David Starr is the author of Agile Practices for Families. This paper discusses how one can apply the Agile framework to manage your family. During the day, he is a principal software craftasman with Guild 3 software, a custom software development company. We had a chance to discuss his legendary paper and what he’s learned since he published his paper.
Are you still using the agile workflow today?
Yes. We have been using some form of family practice management for 8-9 years now. Most of what we do has borrowed heavily from agile methods.
What have you learned about the process since you wrote the paper?
That it isn’t a process, for starters. There is no “right” way to manage a family, or any other team. There is no process that will just make life better, professionally or personally. There are overarching values, principles, and frameworks, however that give structure and meaning to methods that we might try. Scrum is one of these frameworks, Kanban is another, and we have evolved a framework that borrows from these to work in the context of family life.
Adhering to agreed-upon principles and practices gives us latitude for experimentation and evolution within the greater context of an appropriate framework. We have derived a framework in our home for how we deliberately manage our family, and that looks significantly different (and simpler) than the process proposed in the original paper I wrote on the subject.
We also learned that intrinsic motivation (vs. extrinsic) may be used earlier than we thought with children. We don’t have to reward young, immature children with baubles or gold stars. Just like their more mature counterparts, they can learn to work hard and well simply because it is the right thing to do. Odds are, if you are bribing your children to contribute, something is broken.
Have you changed the workflow at all? If so, what?
The workflow changes all the time at the daily level, but remains fairly fixed at the weekly level which is where we see the overall framework in action. The children themselves have a weekly opportunity to suggest, implement, and experiment with changes to the process itself. This is a prescribed part of our Weekly Family Meeting, and an opportunity for the children to take ownership in the process we use.
For instance, it may be suggested that we use a different model of rotating chore cards for the week, or that we handle a particular situation differently when it occurs. If agreed upon, these commitments to change are posted visibly and revisited in the next Weekly Family Meeting to see if they worked well for us.
Your workflow process introduced several key concepts such as “information radiator” and “go check the list” to your family. If you had to choose one, which one made the biggest difference?
No question the most impactful event in our family management framework is the Weekly Family Meeting. This meeting occurs on Sunday nights and includes the following elements:
- Reviewing Last Week
- Allowance (not tied to performance)
- Planning Next Week
Reviewing Last Week is an opportunity for each family member to discuss the experience of being a member of the family that week, and to comment on how that might be improved. Suggestions for improvements range from communications skills of individuals to tweaking something within the process of family management itself.
The distribution of allowance is simply used as a way to break up the meeting into distinct parts and to separate review and planning. Although there is a whole school of thought on models for allowance, that’s best treated in a separate discussion. For our purposes, this is a tool for dividing the Weekly Family Meeting into distinct phases.
Finally, Planning Next Week enables the group to commit to trying some proposed changes, either as individuals or as a group. It also allows us to recognize all the commitments family members have in the next week and discuss how we will accommodate them. As kids get older, their activities add more and more complexity, and require more accommodation from others.
This added complexity is easily seen when 2 kids have sports practice at the same time, for example. When only one parent is available to pick them both up, it is interesting to ask the kids to take an active role in solving this problem. One of the kids might find a ride with a friend, or one might be perfectly happy to wait the extra time while visiting with friends. In any case, having the children participate in solving the problem limits resentments, increases cooperation, and causes the kids to realize they simply must accommodate the lives of others in the family.
Let’s say a family that’s unfamiliar with agile practices would like to implement a simplified version of your workflow. What would be the top three components that you’d recommend for a simplified system?
Weekly Family Meeting as explained already.
Daily Discussions about progress toward accomplishing today’s goals and any broader goals set forth for the week.
Highly visible information radiators showing:
- Chores or other responsibilities, both individual and shared
- A calendar and plan for the week
- Commitments made in the last Family Planning Meeting
- Household rules and schedule, including things like bedtimes, bus times, etc.
What can corporate teams learn from your “Agile Practices for Families”?
So much in agile development, and effective management for that matter, is rooted in simple human needs and behavior. We all have a need to be heard and respected. We all hope to be trusted. We all want to do the best we possibly can, even your idiot teenager.
The big difference between working in a family and working in a professional team is that you simply cannot fire a family member. It just isn’t possible. That makes the relationships different between team members and highlights the very idea of commitment between family members.
We tend to be 100% committed to our children’s success. Can you genuinely say the same about the people you work with? How does this impact your relationships?
Have you adapted agile practices to other parts of your personal life?
Absolutely. In particular, I make visible commitments like exercising, cutting down on eating out, or stopping a bad habit. This allows the family to hold me accountable in the context of our Family Practice Framework.
The impact of a child asking if you exercised today is much greater than the anonymous nagging voice in the back of your mind.
When it comes to applying agile practices to personal life, who are the top thought leaders in the field?
This is an emerging, yet eternal space to be interested in. Bookstores are littered with plenty of books on parenting, management, and agile methods, yet to my knowledge no one is focused exclusively on the intersection of these fields.
At the risk of being incredibly self-serving, I will go on record here with a little secret. I have a book on my drawing board on the topic of Agile Families. It will help readers learn how this works, why it works, and how to get started.
Who are the smartest people you know when it comes to agile thought leadership, in general?
This field is now so large this is a very difficult question to answer. There are just so many smart people out there talking about various aspects of agile software development.
In addition to everyone’s favorites like Ken Schwaber, Jeff Sutherland, Robert Martin, Martin Fowler, David Anderson, and others, I have really begun enjoying the contributions of people who contribute to our knowledge of agile at the larger organizational level. Jim Coplien and Rachel Davies come immediately to mind.