Henrik Kniberg: Agile at home

Agile @ Home Agile Eastern Europe keynote

Keynote 2012-10-06 (annotated slides)

Henrik Kniberg Agile/Lean coach

www.crisp.se

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Let me show you how some of the ideas from Agile and Lean software development can be used in a different context: At

Home!

We have 4 small children, age 1-8.

Needless to say, that can get complicated sometimes.

Over the years, we’ve found that many of the practices and ideas from the Agile/Lean toolkit can

really improve life at home!

Here are some examples of things that have worked particularly well.

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Travel Spike

Agile party

planning

Clothes WIP Limit

BigFamilyTrip Kanban board

Homework Burnup chart

Kitchen WIP Limit

Definition of Done

Kitchen Value Stream

Map

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This is my focus board. Some would call it a

Personal Kanban system.

The stickies on the bottom half are

independent actions, such as

”buy a new shaver” or ”call client X”

The index cards on the top half are ”projects”, with stickies showing the

next 1-2 actions for that project. Let’s look closer...

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For example preparing this talk

Or playing with my band at a wedding

Or writing a foreword to someone’s book

The goal is to focus on at most 1 or 2 projects at a time, and minimize

multitasking.*

*Multitasking sucks. See www.crisp.se/henrik.kniberg/multitasking-name-game

Some actions have deadlines

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This part of the board is for practing new

habits I try to practice one

new habit at a time for several weeks...

... until it becomes, well, a habit!

Right now I’m trying to learn to start each day by finishing the most important thing for that

day, BEFORE opening the inbox and getting sucked into the

void.

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We use focus boards for family stuff too. Here is a party that we were preparing. 3 sections on the left refrigerator door ”Must be done”, ”Should be

done”, ”Bonus stuff”

Here is when we were preparing for Big Christmas

Invasion with lots of friends and family staying for several days.

This board even had a time plan!

As things get done, we move the notes to the other

refrigerator door. The ”Done Door” so to speak...

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This board was for a BBQ party a few years ago. Guests would pair up with somebody they don’t know too well, grab a

card, and get going!

I know. But seriously, guests actually like to help :o)

To our surprise, small kids (even 3 year olds!) quickly decoded

our system and hacked it!

So... ice-cream cards starting appearing on the board...

”Hey, things that go on the board actually Happen!”

”We can make grownups Do Things!”

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So now we use this quite often :o)

Here the kids are planning and preparing a birthday

party

Each stickynote is a ”feature” of the party.

As usual, things that are Done go on the right

refrigerator door

When time started running out, the kids automatically started descoping. ”What’s more important, balloons, or cake? We won’t have time to finish

both!”.

Imagine if all project managers could learn to

do that to! :o)

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Once Dave (7 yrs at the time) was behind on his

homework, and had quite a few pages to do

He found it hard to stay focused and motivated


So I showed him how to create a burnup chart.

Here’s the page numbers he had to finish

Here’s the timeline. Each number is a 5 minute interval

(big hand of the clock)

This is the ”finish line”. If he crosses this before bedtime, the

remaining time is play-time!

This is the ”timebox” – bed time at 8pm

”Every 5 minutes or so, check the time and put and write X for the page number that you are

working on”

After 15 minutes he noticed something upsetting:

”Time Keeps Going even when I’m Not Focusing!”



The chart helped him get back into focus, without me having to

nag or remind him.

A clear and obvious visualization, showing the

benefit of focusing.

Even project managers can get

it :o)


He finished in record time, and had time to play!

However, we should have made sure testing & validation was

included in Definition of Done, since there were some ”defects”...

oh well, next time :o)

Sometimes when he has very much homework to do, he says ”Daddy, I’d

like to create one of those graph thingies again, because I want to get

my homework done quickly!”


We recently came back from a BigFamilyTrip – a 6 month trip that took

us through 8 countries.

A trip like that takes quite some planning and preparation. We used this planning board for the 8 months or so we had to prepare for the trip. Very

useful.


Dreams & visions. We downloaded some inspiring

pictures from Google images, to exemplify the type of things we were hoping to experience

during the trip.

Timeline, with red arrow that moves. Reminds us that time

keeps going.

We decided on a departure date (Oct 1) from the very beginning, just to make sure the trip happens.

Yellow stickies show when we plan to be in which country

Clearly defined purpose of the trip The columns are ”To do”,

”Next”, ”Ongoing”, and ”Done!”

The three horizontal swimlanes are ”Must do”, ”Should do”, and ”Bonus

stuff”


We did a ”spike” (practice run), a 4 day trip to

London.

Our hope was that, anything that can go

wrong, will go wrong on this trip.

...so we can learn from it and avoid problems during

the Big trip.


We learned what kind of stuff to pack. And we learned that the kids

(even Emma, 3 yrs) can carry their own stuff. We learned that our baby carriage sucked and needed to be replaced (broke after 1 check-in!). And more!

