Scrum is Great, But Focus Cycles System is Better
Scrum can help you work less and accomplish more. So Scrum is great! But Focus Cycles System, another agile methodology that is based on Scrum, is better.
Scrum is an agile methodology that prescribes certain rules for organization and coordination of work. It has helped thousands of organizations become more productive and therefore has become the most popular agile methodology.
We love Scrum and have been using it for many years. In fact, we have been Scrum evangelists, introducing Scrum into many teams.
However, after working with Scrum for many years we have found that certain things needed to be adjusted. This was especially true for teams that work remotely and for work other than software development. These adjustments to Scrum over time developed to a new methodology we call the Focus Cycles System.
We have seen the Focus Cycle Works System work for ourselves as well as for our friends and now want to introduce it to a wider audience.
The Focus Cycles System is in fact very similar to Scrum.
● Its objective is the same as Scrum, to get more done in less time and thereby become more successful and less stressed.
● Both Scrum and Focus Cycles work best in small and empowered teams.
● Both Scrum and Focus Cycles are based on short time periods of work. Scrum calls them sprints, Focus Cycles System calls them Focus Cycles.
● Both Scrum and Focus Cycles try to involve all stakeholders and collaborate with the customers and across departments.
● Both Scrum and Focus Cycles aim for flexibility instead of rigid long-term planning but both also encourage work planning prior to work execution.
● Both Scrum and Focus Cycles also encourage a review of the work at the end of the sprint/focus cycle and continuous improvement.
Besides these similarities there are also many differences between these agile methodologies that are described below. We organize the description of the differences according to six core elements of Scrum:
- Task Backlog
- Work Estimation
- Sprint Planning
- Work Progress Visualization
- Daily Stand-up Meetings
- Sprint Review & Retrospective
- Team
1. Task Backlog
A task backlog is a place where you store all your future tasks. It can contain large tasks or projects as well as small actionable tasks. In software development projects this backlog is often called Product Backlog as it contains items to be done in the product development.
Such a backlog is a core element of Scrum. It helps the team to see all the future tasks to be done, and to have one place to store new product ideas as well as one place to take new tasks from for the upcoming sprint.
A task backlog can be started by writing down all those tasks that are on your mind. This is in effect what the famous book “Getting Things Done” by David Allen prescribes. The book prescribes this as the first step to get a clearer mind by writing all the tasks that are on it down.
1.1. Goal Pyramid
In Scrum the prescription is to write down user stories, tasks, goals, project into an unordered list and then sort that list according to importance, putting the most important projects, tasks or subtasks at the top.
In Focus Cycles the prescription is to sort the backlog according to the level of task. This means that the subtasks are grouped by the task they belong to, the tasks are grouped by the project they belong to, and the projects are grouped by the long-term mission they belong to. Doing this kind of grouping we are establishing a goal pyramid.
The goal pyramid enables us to see instantly what our long-term missions are and how best to achieve them. It also reduces the complexity of a very long unstructured list.
You can find out more about goal pyramids in this article:
1.2. Task level planning
The backlog of Scrum will seldom contain actionable tasks. Instead, it is composed mostly of long-term goals, projects and big tasks.
In Focus Cycles the aim is to create a detailed backlog with many small tasks and subtasks. This would be unmanageable in an unorganized backlog as we would be creating hundreds of unorganized items. In Focus Cycles, using pyramids, this is possible because each subtask relates to fewer tasks, that related to even fewer projects that relate to very few mission goals.
This kind of detailed planning to a task and subtask level is called task level planning. You can find out more about its benefits here:
2. Estimating Work
Estimating work means that before you execute a task you write the task down and you think about how much time you expect the task to take.
Estimating time is an important part of both Scrum and Focus Cycles methodologies. For both methodologies you plan your work for certain time periods, which are called sprints or focus cycles. In order to do that you need to know how much time tasks are likely to take. However, both Scrum and Focus Cycles methodologies recommend that time estimates are made very quickly and roughly, in order not to waste time on the time estimation.
The biggest difference between Scrum and Focus Cycles in terms of estimating work is that the time measure in Scrum is story points while it is hours in Focus Cycles. Both story points and hours are time measurement units.
