Sprint Goal Quotes

Some people can’t be in your life because they don’t have the power to help you improve it. That doesn’t mean you don’t wish them well, it just means that you are on Chapter ten of your life, when they are on Chapter five. Maybe, it is just enough to meet at the crossroads in life and agree to take separate paths, then with a cheshire grin you both look back and shout, “Beat you to the top of the mountain”, followed by the funnest sprint of both of your lives.

Constantly stopping to explain oneself may expand into a frustrating burden for the rare individual, so ceasing to do so is like finally dropping the weights and sprinting towards his goals. Those who insincerely misunderstand, who intentionally distort the motives of a pure-intentioned individual, then, no longer have the opportunity to block his path; instead, they are the ones left to stand on the sidelines shouting frustratedly in the wind of his trail.

Jahan took a breath and composed herself. “When I was a little sort of girl and I would see a gentleman or a lady with good, clean clothes I would run and hide my face. But after I graduated from the Korphe School, I felt a big change in my life. I felt I was clear and clean and could go before anybody and discuss anything. And now that I am already in Skardu, I feel that anything is possible. I don’t want to be just a health worker. I want to be such a woman that I can start a hospital and be an executive, and look over all the health problems of all the women in the Braldu. I want to become a very famous woman of this area,” Jahan said, twirling the hem of her maroon silk headscarf around her finger as she peered out the window, past a soccer player sprinting through the drizzle toward a makeshift goal built of stacked stones, searching for the exact word with which to envision her future. “I want to be a… ‘Superlady’” she said, grinning defiantly, daring anyone, any man, to tell her she couldn’t. p. 313

Lurking beneath every goal are dangerous assumptions. The longer those assumptions remain unexamined, the greater the risk.

Remember the story of the tortoise and the hare? While many investors have ‘sprinted’ toward their investment goals, success is most often found by consistent action, not big action.

This process of healing is a marathon, not a sprint…The goal is to keep showing up for yourself.

In her TED talk, Dr. Duckworth said, “One characteristic emerged as a significant predictor of success. It wasn’t social intelligence. It wasn’t good looks, physical health, and it wasn’t IQ. It was grit. Grit is a passion and perseverance for very long-term goals. Grit is stamina. . . . Grit is living life like it’s a marathon and not a sprint.

One characteristic emerged as a significant predictor of success. And it wasn't social intelligence. It wasn't good looks, physical health, and it wasn't I.Q. It was grit. Grit is passion and perseverance for very long-term goals. Grit is having stamina. Grit is sticking with your future, day in, day out, not just for the week, not just for the month, but for years, and working really hard to make that future a reality. Grit is living life like it's a marathon, not a sprint.

The Christian race lasts a lifetime, with Christ Jesus as our goal, the prize that awaits us at the finish line in heaven. It can’t be run all-out as a sprint or no one would last the course. Though there was one race in the ancient games where the runners wore full armor, most of the time the ancient runners ran naked, stripping away anything that would slow them down. Obviously the writer of Hebrews was familiar with the ancient sport of running when he advised believers to run with endurance the race God set before them.

…we encourage you to trust your coping plan over the long haul. It is useful to acknowledge your small and daily successes, such as facing things you would typically avoid. There will likely be daily examples of slipups, too, but, similar to looking at a garden, we encourage you to focus on the flowers as much, if not more so, than you do the weeds. As an aside, both of us have taken up bike riding in the past few years. In our appreciation of the multiday, grand stage races in Europe, such as the Tour de France, we have seen a metaphor that helps to illustrate the goal of coping with ADHD. These multiple stage bike races last from 3 or 4 days on up to 3 weeks. Different days are spent climbing steep mountain roads, traversing long flat stages of over a hundred miles that end in all out sprints to the finish line, and individual time trials where each rider goes out alone and covers the distance as quickly as possible, known as “the race of truth.” The grand champion of a multiday race, however, is the rider whose cumulative time for all the stages is the fastest. That is, if you ride well enough, day-in and day-out, you will be a champion even though you may not be the first rider to cross the finish line on any single day’s race. Similarly, managing ADHD is an endurance sport. You need not cope perfectly all day, every day. The goal is to make progress, cope well enough, handle setbacks without giving up, and over time you will recognize your victory. Just keep pedaling.

