” – Analysis: Lasse did not show enough interest in Julia’s life and work. He did not listen when she told him about her day and presumably knew very little about her. On the other hand he could, in length and detail, account for his job and expected her to understand the nuances and ask intelligent questions. – Action plan: Lasse has to learn as much as possible about Julia, and during the return prove that he was both knowledgeable about her life and work as well as show interest by actively listening to her and supplying relevant comments when needed.
Laziness – Quote: “I can’t stand your lazy […] personality” – Analysis: Lasse was lazy. He was a procrastination expert and used to joke that “one shouldn’t put off things until tomorrow which one could do the day after”, which Julia did not think was particularly funny. Thus he postponed important things until the last minute, such as bills that got paid only after the second reminder, and food that was cooked using leftovers because of lack of planning. – Action plan: Lasse must get a grip and start doing stuff directly instead of putting them aside when he didn’t feel like it. He needs to write Todo lists even at home, to avoid missing stuff that must be done, and account for it during the return.
Negligence – Quote: “I loathe this sty you call home!” – Analysis: Mainly because of his laziness (see above), Lasse did not take care of his home in an appropriate manner, which resulted in a bad smell in the kitchen, dust bunnies in the corners, and a lot of other neglects that needed to be tended to. – Action plan: Lasse must go from room to room and assess what must be done in each. Thereafter he must write a long Todo list with measures that must be taken, which he must start attending to as soon as possible. Finally, Lasse must get used to cleaning regularly and consider it as part of a day-to-day routine.

When Lasse was finished he was both tired and hungry. He looked in the fridge but could not find anything edible. He decided to take his bicycle to the nearest pizzeria and eat something good. Tomorrow he will start his new life and get back his Julia. On his way to the restaurant, he sang a bit to himself and at the same time wondered if there were other techniques, aside from his problem-breaking method, which sought to solve all of the problems in their domain. He assembled the following list:

there are no traffic-related problems that cannot be solved by riding your bicycle faster
there are no such problems, based on lack of song talent, which cannot be ironed out by singing louder and in falsetto
there are no anguish-related problems that cannot be dealt with by eating a delicate pizza

Retrospective

The next day the sprint was over, and Lasse consequently attended in a retrospective meeting. The idea was to look back at the sprint and try reflecting on what went fine, what could be better, and which measures one could take to improve future sprints. The team sat in a conference room and each member tried reflecting and writing their thoughts on small post-it notes, which their devoted scrum master Paul had dealt out. After five minutes, they each went to the whiteboard to hang their notes on it. Together, the team members tried grouping similar reflections. Later, it was time to vote on which action items they would like to concentrate on in the coming sprint. They all borrowed a marker pen and painted a dot on those notes they consider were most important. When the retrospective was over, the team decided to focus on collaboration with other teams, to try to improve the collaboration with the project owner, and to try helping Lena with the test tasks.

On his way back to the open-plan office, where the team had their workstations, Lasse went and reflected on scrum and relationships. What if one could regard a relationship as a project: split it into small sprints, plan sprint goals and decide on a DoD, as well as perform retrospectives at the end of each sprint. He thought that the list of Julia, which he authored the other day, was a typical result of lack of continuous feedback from the team (or the partners), and instead received all the critique at the project’s end, when it was already too late. The idea behind scrum was to continuously seek to improve the process, and the retrospectives and the end of each sprint were there to ensure that one received early feedback and tackled the problems before they became too hard to deal with. One or two retrospectives — reflected Lasse finally, could perhaps have saved the relationship with Julia.

Lasse tried imagining how such a retrospective might have transpired:

(The curtains roll aside. Lasse and Julia have been together for three weeks. They now sit around the kitchen table in Lasse’s flat with small post-it notes in front of them)

Julia: So we should write stuff on those post-it notes and hang them on the fridge you say?

Lasse: Yes dear. Try thinking about those last few weeks. What went well and what could have been better.

J: Ok, can I write anything I want?

L: Yes, just write whatever comes up in your pretty head, my beauty.

(They both sit and think for a while, then write down their thoughts on small notes and hang them on two columns on the fridge, one with good experiences and one with improvement potential.)

L: Now we’ll try to group those notes. Let’s start with the positive side. Here I see two notes with “sex” written on them. I gather both are satisfied with that aspect? Good. And here it says “Fun doing stuff together” and “fun to associate with each other” — those two I’m going to combine.

J: Ok, I’ll take the negative side. On this note, it says “Lasse’s apartment could do with some cleaning”. I put this one on the top left. On the next one, I see “Lasse could be slightly more attentive when Julia tells him about her job”. This one I’m going to hang to the right. Haven’t you written anything that could be improved, hun?

L: No, I think everything is simply so fantastic that I cannot come up with anything.

J: Ok, so if I understand it correctly we should now vote on which areas we should be better at, right? But we only have two negative notes. Can’t we simply decide to concentrate on both of them?