The reason Scrum recommends story points is to allow for a time estimate to represent the time it would take an average worker and not any specific worker. Focus Cycles does the same with hourly estimates assuming an average worker by agile time estimation. You can find our more about agile time estimation in this article:
The main advantage of estimating in hours is that every team member and even outside stakeholders know how much time one hour means, while the time for story points varies between different teams.
3. Sprint Planning
A sprint is a short time period of work, which is preceded by a work plan and ended by a work review. Sprint planning is thus the planning of what task you want to accomplish during the time of the sprint.
Working in sprints makes a lot of sense because by planning your work ahead of time you are able to focus on the execution of the work during the time of the sprint. Also, by determining the objectives ahead of time and not changing them during the sprint, you ensure continuity.
The Focus Cycles’ focus system is called “Focus Cycles” because this is its main concept. Focus Cycles are very similar to sprints but with some important differences:
● 2 week sprint vs. scaled sprints
● Top-down task selection vs. bottom-up task selection
● Scrum board vs. structured tasklist
3.1. Scaled sprints
Scrum generally prescribes a sprint length of two weeks. Focus Cycles on the other hand does not use one sprint length but rather prescribes to use the different natural cycles: a year, a month, a week, and a day.
Out of these, the monthly and weekly focus cycles are very similar to sprints. By combining a long sprint of a month with a short sprint of a week you are able to get the best combination of the benefits of both short and long sprint.
The benefit for this scaling of the sprints into month and week instead a constant two week sprints is described in more detail in this article:
3.2. Bottom-up task selection
Another major difference is the way the tasks for the sprint are selected. In Scrum the Product Owner is supposed to define the most important projects and tasks to be accomplished and then together with the team split them into individual tasks. This is a top-down process. Top-down means that we first look at the big goals and projects and then define what tasks are needed to accomplish them.
Focus Cycles on the other hand uses a bottom-up approach, first. That means that before looking at the big goals and projects, Focus Cycles looks at the tasks that are already in the pipeline. These are the following tasks:
● Tasks that you have not been able to complete in the past sprint
● Tasks that are already put into your calendar
● Tasks that are related to tasks on which you worked in the past sprint.
These tasks are already on our mind, and we should get them done before going to new tasks. Therefore these tasks go into the sprint planning first. Only afterwards do we see how much time we got left to work on new goals and projects.
3.3. Structured tasklist
Scrum recommends the use of the Scrum boards often also called Kanban boards. In these boards team has basically three columns:
● Not started task
● In progress tasks
● Completed tasks
The team then moves the tasks from the left to the right of the board, that is, from not started to completed.
Focus Cycles on the other hand uses a structured tasklist. That means that the tasklist is structured into high level goals which are split up into projects, tasks and subtasks. This structured tasklist does have all the benefits of a goal pyramid as mentioned above.
4. Work Progress Visualization
Work progress visualization means that team members are able to see the progress that they are making towards the accomplishment of the weekly sprint goals. This is an important concept in both Scrum and Focus Cycles.
4.1. Burndown charts
In Scrum it basically means a burndown chart. In a burndown chart we are tracking the amount of work that is still outstanding as well the amount of work that has been completed so far.
You can see an example of the burndown chart here:
Focus Cycles also uses burndown charts to visualize work progress. However, the difference with Scrum is.
- Using several other charts to visualize work progress
- Complete transparency
Focus Cycles not only uses a burndown chart but also uses a breakdown chart and other charts visualizing things like work of each team member, delay of each team member, delay of each task, estimation, accuracy for each task and each team member, etc.
4.2. Total transparency
Most importantly Focus Cycles values total transparency. Every team member and every stakeholder should be able at every moment to see what everyone in the team is working.
Scrum, at first, look also values transparency; but at a closer look tolerates intransparency. For example, Scrum prescribes story points as a method of estimating time. The biggest drawback of story points is that they hide delays and mistakes in estimations from stakeholders outside of the team. Focus Cycles prescribes estimating in hours, which are understandable to everyone.
Also, Scrum prescribes only a very rough plan of projects and tasks without splitting the tasks into subtasks. That further makes it difficult for team members to know what everyone else is working on and how much time they are spending on each task. Therefore, Focus Cycles prescribes task level planning, going to the small task and subtask level.
Furthermore, at the daily stand-up prescribed by Scrum, only team members themselves participate, while other stakeholders are left out. On the other hand Focus Cycles prescribes a daily focus cycle in which every team member makes their daily work transparent to all team members as well as to all other stakeholders.
