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Scrum for Personal Financial Planning (CFP)

Last post 03:22 pm June 29, 2021 by Michael Degtyar
2 replies
07:51 am June 27, 2021

Hi All,

 

I am an ex-mechanical design engineer turned financial planner in Australia

I recently started learning more about Scrum and I am seriously considering implementing Scrum methodology for personal financial planning service delivery.

 

I am still new to scrum and never worked in scrum environment and never managed it myself.

However, I would greatly appreciate any comments or suggestions.

 

Here are my first thoughts on this subject:

From the outset the financial planning process consists of a series of meetings with the new client where we discover what the clients needs are

and define the scope of work in the first year. Then, we spend 2-4 weeks research and drafting our recommendations which we deliver to the client in a written report.

The written report includes financial modelling & projections of the clients financial into the future. The next step is for us to implement these recommendations.

After all our recommendations where implemented, we book a 6-12 monthly forward planning meeting.

In the forward planning meeting, we review clients current circumstances, what has or hasn't changed since we last saw him and see how this impacts the financial modelling we built previously. That is, we run another iteration of the same financial modelling with the required tweaks & changes.

The forward planning meeting process goes for 3-6 weeks and includes 1-2 meetings with the client and us providing an update & further recommendations to "correct" clients situations towards the required path.  

If we look at financial planning from the lens of Scrum then

The Product is the financial planning modelling 

The increments are the annual or semi annual meetings

The Product owner is the financial planner

The Scrum master is the practice manager

The Team members are the paraplanners

 

Now, the way we manage our practice is:

Every month, we contact the 10-12 clients who are due for review, meet with them, run the forward planning process and embed the required changes.

I am thinking that we could run 10-12 simultaneous Scrum processes (where many of them are the same or very similar to each other)

 

 


08:12 pm June 28, 2021

I am seriously considering implementing Scrum methodology

Yes, you've obviously been thinking seriously about a methodology that might be followed.

However, Scrum is not a methodology. It's a framework for achieving empirical process control under complex conditions of high uncertainty. Teams implement the Scrum framework, in their context, so they can then learn to build the right thing at the right time. Work is planned, implemented, and finished every Sprint.

In your situation you are apparently:

  • Defining the scope of work in the first year.
  • Spending 2-4 weeks research and drafting your recommendations which you deliver to the client in a written report
  • Implementing recommendations
  • Having a planning meeting process which goes for 3-6 weeks

Does that sound like it's a good fit for Scrum?


12:43 am June 29, 2021

Hi Ian,

 

thank you for your comment.

 

Please replace the word methodology with frame work.

My question is more about implementing scrum in an unrelated field and run 10-12 different "products" simultaneously. 


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