Boys will be boys, and ballplayers will always be arrested adolescents at heart. The proof comes in the mid-afternoon of an early spring training day, when 40 percent of the New York Mets’ starting rotation—Mike Pelfrey and I—hop a chain-link fence to get onto a football field not far from Digital Domain. We have just returned from Dick’s Sporting Goods, where we purchased a football and a tee. We are here to kick field goals. Long field goals. A day before, we were all lying on the grass stretching and guys started talking about football and field-goal kickers, and David Wright mentioned something about the remarkable range of kickers these days. I can kick a fifty-yard field goal, Pelfrey says. You can not, Wright says. You don’t think so? You want to bet? You give me five tries and I’ll put three of them through. One hundred bucks says you can’t, David says. This is going to be the easiest money I ever make. I am Pelf’s self-appointed big brother, always looking out for him, and I don’t want him to go into this wager cold. So I suggest we get a ball and tee and do some practicing. We get back from Dick’s but find the nearby field padlocked, so of course we climb over the fence. At six feet two inches and 220 pounds, I get over without incident, but seeing Pelf hoist his big self over—all six feet seven inches and 250 pounds of him—is much more impressive. Pelf’s job is to kick and my job is to chase. He sets up at the twenty-yard line, tees up the ball, and knocks it through—kicking toe-style, like a latter-day Lou Groza. He backs up to the twenty-five and then the thirty, and boots several more from each distance. Adding the ten yards for the end zone, he’s now hit from forty yards and is finding his range. Pretty darn good. He insists he’s got another ten yards in his leg. He hits from forty-five, and by now he’s probably taken fifteen or seventeen hard kicks and reports that his right shin is getting sore. We don’t consider stopping. Pelf places the ball on the tee at the forty-yard line: a fifty-yard field goal. He takes a half dozen steps back, straight behind the tee, sprints up, and powers his toe into the ball … high … and far … and just barely over the crossbar. That’s all that is required. I thrust both my arms overhead like an NFL referee. He takes three more and converts on a second fifty-yarder. You are the man, Pelf, I say. Adam Vinatieri should worry for his job. That’s it, Pelf says. I can’t even lift my foot anymore. My shin is killing me. We hop back over the fence, Pelf trying to land as lightly as a man his size can land. His shin hurts so much he can barely put pressure on the gas pedal. He’s proven he can hit a fifty-yard field goal, but I go into big-brother mode and tell him I don’t want him kicking any more field goals or stressing his right leg any further. I convince him to drop the bet with David. The last thing you need is to start the season on the DL because you were kicking field goals, I say. Can you imagine if the papers got ahold of that one? The wager just fades away. David doesn’t mind; he gets a laugh at the story of Pelf hopping the fence and practicing, and drilling long ones.

Ellen Braun, an accomplished agile manager, noticed that different behaviors emerge over time as telltale signs of a team’s emotional maturity, a key component in their ability to adjust as things happen to them and to get to the tipping point when “an individual’s self interest shifts to alignment with the behaviors that support team achievement” (Braun 2010). It is better to know some of the questions than all of the answers. —James Thurber Team Dynamics Survey Ellen created a list of survey questions she first used as personal reflection while she observed teams in action. Using these questions the same way, as a pathway to reflection, an agile coach can gain insight into potential team problems or areas for emotional growth. Using them with the team will be more insightful, perhaps as material for a retrospective where the team has the time and space to chew on the ideas that come up. While the team sprints, though, mull them over on your own, and notice what they tell you about team dynamics (Braun 2010). • How much does humor come into day-to-day interaction within the team? • What are the initial behaviors that the team shows in times of difficulty and stress? • How often are contradictory views raised by team members (including junior team members)? • When contradictory views are raised by team members, how often are they fully discussed? • Based on the norms of the team, how often do team members compromise in the course of usual team interactions (when not forced by circumstances)? • To what extent can any team member provide feedback to any other team member (think about negative and positive feedback)? • To what extent does any team member actually provide feedback to any other team member? • How likely would it be that a team member would discuss issues with your performance or behavior with another team member without giving feedback to you directly (triangulating)? • To what extent do you as an individual get support from your team on your personal career goals (such as learning a new skill from a team member)? • How likely would you be to ask team members for help if it required your admission that you were struggling with a work issue? • How likely would you be to share personal information with the team that made you feel vulnerable? • To what extent is the team likely to bring into team discussions an issue that may create conflict or disagreement within the team? • How likely or willing are you to bring into a team discussion an issue that is likely to have many different conflicting points of view? • If you bring an item into a team discussion that is likely to have many different conflicting points of view, how often does the team reach a consensus that takes into consideration all points of view and feels workable to you? • Can you identify an instance in the past two work days when you felt a sense of warmth or inclusion within the context of your team? • Can you identify an instance in the past two days when you felt a sense of disdain or exclusion within the context of your team? • How much does the team make you feel accountable for your work? Mulling over these questions solo or posing them to the team will likely generate a lot of raw material to consider. When you step back from the many answers, perhaps one or two themes jump out at you, signaling the “big things” to address.

