Agile? I live it! - Taking agile and implementing it at home

Modern family life can be busy, trying to manage the comings and goings of a young family is as stressful as a full time job!

Parents become managers, often with little training. They are required to be teachers, councillors, life coaches, interior designers, taxi drivers and more often than not project managers, for their children (customers). Organising a week’s tasks list for the Generation Z’s takes planning and management skills similar to a medium size project, but as the great educator Sir Ken Robinson says, "We prepare our lives for the next 50 years, but no one can predict where we will be in 5!"

These tasks can be met and delivered with iron discipline, rigid time frames, penalties for missing deadlines, everyone knowing where they are going to be and what they need to do hour by hour, day one to day seven! Well that maybe the waterfall way, but you might end up drowning.

What happens when your son wants to have his best mate over to play, sorry not in the plan. Or your daughter has a new school open day sprung on you for day four, sorry not in the plan, you get my point.

“The key idea of agile is that teams essentially manage themselves. … It works in software, and it turns out that it works with kids.” (Bruce Feiler)

What if you were to employ an agile methodology to your week? Something that encouraged creativity and feedback, personal development, having the key highlights of the week pointed out to the Family (team). With your children having a chance to feedback about the last weeks successes and downfalls, and how these can be improved and worked on for the coming week. This allows for a dynamic family constantly evolving, growing and developing.
“Children who plan their own goals, set weekly schedules, evaluate their own work build up their frontal cortex and take more control over their lives.”(Bruce Feiler)

With no defined end product, but clear milestones that need to be achieved for the week. Agile offers the family a chance to be successful getting from A to B in their family life but not having to worry about getting from Y to Z.

For more information on the agile family please watch this great TED video from Bruce Feiler.