In summary Focus Cycles prescribes a lot more transparency in order to make work progress as well as delays and estimation mistakes visible to all stakeholders.
5. Daily Stand-Up Meetings
A daily stand-up meeting is a short 15 minutes meeting that the team holds every morning to quickly talk about two questions:
● What is it we are working on today?
● Are there any obstacles to accomplishing our goals?
It is called “stand-up’’ meeting, as participants are supposed to stand-up in order to try to make the meeting as concise as possible.
The daily stand-up meeting is a core element of Scrum. It helps in several ways:
● To ensure that every team member knows what he is supposed to accomplish during the day
● To coordinate the work of team members and
● To ensure that no work is being blocked.
5.1. Virtual meetings and daily mails
Scrum strongly recommends for team members to physically meet during the meeting; everybody should be in one place.
Focus Cycles on the other hand values remote work and therefore does not prescribe a physical meeting. However, if team members are working full time and are in similar time zones, Focus Cycles also recommends a face-to-face or at least a video meeting.
If team members only work part time or in different time zones, Focus Cycles recommends to use a daily mail to replace the daily stand up. A daily mail is an email send to an email group of the team in which each team member talks about 2 to 3 things:
● What she accomplished yesterday (optional)
● What she will work on today
● What roadblocks are preventing her from completing tasks.
The daily mail should be sent by each team member in the morning before starting work.
5.2. Daily focus cycles
In a daily stand-up meeting team members share their respective tasks in the morning.
Focus Cycles goes further than this by letting each team member make public all tasks during the whole day and not only to team members but to every stakeholder.
More specifically, in Focus Cycles every team member is asked to create a daily task list and share this list with every stakeholder of the project. During the day the team is asked to update this list so that everyone can see what has already been accomplished and what each team member is working on.
6. Sprint Review & Sprint Retrospective
Sprint review and sprint retrospective are done at the end of a sprint. In the sprint review the team demonstrates what they have accomplished during the sprint to the other team members as well as to external stakeholders.
In the sprint retrospective the team discusses what went well in the sprint and what needs to be improved in future sprints.
Sprint review and sprint retrospectives are central parts to both Scrum and Focus Cycles. The benefits of having them are multiple:
● Everyone in the team gets and updates on each other’s work.
● External stakeholders can give feedback.
● Team members can be held accountable for not accomplishing their sprint goals.
● Team members can proudly show off their work, which can motivate them during the whole duration of the sprint.
Despite the fact that Scrum and Focus Cycles both have sprint reviews and retrospectives as core elements, there are important differences in how these are implemented.
6.1. Tangible results, intangible results & work action
Scrum focuses only on tangible results. These are results that can be shown. As Scrum has historically focused on software development the most common tangible results are working software. That is why the sprint review is often called a sprint demo; each team member shows the software that he has been able to complete.
Focus Cycles is not focused exclusively on software development but on any creative or knowledge worker. Many of these workers do not have tangible but intangible results of their work. For example, a psychologist makes his clients happy, a fund manager gets a return for his client and an auditor ensures that accounts are in order. For all of this work it would be difficult to show any tangible results. Therefore, Focus Cycles not only focuses on tangible but also intangible results.
Also, Focus Cycles believes that is not only the results that count but the action. For example, a sales agent could have made 500 sales calls without making any sale in one week and the next week he only makes 300 calls but generates 10 sales. So results often do not represent well the work that has been accomplished. For that reason the sprint review in Focus Cycles focuses not only on results but also on work action.
As Focus Cycles prescribes a detailed task level planning and an estimation in hours it is possible to generate analytics on what each team members worked on and for how much time. These analytics serve as a second metric in addition to the results.
6.2. Combine sprint review, retrospective, and planning
Focus Cycles just as Scrum has sprint planning, reviews and retrospective. However, in order to reduce the required time and the number of meetings in Focus Cycles all of those three, planning, review and retrospective, are combined into one meeting. This combined meeting has the following agenda:
● Sprint retrospective
○ What went well during the last focus cycle (sprint)?
○ What needs to be improved in the future?
● Sprint review
○ What have you been able to accomplish?