(Lasse and Julia decide that both will try to clean up the apartment a little and Lasse promises to be better at listening to Julia, now that he realizes how important it is for her that he does so. Thereafter they live happily ever after.)

Lasse shook his head and tried returning to reality. But what if he actually was on to something, he reflected. If one simply understood all that he now knew a bit earlier, then they could still be together. Lasse felt that he had something important to tell the world, but how would he go about disclosing the message? He had to consider this question a little. But before that, he had to return to work for a while.

The world has to know

Many people have tried communicating important messages to the world when they knew something that they suspected other people did not. Lasse sat at home and contemplated on the subject of persuasion. To conclude it all, he decided to write a bullet list.

How do people proclaim their Evangelium to the masses?

Religion — by writing holy scrolls, building churches, starting traditions, holding church masses, burning infidels, etc.
Politics — by assembling political parties, writing manifests, arranging meetings, ridiculing the opponents, etc.
Project methodologies — by composing manifests and books, organizing courses and distributing certificates, discarding other methodologies, etc.

There’s a pattern here, noticed Lasse. To reach out to the uninformed, one needed simply to write down their thoughts, convince the audience, and ridicule the other alternatives. Simple. But where would he start? A letter to the editor would not be read by anyone. A blog post would suffer the same faith. A book was way too much work — and he also lacked the talent and preferred expressing his poetic flair in list form, which he suspected the world was not yet prepared for. So what was left? Posters? Speakers corner? A rock band? By the way, Lasse realized that he had two important projects to deal with at once: to solve the Juliagate in order to win back the ex and to spread his knowledge about the similarities between relationships and projects. Which was more important? Could he achieve both goals at the same time? Lasse recognized that he probably had to talk to someone in order to contemplate these questions, and decided, therefore, to take his bicycle to the pizzeria and have a talk with Peter, who was an excellent listener and also held the fantastic ability to spin the pizza dough in the air like a UFO while doing so.

Lasse told Peter about his predicament but chose a slightly shorter version than the detailed reality. He didn’t want to be lengthy and knew that Peter had other important things to tend to, even if he was more than happy to listen to his customers’ stories, as he used to say. Perhaps the baker thought waving the dough around all day was getting boring, thought Lasse. Or maybe he dreamed of becoming a bartender and listening to depressing life stories. In any case, one could summarize their discussion as follows:

Lasse: eh Peter, you who understand things like relationships and philosophy, in addition to baking the world’s best pizzas…

Peter: well pizzas I understand, otherwise you wouldn’t be here so often. The other things I’m not too sure about

L: doesn’t matter. But what would you say about that — I think I found a way to get Julia back!

P: ah Julia Julia, I’d like to get her back too, if she only had some taste for Italian specialties

L: hmmm, but anyway, I have also come up with an important thing that I need to tell the world, and I’m not sure how to go about doing it

P: I understand. The ex and the message. The eternal battle.

L: is it really eternal?

P: yes. But hear now, the queue behind you is growing a bit long. Couldn’t you sit beside that table over there and we could talk a bit more once I’ve shown those waiting people what the Italian kitchen is all about?

Advice

“Marina”, said a voice beside Lasse as he sat down. He looked in the voice’s direction and saw a hand stretched towards him. He glanced further and saw that the hand, via an arm, was connected to a cute girl who sat on his side, with a tasty-looking calzone in front of her. After a few seconds’ reasoning, he realized she was trying to greet him and thus shook her hand carefully. Marina continued: “are you also here to dine on a fine pizza and get advice from Peter?”

After the introductions, Lasse went straight to the point and asked if Marina ever thought about relationships’ similarity to development projects. Surprisingly, Marina's mouth did not drop open. Instead, she answered coldly that if that was the case then her last project, in similarity with many others before, was canceled due to miscommunication. “Mine also!” yelped Lasse happily, “due to poor and sporadic feedback!”. “Feedback was my dismay”, Marina answered melancholically. “The project leader didn’t want to listen when the team, which consisted of me and the cat, wanted to present our opinions. Instead, he decided to experiment with ultimatums. “Eat out or not eat at all”, he said once when I baked a magnificent, though slightly burned pie. Another time he decided that he was allergic to cats and made me choose between the two of them. I chose Gudrun. He moved out last week and now I’m here to hear from Peter that I made the right decision.”

“You made the right decision”, said Peter who just arrived on his pink flopper shoes. “And such luck that you came here today. First off, you get a tasty calzone which you can enjoy eating and which gives me some jingling coins, and secondly, you get to hear that you did right: I never liked your ex that much. He always left the crust. I just don’t trust such people. Finally, you get a chance to meet Lasse, who is an immensely likable guy who just happens to be single. Lasse made some very exciting observations about humanity which he would gladly share with you, or have you already started Lasse? In any case, Lasse, Marina is one of the most charming customers I ever had here, and I think she could withstand some strange theories, so go for it. I’ll be right back with your UFO!”

