As I continue to research a number of topics, and many days consider which ones are worthy of a post – I’m beginning to see some patterns emerging as some of the more interesting ones.
This notion of mashups where you can take one technique or concept from one domain of life and applying it with a slight twist to another domain of life for some new benefit that may not be apparent to many of us is one such pattern. Check out my post on a BOD for yourself as an example.
Well, I have another one that I’ve been toying with as a father and as the leader in my home with my three sons. I’ve deliberately held off on speaking to how things are run in my home – until now. I tested this notion of a Scrum-based approach to family life a little bit in an offsite a few weeks back in Boston. The reactions in the room were about as varied as you would expect.
Let me go back a few months in time.
In my work life, on a particular project we’ve introduced a scrum-based approach for planning and delivery of our work. We have a mixture of backgrounds on the project with many divergent opinions being brought into the mix when it comes to planning and delivery. A few folks are well versed in the world of scrum-based approaches to work design, with a few folks being familiar with it, and a few having no idea how to spell it – let alone what the scrum manifesto says.
Powering the Scrum Manifesto are 12 Principles of Agile Development, and I’ve restated them here:
- We follow these principles:
- Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer
through early and continuous delivery
of valuable software. - Welcome changing requirements, even late in
development. Agile processes harness change for
the customer’s competitive advantage. - Deliver working software frequently, from a
couple of weeks to a couple of months, with a
preference to the shorter timescale. - Business people and developers must work
together daily throughout the project. - Build projects around motivated individuals.
Give them the environment and support they need,
and trust them to get the job done. - The most efficient and effective method of
conveying information to and within a development
team is face-to-face conversation. - Working software is the primary measure of progress.
- Agile processes promote sustainable development.
The sponsors, developers, and users should be able
to maintain a constant pace indefinitely. - Continuous attention to technical excellence
and good design enhances agility. - Simplicity–the art of maximizing the amount
of work not done–is essential. - The best architectures, requirements, and designs
emerge from self-organizing teams. - At regular intervals, the team reflects on how
to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts
its behavior accordingly.
Now the world I operate within at work is focused on technology, innovation, and many times business transformation. Software and systems (technology, people/org, processes – among other elements) design and architecture play huge roles in cultivating new capabilities that fuel incredible goals that have been set by our most senior leadership.
This has been my career for quite awhile now, and scrum-based approaches promise a more reality-based and iterative approach over some of the methodologies that I used when I first joined the workforce back at Raytheon in 1998.
Fast forward a month or two – from earlier in the year and this particular project team is now increasingly well versed in designing work and delivery efforts via a scrum-based approach. Everyone is learning, myself included – as we are utilizing scrum in a manner that has been tailored to our culture, our team makeup, and our deliverables. This incantation of scrum is not exactly the same as prior implementations I have done in other stops of my career journey.
Cool, right?
Well, I found myself listening to a podcast during a typical Friday morning cardio session – my Friday morning cardio sessions are typically reserved for a podcast that is squarely aimed at uplifing my performance at work. The podcast I was jamming out to was from one of my favorite online communities – the Asian Efficiency crew based out of Austin, TX.
They were talking about Scrum development and delivery approaches with some guy I had never heard of. The podcast was very interesting as the guy, Lucas Smith, is a well known practitioner and one of only 50 Professional Scrum Trainers in the entire country. His creds are here if you want to see all of the acronyms and certs he has.
Before I go any further, I do not personally know the guys at AE or Lucas, although I’m certain that will change on both fronts in the coming months. The podcast itself was especially useful, and you can find it here if you are interested in getting a ‘plain english’ review of what it is. The app I listen to podcasts on – Overcast is worth a post unto itself, maybe tomorrow…
Anyway, Scrum and the Agile Manifesto are readily linked to software development. However, this is a mindset more than anything else that aims to:
- Meaning – for getting more meaningful work done
- Reality – working from a reality based perspective
- Flexibility – working with change rather than fixed plans
- Innovation – change is leveraged into greater value
- Priority – work is performed based upon priority
- Efficiency – direct communication is built in
- Value – greater value is delivered in shorter cycles with more throughput achieved over time
All very useful notions that are not unique to software development. In the course of the podcast both the AE crew and Lucas began to talk about how they have used Scrum-based approaches in non software development contexts. The Asian Efficiency team discusses at length how they use Scrum to run their business.
The Asian Efficiency team is all about enhancing productivity and equipping the community that they have developed with all sorts of real world approaches for greater delivery.
They write code.
They build blog articles.
They cultivate online communities.
They build coursework.
They market and sell.
They run events.
They have a multifaceted and multichannel business, and they use scrum as the basis to deliver and out innovate many that are attempting to play in this space. I am a client of theirs and I am also an active community member over there.
Here’s the point – you can use scrum to run a seemingly very successful business. Lucas then provided other examples of client work that he’s been engaged with. The examples and use cases that he enumerated got me to thinking while walking on that treadmill…
Why not do some scrum-based backlog management with my sons this weekend?
Have you heard of ‘family meetings’ as a concept?
I have and I think the idea sucks.
I have three boys that have a lot of energy, they get bored quickly. As do I. Have we done such a thing as a family – yes, and it invariably goes sideways when it does happen. None of us really want to be in a meeting in the traditional sense.
Hell, I have enough meetings at work, why bring that into my family life?
Enter scrum.
So the next Saturday morning, while they were eating some unreal waffles that I had made with real Vermont maple syrup. (we do not do the fake syrup crap) I mentioned we needed to talk about our plans for the weekend.
We had a few set things we had to do, and I started with those. Church, gym, soccer games… And that was basically it.
I then asked the guys to start thinking about their ‘must do’ things. One of my sons had some homework he had to knock out, so we threw that down on the list. Then the real fun started.
‘What do you guys want to do this weekend?’
From there, we rifled up a list of about 20 things that ranged from ‘pool time’ to ‘visiting Six Flags’ — all of the items made the list. And then we started playing with the size of the things in terms of time – so Six Flags was a full day thing. Pool time was 2 hours. And so on…
Once we sized each thing on the list in a very loose way, we then picked one thing each as each of our #1 item, and then we did it a second time. We then negotiated over which things we would go for first in the time that we had that weekend. We landed on three things for the weekend beyond the original ‘must do’ list of stuff.
All of it took about 30 minutes, and everyone was pumped. We knew the plan, we knew that we could get to the other stuff later, and we all codeveloped it.
That original list (dare I call it an epic?) has more than few things (stories?) crossed out since early May, and now that summer vacation is upon us – it will be getting refreshed.
It is not full blown scrum on the family scene – however the backlog grooming practice, sizing, and priority approaches of our ‘family work items’ all have resulted in greater fun and happiness in the household. Teaching my boys some priority-based planning in a way that does not suck has been really eye opening and fun. For them, they get to see us plow through the list that we created together, and we are actually getting more of what we all want done – in a more effective manner.
I’m sure there are more concepts that I’ll be pulling across into my family life based upon the scrum learning I’m continuing to pursue.
Interested in your opinions of laying down some scrum on the family scene.