Oh, and we had fun too :o)


After coming we could already cross some things off the Dream

Gallery (such as the double decker bus)...


... and we could turn our learnings into concrete actions (such as ”buy

a better baby carriage”).


Hej då, vi ses i vår!

Peru

Västindien

Japan

Följ med på resebloggen: bigfamilytrip.posterous.com Hälsningar Henrik & Sia & David & Jenny & Emma & Peter

Nya Zealand

Oct 1 – Off we went!

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We had an awesome trip! Read more on http://bigfamilytrip.posterous.com,

we wrote down we we’ve learned about travelling with kids.

The long-lived planning board and the 4 day London ”spike” really

helped us set the trip up for success.


When we got home, 6 months later, we were surprised at how quickly the

house got completely messed up, especially the kids’ rooms.

They wanted to pull out all the toys and clothes they had missed

Just about impossible for them to take responsibility for their own stuff.

It was just too much.


We didn’t really have that problem during the trip.

... because look: the kids could only fit so much stuff in their bags. And they had to carry their

own stuff!

There’s a term for that in the lean community:

A ”WIP Limit” (work-in-progress limit).

WIP limits stop things from getting out of hand!


At home there were no WIP limits.

So we decided to change that.

The drawers + the closet = The WIP limit. You can only

keep as many clothes as you can fit there. And there

should be extra slack in each drawer, it should not

be crammed.


To implement this, they put all their clothes in one place (a ”temporary inbox” you

might say)


I handed them one item at a time and asked ”In or Out?”

”Out” means: throw it in the box (to be sold or given

away or trashed at a later time).

”In” means: decide where that particular thing lives,

and put it there now.

Slack rule: no drawer is allowed to be crammed full

I was impressed by how much stuff the kids were willing to do away with

(many boxes! let us know if you need anything!)


Voila! Tidy room!

And, more importantly, a room that has few enough things, so the kids can realistically take

responsibility for keeping it tidy.


We had the same problem in the kitchen

It was a mystery! Why were we spending so much time in the kitchen, cleaning dishes,

filling and emptying the dishwasher, etc? Felt like

hours every day.

Why didn’t we have this problem while travelling? Heck, we didn’t even have washing

machines while travelling!

Answer: WIP limits! In our rental houses and apartments, there were only a few plates

and utensils, barely enough for everyone in the family.

So we decided try WIP limits in our kitchen

at home.

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8

8

A quick calculation revealed that each one of us uses about

8 things per meal (plates, utensils, cups, etc).

With 3 meals per day, that is about 24

things.

8 8 8

8 8 8

8 8 8

8 8 8

8 8 8

8 8 8

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160+

With 6 people in the family, plus some shared stuff like pots, that adds up to over 160 things per

day!

160+ things to take out, wash up, and put back in

again. That’s a lot!

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8

8

8

8

8

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If we instead Limit WIP to one ”set” per person

(one of each type of thing, total of 8 things)...

(except Peter, he’s only 1 yr old...).

And each person washes their own stuff....


Here’s what we did


Each person has their own ”set” of 8 things, in a dedicated place in the

drying tray.


”Definition of Done” for a meal is when your set of

things are back in it’s place, clean.

A simple rule that even a 3 year-old can learn easily

If you forget to wash your stuff then, well, you’ll regret it next

mealtime. ... because your plate will

be icky and hard-to-clean :o) Effective feedback loops

beat nagging any day :o)


1 Mon 7:00

2 Mon 11:00

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Mon 22:00 4 Tue 22:00

1-2 days!

The new system worked surprisingly well! Why?

Because with the old system, a single item, such as a cup, would take up to 2 days (or longer!) to make it out and back into the

cupboard.

With 160+ items in play, each taking 2 days or so to pass through the kitchen... well, no wonder the

kitchen was often a mess!

Typically we’d take out the old batch and insert the next batch in

the evening.

...because filling/emptying dishwashing machines is boring, so

we resisted it ’till the last responsible moment.


1 Mån kl 7:00

2 Mån kl 7:30

< 1 hour!

With the new system, we skip the cupboard

... and we skip the dishwasher! Ironic huh?

Instead, everything lives in the drying tray, comes out for the meal, and is back

in the drying traywithin an hour!

The kitchen mess never has time to

build up!


The new system works great!

We spend MUCH less time doing dishes

And the kitchen is for the most part

nice and tidy

The system is a bit brittle though.

It breaks down when we have guests coming over, for

example.

In those cases we temporarily revert to the old system, with dishwashing machine

and batching.

But the new limited-WIP system has become our

”default system”, for everyday use.

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Travel Spike

Agile party

planning

Clothes WIP Limit

BigFamilyTrip Kanban board

Homework Burnup chart

Kitchen WIP Limit

Definition of Done

Kitchen Value Stream

Map

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Henrik Kniberg: Agile at home