Kanban At Home

As Jen mentioned in the previous post, kanban has crept into our home. Here is a quick post to tell you how we build our board, how we use it, and the results.

While some families create a permanent board, we've found that temporary boards serve us well. If you stop by some Saturday morning you'll probably find us in the act of putting post-its on the mirror in our front entrance. It is true that occasionally our board is created in the kitchen or even sometimes the hallway, but the front entrance is currently our favourite location. We have three columns across the top - "Ready", "Doing / Work in Progress", and "Done". You can probably simplify the middle column name to "Doing" or "WIP" but our kids have decreed that we should use both terms.

We populate the "Ready" column with everything we'd like to accomplish that weekend. We're careful to make sure the tasks are clear and not too big. For example, instead of "Clean the House", we create post-its for "Clean the Kitchen", "Vacuum the living room", etc. Our board will have a mix of post-its that are specific to one person ("C practice piano", "A practice drums", "M clean room", "Daddy pay master card") and cards with no names that anyone can grab ("Shovel the snow", "Organize the front closet"). More recently we've also started to add post-its for doing fun things together ("LEGO!", "Family Movie").

Once the board is populated the process is quite simple. Everyone selects a post-it, moves it to the "Doing / Work in Progress" column and goes to work. Once they are done that task, they move it to "Done" and select another. By the end of the weekend, the post-its have made a large shift towards "Done" as seen above.

For our family this board works because it is simple, transparent, and requires little to no 'management' (i.e. nagging). Once the board is populated each person has a clear view of their expectations and can make their own decisions about when to do chores and when to play. On most Saturdays our kids (ages 7, 9, 11) do their chores earlier in the day so that they can spend the rest of the day relaxing without worrying that more chores will be added to their list.

A board we created this holiday season is a particularly great example of the peace that a board can bring in our household. We had just returned from a road trip through Nebraska (Car Henge!), South Dakota (Rushmore and Jewel Cave), Wyoming and North Dakota. The level of grumpiness as we unloaded all of our luggage from the van into the house was historic - we were all tired and the mood was tense. As we stood around the pile of luggage now clogging our front entrance we reluctantly decided to create our board. Among the post-its for "Laundry" and "Unpack Luggage" were reward post-its like "Sleep" and "Spend my $10 Claire's gift card". After agreeing to take care of all the chores before starting any of the reward post-its, we moved our post-its to the "Done" column in record time with zero nagging. In parallel, the spirit of our household moved from grumpy to peaceful with the same efficiency.

Well, it's Saturday morning. I'm being beckoned...

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Living With an Agilist

(Editor's note: The following is a guest post by Jen Rogalsky)

A couple of years ago Steve came home from work and announced, “Podcasts have changed my life.” My natural response was: “What? Podcasts? Not me, not our children, but podcasts?” He persisted with his original assertion. “Yes, podcasts. They’ve changed my life.”

This was my first introduction to the fact that Steve, through podcasts, had begun to learn about something called agile, and his declaration of devotion seemed to leave me with a clear choice: learn a little about this new interest or be left behind by this obviously life changing discovery. We were not immediately friends, agile and I, and yet along with the post-it notes and sharpies that have overtaken my house, some agile practices and principles have slowly become part of my life. I don’t pretend to be an expert in their application in a business context, but as I stumble through trying to explain to someone who asks me “What does your husband do?” I often come out with some kind of statement explaining that agile is applicable in some way to almost everything and everyone. Quite a lofty statement, and obviously somewhat hyperbolic, yet my personal adoption of some agile ideas is a testament to a sliver of truth.

So here are just a couple of examples of how agile practices have seeped through the cracks.

I like to picture myself as quite a broad thinker, capable of pondering and producing on multiple platforms simultaneously, unhindered by the shackles of linear constraints. Okay, so, that may look somewhat unsystematic to the outside viewer. And, okay, that may occasionally result in many simultaneously started, yet unfinished (albeit very creative and useful) projects. As I’ve learned more about agile, however, I’ve become more convinced, although reluctantly, about the value of shorter loops. Just as risky as it may be in a professional setting to invest money and energy in a long arc with feedback and product only at its end, shorter loops have proven their value for me, as well. I churn less often, (although sometimes churn on purpose just to be rebellious, now that I actually understand it for what it is), actively seek frequent feedback from those involved or implicated by my task rather than wait until the end to ‘test’, and force myself to be more systematic at finishing one task before beginning another, fueled by the motivating sense of reward that can provide.

My evolving relationship with kanban has been no less reluctant, and yet equally as relentless in slowly changing my practices. Steve introduced kanban into our household quietly, first making his own boards for house and renovation projects, then producing boards on the kitchen cupboards for when he was in charge of doing chores with the kids. I didn’t object as long as I wasn’t required to participate. “Let’s just do it already, instead of sitting around writing stuff out first!” was my usual response when invited to join the process. Steve’s gentle suggestion that he wasn’t born with the ability to help accomplish our common goals by subconsciously divining the detailed task list in my head wasn’t enough to convince me of kanban’s value. Once again, however, like the persistent drip of water on rock, my resistance has been futile. It began with observing the relative lack of nagging involved when he did chores with the kids. What a wonder to behold when they would eagerly race back to the board to move their sticky from “WIP” to “done.” Or to overhear them debating their preferences in referring to the middle column as “Work in Progress” vs “Doing.” Or to watch their ownership of the whole task process increase as they were given the opportunity to participate in the creation of the list and then freed to choose their own route through to getting all the stickies transferred over to “done.” And now, after a long, slippery slope, most of our Saturday mornings begin with the creation of a family kanban board on the mirror in the front hallway. We are careful to also include the fun and relaxing activities in the “ready” column, and we all share in the sense of satisfaction when, come Monday morning, the board is balanced quite differently toward “done.” kanban’s conquest to take over our house is almost complete, since I recently found a spare bulletin board that seems to be calling to me to be made into a personal kanban board. Oh, how the mighty have fallen.