Fondness emerged, and Marina, whose love-life experience related to Lasse’s in respect to relationships that broke due to their partners exceeding expectations, found that she liked the original and pizza-loving Lasse. They sat and talked so long that the pizza oven had already got cold, and decided to meet again at Peter’s the following day. Finally, they dared meet each other even outside the pizzeria, a decision which, a few months later, led to Marina moving with her cat to Lasse’s, who actually tried cleaning a little and even started paying his bills fairly in time. He decided to rearrange his inner scrum board which resided inside his brain: the list of Julia had to be moved to “over and out” due to irrelevance. Spreading the Evangelium needed to be blocked for the time being, and the new task, welcoming Marina in Lasse’s world, had to move in as the sole citizen in the “What we’re doing” column.

Sin

Lasse stood at work and studied the scrum board. Has was done with his last task and must now choose a new one, which, according to the board’s vertical priority order was “discuss the contract with the Wolves”. The Wolves were another developer team who shared the open-office space with Lasse’s team. It was also the only thing they shared with them since the Wolves were so welded together and unavailable that it was impossible to discuss anything with them. The problem was that Lasse’s team developed a module that integrated with the one that the Wolves developed, and the contract, which specified how the integration was implemented, must now be altered. Lasse stood and endeavored to find an adequate simile to requesting the Wolves to change their side of the contract and came up with Moses and the water he managed to draw out of the rock. “That was a nifty trick”, one might have said to him. “But now, please put it all back where it came from and try again. We have a massive craving for some Bloody Mary”.

Lasse side-looked at lazy Anders and glimpsed Aftonbladet’s² sports site just before he switched back to his development environment. Apparently, the slacker was already done with his task but sat and waited for someone else to take the Wolves assignment and instead gladly take the next task, which was much simpler. Lasse recalled that he promised himself that the next time he’ll be more of an “alfa” and make himself heard, and thus took a deep breath, picked the controversial note from the board, and marched up with long steps towards Anders’ cubicle, which was only five meters away from the board, but felt more like five hundred. Upon arrival, he held the miserable piece of paper up in the air and then fastened it with confident hands to the center of Anders’ monitor at the same time that he, still with the Bible in mind, proclaimed that “he who is without sin may take the first post-it note’’.

Lasse blinked and realized that the last seconds were imaginary. In reality, he still stood beside the scrum board and was currently in the act of moving the Wolves’ note over to the “What we’re doing” column and attaching his magnet-embedded avatar to it. He dared not look directly into Cartman’s eyes, who gazed accusatory back at him. Then he turned around and went back to his place. If anyone had listened really carefully, they could perhaps hear how Lasse mumbled to himself that next time Cartman, next time they would hear him out.

[1] Let me be your soldier (Låt mig vara din soldat) is a song, written by Mattias Andréasson, Viktor Bolander, Albin Johnsén and Kristin Amparo and recorded by Albin Johnsén and Kristin Amparo in 2014. The English translation can be found here: https://lyricstranslate.com/en/din-soldat-your-soldier.html

[2] Aftonbladet is a Swedish tabloid

Lexicon

Definition of done (DoD) Whatever is required for a development assignment to be regarded as done. DoD can for example be defined as “is in the test environment and accepted by the tester”.
Product owner The product owner, representing the product’s stakeholders and the voice of the customer […], is responsible for delivering good business results. Hence, the product owner is accountable for the product backlog and for maximizing the value that the team delivers. [Wikipedia]
Scrum An agile methodology for system development, in which one prioritizes short delivery cycles, fast feedback to the stakeholders, and small cross-functional development teams.
Scrum master Scrum is facilitated by a scrum master, who is accountable for removing impediments to the ability of the team to deliver the product goals and deliverables. [Wikipedia]
Scrum board A physical or digital board that lists all of the tasks which need to be developed during the current sprint. The board is often split into multiple columns that symbolize different development phases, such as “Todo”, “Ongoing” and “Done”. Oftentimes one sets a limit to how many tasks are allowed under the same column to increase the team’s focus and to make certain that fewer tasks can be completed faster, rather than having many tasks developed simultaneously.
Sprint A sprint is the basic unit of development in scrum. The sprint is a timeboxed effort; that is, the length is agreed and fixed in advance for each sprint and is normally between one week and one month, with two weeks being the most common. [Wikipedia]
Sprint retrospective A sprint retrospective is usually performed when the sprint has ended and allows the team members to reflect on the last weeks and try to identify problems and suggest remedies to make the work in the next sprint even smoother and more productive
Developer team A developer team is a self-organized group whose task is to develop software. In the best of worlds, the team contains all of the required competencies that are required to accomplish the tasks and consists of a small number of members.