I use agile and scrum everyday at work, but it was not until recently that we started using the scrum methodology for our weekly family meetings and for daily updates. As a family, we do modified scrum for our daily meetings before I go to work and before the boys start their day. During this short standing meeting we all talk about what we will do that day, any outside activities that we should be aware of, and if there is anything we can do to help. On Sunday afternoons, we have a retrospective where we list what we did well during the week and what we didn’t do so well. Here is the meeting from last week:
While Amber and I will add to the list, the boys mostly came up with the items you see above. We then talk about the items, and vote on which items on the poor list we want to address during the week. Everyone gets 2 votes (even the three year old). Once we have decided on the items we let the boys pick the deterrent. Some weeks there is no deterrent. In this example it happened to be that they had to read for an extra 30 minutes if they were not listening. The week before it was running laps around the cul-de-sac.
As a family we have responded well to the adoption of this system. But has this system made us all happy and everything running like a clock you ask? Absolutely not. This week we had lots of extracurricular activities so we didn’t do so well at meeting our goals. Here is the board from this morning:
What the retrospective and scrum meetings do is give us a way to address the issues we encounter weekly, and deal with them as a family. Everyone in the family understands what is expected and what will happen if they meet the goals laid out before them. The boys do an excellent job of policing themselves with items tagged to be worked on.
In the near future, I will be adding a kanban board to this process to help everyone remember the expectations and make our lives run a little more smoothly. I will keep you posted on how that works out.