57. Every Time You Surprise Yourself…You Inspire Yourself SAS selection is designed to test you. Any mental flaw, any physical failing will be exposed by the relentless series of challenges aimed at finding your breaking point. Lung-bursting cross-mountain marches through the snow, uphill sprints, carrying another recruit in a fireman’s lift up and down steep hills, often in driving rain, sometimes in sub-zero temperatures. As selection goes on, these ‘beasting’ sessions get harder and harder. And yet I also found that the more of them I came through in one piece (albeit exhausted and battered), the more easily I could cope with them. It was the SAS way of testing our mental resolve through physical battering. Selection is all about realizing that the pain never lasts for ever. And every time I was tested and I hung on in there, the better I understood that it was just a question of doing it again - one more time - until someone eventually said it was the end, and I had passed. I now know that unless you really, truly test yourself, you’ll never have any idea just how capable you can be. And with each small achievement, your confidence will grow. Most people never reach their limit because they are never sufficiently tested. This means I’ve got two good pieces of news for you. The first is that whenever you do something beyond your ‘comfort zone’ and realize you are still standing, the more you will believe that the impossible is actually possible. And on the road to success, belief is everything. And the second piece of news is that we all have much further to push ourselves than we might initially imagine. Inside us all, just waiting to be tested, is a better, bolder, braver version of who we think we are. All you have to do is give it an opportunity to be unleashed. So pick big targets and surprise yourself with how capable you really are deep down. Remember David and Goliath? Rather than David, the young shepherd boy, looking at this giant of a warrior and thinking, ‘Yikes, he’s huge, I’m beat’ - he thought, ‘With a target that big, how can I possibly miss!’ Success, in life and adventure, is dependent on the retraining of our mind.

Scrum involves experimenting, discovering, learning, being flexible, and adjusting your plans as necessary. It is about working with what you do know to discover what you don’t know. Scrum, in a single word, is about learning.

It is important to realize there is no magic recipe that guarantees success when you build products. There are no exact steps for you to follow. Every step you take helps shape the way. You must go where there is no path and leave a trail.

Scrum does not tell you what to do; it helps to show what is going on. An intentionally incomplete framework like Scrum can never answer all your problems. How you enrich Scrum and make it your own is what matters. As you master Scrum, all the talk about Scrum should move to the background.

How are Sprints different from just dividing a goal into phases? Unlike phases, which are not ends in themselves, Sprints are independent, self-contained projects—thus the outcome is, let’s hope, a source of satisfaction, information, and motivation to keep going (or, as happened with my stop-motion animation project, a helpful cue to let this particular goal go). One author and entrepreneur, for example, was curious about podcasting. It was something he knew little about. Rather than dedicating himself to becoming a podcaster, he set out to do six episodes with his friend Kevin Rose. That experiment turned into The Tim Ferriss Show, the number one business podcast on iTunes, with