○ Anything that you can show? (sprint demo)
● Sprint planning
○ What are the tasks that each team member already knows he needs to work on?
○ What are the priorities for the next focus cycle (sprint)?
6.3. Scaled meetings
As Focus Cycles uses scaled sprints, it also uses scaled sprints meetings. That means that at different intervals different kind of meetings take place:
Monthly focus cycle: On the first Monday of each month, sprint review and retrospective of the past month, and sprint planning for the upcoming month.
Weekly focus cycles: On the Monday of each week, sprint review of the past week and sprint planning for the upcoming week.
Daily focus cycle: A meeting each morning to answer these questions:
● What will you work on today?
● Is there any roadblock to your work?
7. Team
The team is the basis of any work done with Scrum or Focus Cycles. Both Scrum and Focus Cycles empower the team giving it a lot of autonomy.
For both Scrum and Focus Cycles it is important that a team is small, 4 to 10 people. Any larger teams should be split into smaller units.
Besides these similarities between Scrum and Focus Cycles there are some differences, as we will see below.
7.1. Empowered Product Manager
The Scrum Team has three main components: the Product Owner, the Scrum Master, and the Development Team.
Most of the team members are responsible for the execution of tasks, while only 2 people are focused on defining the product (Product Owner) and defining the process (Scrum Master).
The Product Owner defines the product. She is the one that talks to customers, analyses competing products, comes up with a product vision, sorts and prioritizes backlog items.
The Scrum Master, also called Agile Coach, is the one mainly responsible for the process. This is thus closest to a Project Manager, being responsible for organizing meetings, and moderating the sprint review and sprint planning.
In Focus Cycles the role of the Scrum Master or Agile Coach is combined with the role of the Product Owner to form an Empowered Product Manager, who is responsible both for what product to develop as well as how best to get to the desired product.
7.2. Execution Team
Most of the implementation is not done by the Empowered Product Manager (or Product Owner and Scrum Master) but instead by the Development Team. However, as Focus Cycles has no focus on software development but was made to be used by any team doing creative or knowledge work, this team is not called Development Team but Execution Team.
7.3. Scaled teams
Both Scrum and Focus Cycles work best in small teams. But often organizations that want to work in an agile way are already organized into large departments. How do we shift such departments to small agile teams?
Scrum would recommend splitting the department, or at least part of the department, into many small agile teams. We can show this as follows:
The circles symbolize small teams of 5–10 people that are working independently of each other, but still report to the department.
Focus Cycles on the other hand prescribes scaled teams. That means that several smaller teams can be combined to superteams, as illustrated below.
In the illustration above there are two superteams combined of 3 and 4 small teams, respectively. While the work is done in the small teams the different teams forming part of a superteams coordinate work closely. More specifically, they do the monthly planning together but each team does the weekly planning individually. We can see this in the illustration below:
For example, on the first Monday of March, the sprint review and sprint retrospective are done for the month of February. This is being done within the whole superteam.
After this part of the meeting has been completed the team plans the next month also on a superteam level. Then the superteams split into their individual teams and plan out the coming week in detail.
On the next Monday each of the teams get together for their weekly sprint review of the last week and the sprint plan of the upcoming week.
This process repeats until the end of the month and the beginning of the next month, when the monthly sprint is reviewed by the overall superteam and the next month is planned.
Above we have seen that Focus Cycles is largely based on Scrum and incorporates many of its principles but also has some significant differences. These differences are summarized below:
8. Software to Help you Work in Focus Cycles
Working with Focus Cycles can be a bit burdensome, as you have to:
● Write down all your tasks into the backlog
● Structure this backlog to a goal pyramid
● Estimate each task
● Create monthly, weekly plans
● Create a daily task list every day
● Track completion of work
● Visualize your work progress
Doing this with pen and paper is almost impossible. But even using a popular project management system, like Asana, Jira or Trello, will not allow you to do many of the above.
For example, the above systems were not made for creating goal pyramids, or weekly and daily task lists and keeping all of those task lists in sync.
For that reason we developed a work management system that adjusts perfectly to the Focus Cycles Work System. It is called Workiamo.
Workiamo is a very simple tool that is ideal for anybody that wants to be less stressed and more productive. As you are reading this, we let you access it for lifetime for free! In order to do so, you have to register at www.workiamo.com by entering this code: ILOVEWORK.
