The turn of the year is traditionally a time for reflection and setting new goals. Perhaps you mentally create a list or even write your goals down. However, these goals are often too vague or overly ambitious. What if you planned your resolutions like an agile project? This approach could not only help you achieve your goals more effectively but also make the journey more structured and motivating.
Your New Year’s Resolutions as Product Goals
In agile software development, long-term product goals are achieved through smaller, tangible sprint goals. You can apply the same principle to your New Year’s resolutions. Your big goal—whether it’s professional success, better health, or more family time—is your product goal. The concrete steps to get there, such as weekly exercise sessions or reducing overtime, are your sprint goals.
Does it work? My experience at my work shows that it can be highly effective! Big goals can often feel overwhelming. Breaking them down into smaller steps makes the journey more manageable and clearer. Just like in Scrum projects, you can regularly review and adjust your sprint goals—this ensures flexibility. Small victories along the way provide new energy and motivation to keep going.
The Retrospective: A Look Back at the Year
At the end of each year, you can conduct a personal retrospective—a concept borrowed from the Scrum framework. Ask yourself these proven questions:
What went well? What didn’t?
What could have gone better? What might have gone worse?
Which habits or methods proved effective, and which didn’t?
This reflection helps you set realistic goals for the coming year and learn from past mistakes. In Scrum teams, retrospectives are conducted after every sprint—not just at the end of the year. You can adopt this approach in your personal life by performing a small retrospective every month.
Evaluating and Adjusting Goals
Have you ever realized that your goals were too ambitious or imprecisely formulated? To set achievable goals, you can rely on the SMART criteria:
Specific: What exactly do I want to achieve?
Measurable: How will I measure progress?
Achievable: Is the goal realistic?
Relevant: Does it align with my long-term values and objectives?
Time-bound: By when do I want to achieve it?
For example, instead of resolving to “become an excellent developer,” you could say: “I will build a small application in a new programming language” or “I will contribute regularly to an open-source project.” Clear and achievable goals like these make all the difference.
Progress Over Perfection
A core principle in agile development is that progress is better than stagnation. This applies to personal goals as well. It’s perfectly fine to move forward slowly or reprioritize. You don’t need to fully achieve your big goal—every step brings you closer.
Instead of aiming to “be highly organized,” you could resolve to “spend about 30 minutes every Sunday planning my upcoming week.” Beyond professional aspirations, remember that your worth isn’t solely tied to your achievements. Sometimes it’s enough just to be—whether as a family member, friend, or developer.
Personal Goals – My Private Recap of 2024
For me, 2024 was a successful year, but I’ve identified some things I want to do differently in 2025. Whether these changes improve or worsen things often only becomes clear over time—but I’m determined to try!
More Time for Friends, Family, and Myself: Last year, I worked many overtime hours and took very few vacation days. Often, when my wife and child were already asleep or my friends were gaming, I was still preparing for the next day. In 2025, I want to pay closer attention to the clock, finish work earlier, and keep track of my hours worked.
Saying No More Often: For me, saying no means creating more space for myself and managing my energy better. It often feels like saying no might hurt others—but that’s never my intention. Instead, it’s about respecting my own boundaries and making decisions that benefit me. A “no” to others is sometimes an important “yes” to myself.
Refreshing My Azure Cloud Knowledge: While preparing a lecture on Azure Cloud services with .NET at the end of 2024, I realized how much has changed in this field and how out-of-date my knowledge had become. At the same time, this experience reminded me how exciting this topic still is—I want to dive deeper into it again in 2025.
Now It’s Your Turn
The New Year invites us to pause, reflect, and set new goals. With clear product and sprint goals as well as regular retrospectives, you too can break down big ambitions into achievable steps and make progress. What are your wishes and goals for 2025? Write down your first sprint goals and share them with me!
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