Agile@Home :
I met Efi, an old friend working in the hi-tech
industry, and an experienced father of Ben, 8, and Lucy, 4, a while ago n a one
of the Agile practices conferences. He turned to me over lunch, and
asked me to advise him about problems he was having with getting his son to
tidy his room. He practiced Agile daily, and had an intuition that one of the
ways he could resolve his difficulty was in the Scrum world he knew so well.
“Every day, it’s the same story”, he told me.
“I come home, my wife’s upset, Ben’s room isn’t tidy, they’ve already fought,
she’s yelling, he’s yelling... And at the end of the day, Ben is sent to his
room, supper is ruined, little Lucy doesn’t understand what’s going on around
her, and in general, it sucks. All we get to talk about is tidying up the
room.”, Efi went on, “I’m bummed out because i don’t want things to continue
this way, and as Lucy has also stopped tidying her room, we’re now fighting on
two fronts. I really don’t understand, how hard is it to tidy a room? And on
the other hand, why tidy the WHOLE room every day? We’ve tried tidying his room
ourselves, and that didn’t teach him anything, and the situation just remained
the same.”
“But,” Efi continued, “a few months after we
started practicing Agile at work, the penny dropped. I mean, we put up tasks on
a team board almost every day, and the tasks get done. We talk about them, and
review them, so if there’s a problem we fix it on the spot. So why not have the
same task board at home?”
It’s funny, but Efi really felt that the
solution was right there in front of him, and all he wanted was to consult a
bit to see how to do it right.
Before we start, what, in fact, are we talking
about here?
Well, it’s not new that there’s a conflict
between the fact that we want the children to tidy the room, but they really
don’t want to, and why should they tidy the room at all?
As much as you may think so, you aren’t alone
in this conflict. In nearly every family it exists in one way or another, and
every family chooses their way to deal with the issue. Anger, punishments,
benefits, and even tidying the room ourselves.
To avoid the power struggle, the smart thing to
do would be to maintain the boundaries as parents on one hand, and not break
the child on the other, not to force or punish - everything can be done with a
positive mindset (hey, the psychological blah blah had to come at some point
:)).
What drew me to Efi’s story is the fact that it
is completely normal. When you encounter a normal situation, Scrum and Agile
are excellent tools to solve them, especially if we are talking about a behavior
or pattern that we wish to change.
So do we punish Ben when the room isn’t tidy,
and how does Agile help?
Well, being cross about the untidy room is
easy. Getting angry with your kids is even easier. But I don’t believe that
either will help over time, unless they tidy their room because they are afraid
of you - is that what you really want? Fear won’t exactly reduce the stress
levels in the house and make it easier to live there.
A child needs boundaries. Not just because we
want to, but also because it’s better for them. Boundaries and order are very
good values to learn, and the child needs to learn to take responsibility for
his own actions. Combining these elements together aren’t always trivial.
It’s best to interfere as little as possible.
For instance, if the room is untidy and your son can’t find a notebook he needs
for school, he should understand that it’s his problem and that it’s not very
pleasant arriving at school without his notebook, and that he can’t go to
friends until he finds his notebook. The result of his action has to be
logical to make him change his ways and to understand that his needs (such as
tidying the room) are, in fact, similar to ours.
This is exactly where Agile comes in.
The Scrum tool enables you to understand the exact nature of the task and make
sure that the task owner is responsible for it - not anyone else.
Certainly if we wish to raise healthy,
confident children, who can decide for themselves and be responsible for their
own tasks, we should cut back on the punishments, and look more at the results
that the children’s actions bring about. For example, if
your kid doesn’t want to eat during support time, so be it. Our part is not to
give in and to make him understand that there are consequences to his actions.
He’s hungry after supper? Next time he should eat when supper is ready.
We are looking to achieve the following
benefits:
·
How to get to the
stage where the child tidies up his own room (answers our needs as parents).
·
How to avoid a big
mess in the future (or how to split up the tasks into smaller tasks).
·
How to make the
child feel in control of tidying up the room.
·
What values should
we pass on, and what does the child gain by performing his tasks (involvement,
parental communication, attention).
·
How not to earmark
one child as the trouble-maker, and give the right amount of attention to the
messy room.
Few days later Efi told me what he did…
“So when I got home, I showed the system to my
wife, and she was amazed at how easy and nice it was. ‘This is what you do at
work?’ she asked, and I felt comfortable with a system I am used to and I know
what to do with, not to mention that I was the one who brought the system home,
and my wife agreed to cooperate...”
Efi Introduced Scrum to his kids, over the
weekend. He brought colors, sticky notes and a board, and sat down with his
kids to build a task board. And they had fun! Drawing the three columns,
putting up sticky notes, and so on.
Efi suggested that everybody puts a task on the board - even Mummy and Daddy. Not too many, one or two each. He also suggested that it would be really fun to meet every evening and talk about the tasks, and move them on the board according to their progress.
The kids were delighted, especially as they had the whole evening dedicated to them.
The next day, Efi asked to add a new task - ‘Tidy the room’.
I later suggested to Efi that he talk about the
task and define it. Ben is already 8 years old, he can certainly express his
opinion and reach an agreement about what should be done while tidying the room
itself. I also suggested that they could have two kinds of ‘tidy’ - the daily
kind, and the thorough, one a week kind. I recommended that Efi try to agree to
Ben, as cooperation is always better than coercion, and it’s always a good idea
to listen, and maybe give up on a few principles (does the room really have to
be absolutely neat and tidy every day?).
The next day I met Efi again. “I told Ben”, he
said, “come and tell me what it means to tidy your room. Then we split up that
huge task in smaller ones that he can relate to. I swear, if you only take the
time to listen to him”, Efi said with a grin, “the kid is a genius. We finally
arrived at a solution similar to the one you’ve got in your book, and I added a
bit myself. I offered to tidy the room with him for the first time together, so
he understands what it means, and to get off to a fresh start. Then we decided
that the room only needs to be tidied once a week - the rest of the time, just
make sure that there aren’t any large things on the floor, like towels, heaps
of clothing, and so on. We also said that we’d talk about it every evening, and
if we think we need to change something, we will.”
“And what did you get out of it?” I asked Efi a
few weeks later.
“I really liked it”, he said, “I was a bit
worried at the beginning, but the kids really cooperated!
The arguments around the room stopped, my wife
isn’t harassing Ben any more (thank God). She had to manage with things not
being neat all the time, but Ben and her learned what tidy and not tidy limits
are. The only time the issue is raised is at meal times, when we talk about the
tasks, and it isn’t like arm wrestling any more.
Little Lucy is also putting up tasks on the
board (we use pictures for her, like you suggested in the book), and all of a
sudden I see that I have a daughter who wants to add tasks to the board and is
delighted when she completes them on time. Ben isn’t getting the centre of
attention any more as the trouble-maker - instead he gets a mother and a father
who actually talk to him.
We’ve moved on to all sorts of tasks, but the
main thing is that there’s peace and quiet, and I have a son who I can talk to
him about other things, not just fight with him all the time. My children have
learned to tidy the room by themselves, and they’ve also learned that it is
important. Soon, we might not even need the board any more!"
