Agile Approach Parenting

A couple of months ago I joined an IT company which works according to Agile approach carefully using scrum framework. This was completely new to me. However, very soon I found myself in a role of a scrum master of my team. While onboarding I realised I’m already a little bit familiar with the whole approach. It turned out that I used to unconsciously follow it when caring and raising my two kids. This is how the two things are close to each other.

My kids are my product in some sense. My goal is to make this product competitive. This means:

• Raise kids staying healthy and grow their healthcare habits. This means, for instance, regular vaccination and healthy habits.
• Maintain a friendly development environment and teach kids to love the unexplored. This means playing, reading, traveling, visiting theatres and museums etc.
• And above all, I aim to teach kids to be happy and choose being happy every day. This means being attentive to themselves and people around. This means identifying and correctly expressing emotions. This means defending themselves and advocating for their opinion.

Values

Moving towards this fine future my husband and me are navigating according to our values and principles. At some point I noticed that they remind me of Agile approach values very much.

For example, we plan our activities carefully and at the same time we are always ready to change our plans. And this is one of the key principle that keeps us from driving crazy. Without a clear plan you can’t even leave the house. However, if you already left the house and are moving forward pushing a stroller or two, be ready for adventures. Responding to change is more important than following a plan.

Mobile phone is a nightmare of our time. The moment I put it aside, I start being nervous as if I lost something very important. The consequence of this is a desire to picture every moment of my kids growing up. Otherwise I may miss something. However, I don’t do it on purpose in order to live that very growing up together with my kids. When I spin the potter’s wheel together with my four years old son, I hold his hands in mine and I look into his delighted eyes. The resolution is enormous, much better than of the last iPhone camera. At the same time I’m left without photos of this miraculous moment. Oh, wait. My husband made a couple of them. Nevertheless this is a good illustration that a working product is more important than comprehensive documentation.

My family lives according to clear processes. First of all this concerns eating and sleeping schedule. Following this schedule is a guarantee that the whole family will stay comfortable all day long. However, sometimes the circumstances don’t let us follow the schedule properly. The good example may be a journey to another country. Another example is the arrival of our Granny. She wants to spent all possible time with kids and breaks the dinner and sleeping schedule with playing and reading. Well, in these cases we ignore the schedule in order for everyone to be happy in this very moment, because individuals and interaction are more important than processes.

Childcare Scrum Team

For a proper childcare I need a team. Besides my husband and me it includes our nanny (two of them, to be honest) and two couples of grannies and grand-dads. From time to time we use help of our sisters and brothers who are aunts and uncles to our kids. And yes, this is the team. I should even call it a scrum team with me being a manager, a muse and a scrum master.

Ceremonies

Very much like scrum style software development, parental life is heavily regulated with ceremonies. We don’t break our time into sprints, but it turns out that life itself splits into pieces of a regular length and this is how it all works.

Backlog review

Almost every dinner and sometimes during long automobile journeys and walks we talk about our dreams, hopes and aspirations. This process resembles very much of a backlog review.

At some point it occurs to us that time came to fulfil one of those dreams. Thus a backlog item becomes a plan.

Where does this backlog come from? It comes from my husband’s and my own childhood memories. I love a flashback of cold Russian winter when my dad taught me skiing in our yard. And I would like my kids to experience the same some day. One of the most important pieces of my husband’s childhood reality is household chores: fixing, mending an all kinds of household optimisations he helped his own father with. Now he invites and inspires our son to do the same in our own house.

Besides all we collect advice and recommendations of our friends who visited interesting places. And we also realise our own distant ideas.

Planning

By the end of a weekend part of those blurry ideas get the shape of a more or less clear plan for a week which includes regular routines like attending sport, walks, doctor visits if needed and a family weekend with a journey or a visit to an interesting place. Monday breakfast is the time for the whole family to approve the plan. I put it on the shared Google Calendar so my husband and me can see it from desktop and mobile. Besides this, I write down weekend plans on a paper weekend planner which hands in the kitchen. This is the whole year weekend planner. It shows clearly the retrospective of what has taken place already. And it gives an opportunity to estimate long term plans. This looks like a sprint planning, doesn’t it?

Daily stand-ups

Everyday during breakfast we share how things are going on and plan realisation details in particular. We correct the plans if needed. These are our short daily meetings with stuffed mouth.

Sprint Review

As a scrum team we hold a sprint review as well. Grannies are our stakeholders. Sunday evening we usually have a big FaceTime call (sometimes it may be a visit) with our grannies. There we share our news and weekend impressions and kids show their latest achievements going absolutely crazy. Like a real tech demo.

Sprint Retrospective

Late Sunday evening when kids finally go to sleep my husband and me, we open a bottle of Zinfandel and settle down in armchairs to hold a long and thorough retrospective.

We always cheer each other up and thank each other for help and good parenting performance. At the same time we discuss what could be done better next time. These are some examples of action points we may agree on:

• Don’t go shopping after trampoline jumping on the same day anymore (why wasn’t it obvious?)
• I add more plastic spoons to a shopping list as two are not enough. My daughter goes through a period when lunchtime can be considered a good time for throwing training.
• We put a sufficient number of colouring books to our weekend backpack in order to make dinner waiting in a restaurant less resembling of a nightmare.
• We carefully think over what routines could be paralleled in order to save time and energy. This is an endless process as kids gain new and new skills and needs every day so we need to adapt to a current situation.

These home retrospectives made me think of a way to upgrade my team’s retrospective at work. I think during our work retrospectives we all need a glass of Zinfandel. I’m serious like never before.