Getting Through It
My life has had a theme for the past 6 years. I'd like to think it was about building a family of four, leading software development teams into greatness, personal creativity, or healthy living. Yes, there have been elements of all of that, but unfortunately the overall theme has really been "getting through it", or searching for "that thing" where the sunlight of life comes flooding in. I have lots of interests and settling on one direction feels like a trap. Therefore, searching for the answer and reading a lot of self help books is a lot safer than committing to a new direction. Instead of living life, I've been spending a lot of time dictating instructions, cleaning up after others and overall disappointed with the lack of progress on our home projects.
Meanwhile, in my career I got really good at being a Scrum Master an applying the agile software development methodology to reach goals.
Eureka! This agile skill set can be applied to my home life!
Like any other kind of corporate project management, our home projects are endless, the tasks are overwhelming and the operating budget is limited. How and when do we fit in fun and down time? This capacity/commitment question is so simple at work, so why I am making this this hard at home? Work became so much more enjoyable when we figured our our capacity and the average amount of work we could accomplish. Once we knew those numbers, we got really good at figuring out what we could commit to.
Since the family doesn't really want to feel like a corporate employee, the transition to the agile family might be a little tricky. I decide to apply the "stealth adoption" method. (This method is often applied in so many corporations resistant to change.) The good news is this method only requires 3 steps.
Step 1 - Review the elements of agile and decide which "artifacts" and "ceremonies" can be adopted easily. Here is what I decided on.
- Mission/Goal statement - Yes. We need to know where we are headed what we are building.
- Sprint planning ceremony - Yes. We need a a list of things we plan to accomplish in our sprint, iteration. (the block of time we determine we want to work in)
- Retrospective ceremony - Yes. We need to review and adapt
- A complete backlog of everything we need to do to - Nah. A list would be too overwhelming for now.
- An actual burn down chart to chart progress - overkill. As much as this would be interesting, nobody needs to track the "to do" hours. However, we'll be burning down our to do lists and time in the background. (However.. keeping a gentle eye on our overall life burn down is essential)
Step 2 - Start doing it. Start our "iterations".
I eased into this new thought process by having a conversation in the car. (Personally I find some of these times to be the most enlightening and valuable. It's a time when we are able to talk about tough or important subjects. I think it has something to do with feeling safe, not being able to avoid the other, but can stare out the window when it is hard to face those tough or boring topics). Both my 6 year old and 8 year old loved the idea of having more say in upcoming week. Michael loved the idea of having more pillow fights and Sage was excited about "playing baby" with mom.
At a Friday night dinner. I eased into this new process and started with simple items. I brought along a white board while eating dinner. We quickly jotted down the chores we needed to do the next morning. I asked for volunteers for each chore. (This is an important agile element. We succeed or fail as a team, therefore nobody is told what they do, but each picks their contribution.) We quickly wrote down a few "fun" items we wanted to do and some "other" errands or tasks. That's it. We moved through this rather quickly and moved on with normal dinner time conversation.
Note: the white board is approximately 11 x 12... and I write so a beginning reader can read. This is important so we don't overcommit. (For those of you who are already agile-ist, you'll notice how this limited soace is a stealth way of controlling capacity!)
As we worked through the list, each person was given the satisfaction of crossing off their own task or item. (Really, who doesn't love the feeling of crossing an item off a list?)
Step 3 - Review and Adapt.
The next Friday night we started the process the same, but this time I asked two more questions. (Remember, this is the stealth adoption process, so we are slowing dipping our toe, then legs, etc. into this new process)
- What are we doing well? Completing our chores quickly. Clearing the table after dinner. Not writing down too many to-do's. (We were able to have a some spontaneous alone time with each kid!)
- What are some things we can do better at? Not interrupting each other. Using a conversation voice (instead of the high pitched whiny or argumentative voice.) Play a video game as a family.
Great...now lets list out our the chores and things we want to do this weekend and week.
Next up: our mission statement