Well, for a century, our takeover of your kingdom has been inevitable. You should have acclimated yourselves to the idea by now.” “You’re right. This is our fault, really. We’ve never been superb at preparation here in Hytanica.” Saadi shrugged, and I thought for one stunned moment that he had taken my statements to be sincere. Then his expression changed, and he looked at me with what appeared to be sympathy, perhaps even regret. “I do understand it, Shaselle. Being second tier, overrun, overlooked. Not having influence.” It disturbed me that he not only remembered my relation to Cannan and Steldor, but also my name. Yet I did not flee. “You have to take what you’re handed and make what you can of it,” he finished. “That’s the sorry truth.” “I plan to make them pay,” I snarled, hating his words and how similar they were to the message Queen Alera had been trying to send for weeks. “Them? What about me?” “Stop it!” I stamped my foot, not even sure what was upsetting me. “You killed my father!” “And you want revenge. Naturally. Just like the butcher in there. But the problem is, Shaselle, revenge isn’t a very satisfying goal. It eats away at you, destroys you from the inside out. You end up bitter and empty just like that butcher. And that’s not a pretty sight.” “What is wrong with you? You think you know everything about me! You don’t. Stay out of my way and out of my business.” I spun on my heel and began to stride away, but he called me back. “Don’t you want this?” I turned to see that he was still holding my canvas bag filled with fruit. I breathed in and out heavily, my stomach complaining, my pride aching just as much. “So far, it’s been you who’s getting in my way.” He chuckled. “If you don’t like it, let that uncle of yours catch up with you.” I warily returned to him to reclaim my bag, but he held it away from me for a moment longer. “There is the matter of the damages for the door,” he said, and my heart sank, for lack of money was what had gotten me into this mess in the first place. But before I could speak, he added, “I’ll cover the cost for now. But you’ll owe me.” Annoyed that I would be in his debt, I snatched my bag from his hand, then sprinted in the other direction, his laughter nipping at my heels.

Run with Endurance Let us strip off every weight that slows us down, especially the sin that so easily trips us up. And let us run with endurance the race God has set before us. We do this by keeping our eyes on Jesus. HEBREWS 12:1-2 NLT Running was the first and, for many years, the only event of the ancient Olympic games. So it is no wonder that the New Testament writers use the metaphor to describe the Christian life. The first races were two-hundred-yard sprints. These gradually increased in length as the Olympic games continued to develop. The modern marathon commemorates the legendary run made by a Greek soldier named Pheidippides, who ran from the battlefield outside Marathon, Greece, to Athens to proclaim a single word: victory! Then he collapsed and died. The Christian race lasts a lifetime, with Christ Jesus as our goal, the prize that awaits us at the finish line in heaven. It can’t be run all-out as a sprint or no one would last the course. Though there was one race in the ancient games where the runners wore full armor, most of the time the ancient runners ran naked, stripping away anything that would slow them down. Obviously the writer of Hebrews was familiar with the ancient sport of running when he advised believers to run with endurance the race God set before them. Father; as we run the race You set before us this year, let us run with endurance, not allowing anything to distract us from the goal of Christ-likeness.

Mnemonic devices, finding or creating a study spot that has no outside distractions, use hour-long sprints to achieve small study goals and reward yourself for good behavior.

Your goal should reflect your team’s principles and aspirations. Don’t worry about overreaching. The sprint process will help you find a good place to start and make real progress toward even the biggest goal. Once you’ve settled on a long-term goal, write it at the top of the whiteboard. It’ll stay there throughout the sprint as a beacon to keep everyone moving in the same direction. • • • Okay, time for an attitude adjustment. While writing your long-term goal, you were optimistic. You imagined a perfect future. Now it’s time to get pessimistic. Imagine you’ve gone forward in time one year, and your project was a disaster. What caused it to fail? How did your goal go wrong? Lurking beneath every goal are dangerous assumptions. The longer those assumptions remain unexamined, the greater the risk. In your sprint, you have a golden opportunity to ferret out assumptions, turn them into questions, and find some answers. Savioke assumed their Relay robot would create a better guest experience. But they were smart enough to imagine a future where they were wrong, and the robot was awkward or confusing. They had three big questions: Can we make a smooth delivery? (the answer was yes). Will guests find the robot awkward? (the answer was no, except for the sluggish touch screen). And the long shot: Will guests come to the hotel just for the robot? (surprisingly, some people said they would). Just like the goal, these questions guide the solutions and decisions throughout the sprint. They provide a quasi-checklist that you can refer to throughout the week and evaluate after Friday’s test.

What questions do we want to answer in this sprint? • To meet our long-term goal, what has to be true? • Imagine we travel into the future and our project failed. What might have caused that? An important part of this exercise is rephrasing assumptions and obstacles into questions. Blue Bottle Coffee assumed they could find a way to convey their expertise through their website, but before the sprint, they weren’t sure how. It’s not difficult to find an assumption such as Blue Bottle’s and turn it into a question: Q: To reach new customers, what has to be true? A: They have to trust our expertise. Q: How can we phrase that as a question? A: Will customers trust our expertise?

