It started with a shocking comment from my, then, 5 year old's mouth. "I don't need to pick that up. I can leave it for Graciela". What? She is going to rely on a person she hardly knows and who only cleans once every two weeks to pick up her stuff? Wake up call. My kids don't understand what chores are. They don't really know why I get annoyed when they drop crumbs on the floor or put their entire hand on the sliding glass window to open it. They wouldnt have the slightest clue what to use to clean toothpaste out of a sink. And worse, they think other people are responsible for picking up their stuff.
The solution to this issue came quite easily when we made the big family decision to move to a new house. Besides teaching the young ones about responsibility, we needed to save money. I've always watched my very routine father do his chores on Saturday morning. He would go for his run or hike, then begin his yardwork and other maintenance items. By mid day my dad was a free man and we used the remaining weekend for family or recreational time. This appears to be a great model to follow!
User story and Task assignments
Because this is new to everyone, I pull out the trusty whiteboard and we begin our "family sprint planning". I list the chores out one by one, and pause to ask for their ideas. I forgoe the official user story. (Which by the way, would have read as follows: As the Smith family, we need to maintain a relatively clean house, so we can keep a clear, positive mind, and feel free to invite friends over) Instead I make a quick verbal statement about why we want a clean house. I quickly move to creating a list of chores (aka tasks), while being mindful of not making the list too overwhelming. One by one, I walk down the list and ask for volunteers. (In the software agile world, we want the development team to take ownership instead of being assigned) Sage immediately volunteers. She thinks this is going to be great fun. Michael is sort-of on board, but not quite sold. In the end we wind up with about 3 chores each. (Of course mom and dad are really assigned to help with many of the bigger ones).
Sprint execution
"Pick up" is assigned to everyone and we get through that fairly well. Sage and dad are assigned to bathrooms and apparently Sage thinks using the toilet brush was fun. (P.S. the novelty wore off after a few weeks) Michael volunteers for vacuuming. Then a miraculous teaching moment presents itself and a natural consequence unfolds before my eyes. Michael gets annoyed with trying to vacuum around the Legos he left on the floor. After pausing to pick up the Legos he thought I hadn't noticed, he vacuums about 60% of the remaing room. Sigh. I have to hold back my inner control freak and either fix it later or accept 60% is greater than 0%. I accept 60%. After all, we didn't go through "acceptance criteria" as we would have done with a software development team. More chores, and each person gets to cross off their chore. (Really, who doesn't like like that feeling?) There was no complaining, (gasp!) and after a brief walk through, we agree the chores are complete.
"Acceptance". We get through all of the chores before lunch. Now, we have the remainder of the weekend to enjoy ourselves and complete the "fun" user stories on our agile whiteboard! Before we know it, we are onto the "Go Swimming" user story and are fully enjoying our time together. So far it seems like this agile family approach might have something to it. But who knows.. we're agile after all.
