Towards An Agile Family

I am a software engineer, and we use agile development methodologies at work. Scrum and Kanban are the life we live. I had never thought of using these methodologies outside of work until I saw this TEDTalk by Bruce Feiler, in which he explains that agile methodologies can lead to happier families by reducing stress and helping to better manage busy lifestyles.



After watching the TEDTalk with my wife, we decided we could institute some agility in our family, and immediately started doing daily standups. Every morning, we take 15 minutes to discuss three questions:
(1) How did yesterday go?
(2) What is our schedule like today?
(3) Are there any issues preventing us from making progress?

When there are issues, a quick plan of action is discussed and may lead to changes in how we approach the tasks or projects that are affected. The idea is for daily standup to be more informative than it is a planning session.

The immediate benefit has been improved communication and mindfulness of each other throughout the day. What else do we hope to gain from this? Easier change management, helping each other when common problems are encountered, being on the same page more often, and ability to create, modify or eliminate rules and expectations based on what is and what is not working. We think it will promote teamwork and provide opportunity to serve each other.

So far, the daily standup is all we have in place. Lots of families are doing agility successfully; we hope this becomes a mainstay, slowly but surely.