Inner Odyssey In the depths of my being, I feel a stirring, A sense of discontent, a restless yearning. A voice inside me whispers, "There's more to life," And I know that it's time to embrace the strife. Self-improvement is the call of the day, A journey that takes us along the way. To become the best version of ourselves, We must delve deep and know ourselves. The first step on the road to self-improvement, Is to accept ourselves with love and fulfillment. Acknowledging our flaws, without self-judgment, Embracing our strengths, with pride and contentment. Next, we must set our sights on a goal, Something that inspires, that stirs the soul. It could be a passion, a dream to chase, Or a new skill to learn, a challenge to face. With this goal in mind, we chart our course, And take the first step with courage and force. It may not be easy, the path may be rough, But with each step forward, we gain in rebuff. The road to self-improvement is not a sprint, But a marathon, where patience and persistence are the hint. With every day's effort, we inch closer to our aim, And as we move forward, we break free from the chain. Self-improvement requires discipline and focus, The determination to rise above the hocus-pocus. To maintain our momentum, we must prioritize, And make every moment count, as we surmise. The journey is long, and at times, we may stumble, But if we keep our eyes on the prize, we will not crumble. With every setback, we learn and grow, And with every success, we feel the glow. Self-improvement is not just about us, It's about those we touch, those who we fuss. As we grow, we inspire others to follow, And to chase their dreams, without any hollow. We become the beacon of light, a ray of hope, For those who are lost, a guide to help them cope. With our words and actions, we inspire change, And in doing so, our lives are rearrange. Self-improvement is not a destination, But a journey that unfolds, without limitation. As we reach one goal, we set our sights anew, And in doing so, we discover ourselves anew. So let us embrace the journey of self-improvement, And strive to be the best, with every moment. For as we grow and learn, we enrich our lives, And in doing so, we touch others' lives. The journey is long, but the rewards are great, For as we improve ourselves, we change our fate. So let us take the first step with courage and force, And embrace the journey with passion and remorse.

The Agile project manager plays a crucial role in ensuring the successful delivery of projects using Agile methodologies. They act as facilitators, coaches, and leaders, guiding the team through the iterative development process. Here are some key responsibilities of an Agile project manager: Orchestrating the project's lifecycle: This involves planning and breakdown of work into sprints, facilitating ceremonies like daily stand-ups, sprint planning, and retrospectives, and ensuring the project progresses smoothly towards its goals. Promoting collaboration and communication: Agile thrives on open communication and collaboration. The project manager fosters an environment where team members feel comfortable sharing ideas, concerns, and updates. They actively remove roadblocks and ensure everyone is aligned with the project vision and goals. Empowering the team: Agile teams are self-organizing and empowered to make decisions. The project manager provides guidance and support but avoids micromanaging. They trust the team's expertise and encourage them to take ownership of their work. Stakeholder management: The project manager acts as a bridge between the development team and stakeholders, including clients, sponsors, and other interested parties. They keep stakeholders informed of project progress, manage expectations, and address their concerns. Continuous improvement: Agile is an iterative process that emphasizes continuous improvement. The project manager actively seeks feedback from team members and stakeholders, analyzes project data, and identifies areas for improvement. They implement changes to the process and tools to enhance efficiency and effectiveness. Overall, the Agile project manager plays a vital role in driving successful project delivery through Agile methodologies. They wear multiple hats, acting as facilitators, coaches, leaders, and problem-solvers, ensuring the team has the resources, support, and environment they need to thrive.

His first major project was to invent a new flying machine. He sent one design after another aloft, many of them blowing up, and with each experiment the team refined its ideas. He worked in a mad sprint for the glory of being the inventor of the first helicopter. But there was much more at stake. This was the late 1930s, with a looming crisis in Western civilization. Arthur Young’s research had strong competition. A group of Nazi engineers was striving toward the same goal of providing its military with the world’s most advanced aircraft.