Finally, Steve’s passion for all things agile has found its way to the very core of our most significant common project, by influencing the ways in which we parent our three girls. I often find myself thinking, “But isn’t this just common sense? Perhaps we are making these decisions because we’re so incredibly intuitive and such remarkable parents…” and yet I know that our thinking has been shaped by what we have learned about an agile approach to treating people in the workplace and applying these ideas to the little people we live with. A couple of deliberate parenting strategies have emerged. We deliberately try to assume our kids’ competence rather than treat them as inherently incompetent and in need of our micro-managing. We try to make expectations clear up front, but then encourage them to find their own route toward completion within the established boundaries. We’ve learned that feedback is most easily heard and adopted when offered immediately and within a conversation in which the kids are participants. And perhaps most significantly, we are trying to do whatever we can to help them develop what Linda Rising calls an “Agile mindset” rather than a “Fixed mindset.” I almost thought I heard angels singing when my daughter recently told me that she wished her friend would realize that “Life isn’t supposed to be easy! Challenges don’t mean you’re supposed to sit down and complain, just work harder and figure out how to get past them.”

All right, then, if agile ideas can eventually help my kid say something like that, even once, then I guess podcasts have changed my life too.

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An Example of a Self Organizing Team

After a recent presentation where I talked briefly about self organizing teams, someone came up to me afterward and said (I'm paraphrasing) "That team stuff is great and all, but some people are just lazy and need to be told exactly what to do and when." Argh.

But before you judge that person, let me tell you a story. In this true story you'll have the opportunity to judge me for having the same thoughts before trying a different approach. This is the story of my self organizing daughter.

My kids go to a great school - the kind of school that fosters engaged teachers who go the extra mile to create engaged students. Throughout the school year the teachers run numerous clubs before school, at lunch, or after school including run club, football club, circus club (complete with unicycles!), reading club, wrestling club, girls club, gymnastics club, etc. My kids love attending these clubs and my oldest (aged 10 during this story) was determined to be in every one of those clubs.

This is great, except there were a few problems. Many of the clubs started before the school day so she had to be ready and out the door pretty early. Since most of the clubs had a strict attendance policy (if you miss two days, you are out of the club), being on time was important. Further, because of our cold winter weather, she received a ride on many of the mornings with one of her friends. If she was late getting out the door, her friend also risked being late and missing out on the clubs.

So, being the responsible parents that we are, we nagged her out the door each the morning. "Time to get out of bed", "Have you brushed your teeth yet?" "Go comb your hair",  "It's time to make your lunch now!" "Hurray up, you're going to be late!" It made for some pretty frustrating mornings for all of us. We treated her exactly as the statement above: "some people are just lazy and need to be told exactly what to do and when." She would do the task we asked her to do and then wait to be told what to do next. Looking at it now, she was disengaged and dis-empowered. I cringe at the memory.

While this was happening, I was reading the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by the late Dr. Stephen R. Covey. I had my "Oh crap" moment when he said this:

"You cannot hold people responsible for results if you supervise their methods. You then become responsible for results and rules replace human judgement, creativity, responsibility...  Effective leaders set up the conditions of empowerment and then... get out of people’s way, clear their path and become a source of help as requested.“

After talking it over with my wife, we approached our daughter and apologized. We then discussed a new plan with her. Since she clearly was capable of getting out the door on time on her own, she would take over that responsibility. We would make ourselves available to be a source of help if requested but otherwise stay out of it. She jumped at the chance to take ownership of her morning routine. On the first day of this new arrangement she was ready fifteen minutes early and there hasn't been a day since then that she wasn't ready on time. Not so lazy after all I guess - just the victim of well intentioned managers.

After getting over my embarrassment, I pondered how this is a great parallel to self organized teams:

1. Status is known daily. We had daily status of her progress - if she was late she would miss her ride or be kicked out of a club. Our agile teams have daily standups, visual boards, frequent deliveries and demos so that everyone understands that status of the project at all times.

2. Agreed upon goals. She understood the goal (get out the door on time so that she can keep going to clubs) and desired to reach it. Self organized teams need to understand the goals of the project, not just the tasks to complete the project.

3. Freedom over methods. She started out being assigned tasks and moved to taking ownership of her own methods. Self organizing teams are given freedom to achieve the project goals and pull their own tasks rather than being assigned tasks.

4. Ask for help. She wasn't abandoned if she ran into trouble (oh no! I can't find the shirt that matches these pants!) - we stepped into help when asked. An effective scrum master, agile project manager, IT director, etc helps the team in a similar manner.

5. Empowerment brings results. This change turned a painful morning routine into a simple one because she was given the trust and responsibility to achieve the goal. When a team is given the trust and empowerment to accomplish the goal using their own methods, great things occur.

(Note :You can ready a similar story about Dr. Covey and his son entitled "Green and Clean")