Grit is passion and perseverance for very long-term goals. Grit is having stamina. Grit is sticking with your future, day in, day out, not just for the week, not just for the month, but for years, and working really hard to make that future a reality. Grit is living life like it’s a marathon, not a sprint.”  -Angela Lee Duckworth

Think of it like you are on an isolated island for so long and you woke up one day and saw an empty boat is leaving the island by the force of the wind. It is pushed away so fast by the wind. It is your only and last chance ever to leave this island. You know there are no more chances because you have been so long already on the island. You definitely will sprint toward it. You will use your full potentials swimming to catch it. Even if you do not know how to swim, you still will go for it if you want to leave this island. You will never think of a plan B. Your mind may tell you, "You either catch the boat or die". Finally, when you catch the boat you say to yourself "How did I do this! I never exhausted this amount of energy before! I never imagined this power comes out of me! In addition to many following wondrous questions, you ask yourself after. The answer to all these questions is simple. You focused ALL of what you HAVE on ONE goal. ONLY one GOAl. Only plan, A

The practices and artifacts of Scrum –backlogs, sprints, stand ups, increments, burn charts –reflect an understanding of the need to strike a balance between planning and improvisation, and the value of engaging the entire team in both. As we’ll see later, Agile and Lean ideas can be useful beyond their original ecosystems, but translation must be done mindfully. The history of planning from Taylor to Agile reflects a shift in the zeitgeist –the spirit of the age –from manufacturing to software that affects all aspects of work and life. In business strategy, attention has shifted from formal strategic planning to more collaborative, agile methods. In part, this is due to the clear weakness of static plans as noted by Henry Mintzberg. Plans by their very nature are designed to promote inflexibility. They are meant to establish clear direction, to impose stability on an organization… planning is built around the categories that already exist in the organization.[ 43] But the resistance to plans is also fueled by fashion. In many organizations, the aversion to anything old is palpable. Project managers have burned their Gantt charts. Everything happens emergently in Trello and Slack. And this is not all good. As the pendulum swings out of control, chaos inevitably strikes. In organizations of all shapes and sizes, the failure to fit process to context hurts people and bottom lines. It’s time to realize we can’t not plan, and there is no one best way. Defining and embracing a process is planning, and it’s vital to find your fit. That’s why I believe in planning by design. As a professional practice, design exists across contexts. People design all sorts of objects, systems, services, and experiences. While each type of design has unique tools and methods, the creative process is inspired by commonalities. Designers make ideas tangible so we can see what we think. And as Steve Jobs noted, “It’s not just what it looks like and feels like.

Grit is passion and perseverance for very long-term goals. Grit is having stamina. Grit is sticking with your future, day in, day out, not just for the week, not just for the month, but for years, and working really hard to make that future a reality. Grit is living life like it’s a marathon, not a sprint.3

Mark and Shane, the team leads, were very conscious of not burning everyone out because of their experience on StarCraft. They had both been associate producers on the project and vowed to avoid pushing Team 2 as hard as the StarCraft devs were pushed. StarCraft’s dev cycle was nightmarish in that the goal posts were always moving. Whenever they crossed the finish line, Allen Adham found room for improvement, saying the game wasn’t polished enough, and asked everyone if they could hunker down for a few weeks longer. Whenever the next deadline was reached, another issue would arise and it was extended again, prolonging the crunch of late hours. The light at the end of the StarCraft tunnel always turned out to be a mirage. Each “final” sprint collided directly into another. And then another. Fans camped out in Blizzard’s parking lot and counted the cars, reporting on websites how many people were working at night. StarCraft’s drop-dead due dates were missed again and again until it was over a year later. Shane reminisced how people slept in sleeping bags on the floor. Showers and meals were skipped. To this day, few people who served on the StarCraft team play the game. Both Shane and Mark agreed that people weren’t as productive when exhausted and it just wasn’t worth it. Allen Adham’s nerves had been so worn out he left the company he founded until Blizzard convinced him to help out on WoW years later. In the wake of StarCraft’s quality-of-life costs, Shane and Mark vowed they’d never push a team like that, and their solution was to start the late nights early.

That’s one of the best aspects of a sprint: It gives you an excuse to work the way you want to work, with a clear calendar and one important goal to address. There are no context switches between different projects, and no random interruptions. A sprint day looks like this:

The following are the principles and practices that team members need to understand in preparation for their first Sprint: They are committing to Sprint goals as a team, not as individuals committing to their own tasks. The entire team will succeed or fail on this basis. Overcommitting is not a great danger, because they can renegotiate with the Product Owner during the Sprint. Teams new to Scrum are more likely to underestimate their work. Commitment is reciprocal. Management will not change their goals or the Sprint review date without a Sprint reset. The Definition of Done must be clearly understood between the team and the Product Owner. The functionality delivered at the end of the Sprint must reflect this definition. The rules of the Daily Scrum are understood. The purpose and utility of the burndown chart are understood.

The goal of a writing sprint is to get you into the flow state, where your brain will naturally focus on an activity you are good at to the exclusion of all else.

Monday begins with an exercise we call Start at the End: a look ahead—to the end of the sprint week and beyond. Like Gene Kranz and his diagram of the return to planet earth, you and your team will lay out the basics: your long-term goal and the difficult questions that must be answered.

Monday’s structured discussions create a path for the sprint week. In the morning, you’ll start at the end and agree to a long-term goal. Next, you’ll make a map of the challenge. In the afternoon, you’ll ask the experts at your company to share what they know. Finally, you’ll pick a target: an ambitious but manageable piece of the problem that you can solve in one week.

List sprint questions You’ll list out your sprint questions on a second whiteboard (if you have one). We have a few prompts for getting teams to think about assumptions and questions: • What questions do we want to answer in this sprint? • To meet our long-term goal, what has to be true? • Imagine we travel into the future and our project failed. What might have caused that? An important part of this exercise is rephrasing assumptions and obstacles into questions.

Angela Liberatore Melbourne says, In the realm of digital marketing for therapy centers, the debate between Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Paid Advertising often sparks discussions about effectiveness, budget allocation, and long-term growth. Both SEO and Paid Advertising offer distinct advantages and challenges, making it crucial for therapy centers to understand their differences, benefits, and suitability for achieving marketing goals. This article dives deep into the nuances of SEO and Paid Advertising, drawing from personal experiences and specific anecdotes to help therapy centers navigate this critical decision. Understanding SEO: Building Long-term Visibility SEO involves strategies aimed at improving a therapy center’s organic (unpaid) visibility in search engine results. It’s a marathon rather than a sprint, focusing on optimizing website content, structure, and authority to rank higher for relevant keywords over time. When I first started my therapy practice, I invested time in understanding SEO basics. It was a gradual learning curve, from optimizing my website with relevant keywords to earning backlinks through collaborations and content marketing efforts. Over time, these efforts paid off with increased visibility in search engine rankings. Benefits of SEO for Therapy Centers Long-term ROI: SEO efforts can yield sustainable results with continuous investment in quality content, technical optimizations, and backlink building. Trust and Credibility: Higher organic rankings often equate to perceived authority and trustworthiness among potential clients searching for mental health services. Cost-effectiveness: Once established, organic traffic from SEO requires minimal ongoing investment compared to Paid Advertising. Practical SEO Strategies for Therapy Centers Keyword Research: Identify relevant keywords (e.g., “therapy near me,” “counseling services,” “mental health support”) to target potential clients actively searching for therapy options. Content Optimization: Create informative, engaging content addressing common mental health concerns, therapy approaches, and client testimonials. Optimize content with targeted keywords and meta tags. Local SEO: Optimize Google My Business listing, solicit client reviews, and ensure consistent NAP (Name, Address, Phone Number) information across online directories. Understanding Paid Advertising: Immediate Visibility, Controlled Budget Paid Advertising, such as Google Ads or social media ads, offers therapy centers the ability to target specific demographics, interests, and behaviors with ads displayed prominently in search results or social media feeds. Early in my practice, I experimented with Google Ads to promote specialized therapy programs. The immediate visibility and precise targeting capabilities helped attract inquiries and appointments quickly, albeit at a cost. Benefits of Paid Advertising for Therapy Centers Immediate Results: Paid ads can generate traffic and inquiries almost instantly, making them ideal for short-term campaigns or promoting time-sensitive services. Targeted Reach: Precision targeting allows therapy centers to reach specific demographics interested in mental health services, maximizing ad relevance and ROI. Flexibility: Ads can be adjusted in real-time based on performance metrics, allowing therapy centers to optimize campaigns for better results.

That is my goal: a healthy life. Not a sprint to ketone positive urine tests. The key to sustainability is the LONG GAME.