Agile Coaches' Corner How to Apply Agile Principles at Home with Yvonne Marcus
In this week’s episode, Dan Neumann is excited to be joined by someone outside of AgileThought, Yvonne Marcus! Yvonne specializes in teaching home management (which is the process of effectively running a household) with an agile twist. Her mission is to help parents develop flexible home management solutions using agile principles to leave them with more time for themselves, quality family time, less money spent, and a more productive week.
Yvonne Marcus shares how you can begin to implement agile into your home with her invaluable tips and tricks in this episode! She shares exactly how you can start bringing the agile process into your home, how to introduce your family to it, and actionable tips to take in getting started. Yvonne truly illustrates how applying agile principles can take your family from surviving to thriving!
Key Takeaways
What is home management?
Everything you have to do in your house to make it run (doing the dishes, cooking dinner, taking care of your kids, etc.)
The process of effectively running a household
Ways to apply agile to home management:
You can use Scrum boards at home for your kids so they know what they need to do for the day (and lessen their dependency on parents to guide them through every step)
The kids can contribute to the backlog during their family sprint meetings (ask your kids: “What needs to be done in the next two weeks?” or “What do you want to do in the next two weeks?”)
Families can also discuss behavioral problems at the sprint meetings and discuss what an appropriate consequence could be for said behaviors by involving them in the process (similar to a team working agreement)
Yvonne’s tips for bringing Agility into your home:
Yvonne uses DAKboard for their sprint goal board where she keeps track of their daily schedule, count downs to important events, sprint goals, etc.
She recommends whiteboarding and putting everything either in a Google Sheet or using an application that creates to-do lists (such as Microsoft To-Do)
Do not ask anyone in your family to start using a new piece of software that they do not already use (because if they’re not used to it they will not use it and you’ll fail with your first implementation of trying to run agile at your house!)
You can use Scrum, Agile, Kanban, etc. — whatever works best for your home!
Do your daily Scrum first thing in the morning
An important question to ask yourself is: “How much time do I need to take care of myself today?” (Because if you don’t set aside self-care time at the very beginning of the day you will always find something in your home that is more important that needs to be done and you’ll forget about it)
Create a sustainable pace with the principles behind the Agile Manifesto (it’s not just about the work)Stick with it even if it’s not perfect the first few times
Create a continuous feedback loop by asking your family what went well that week, what didn’t work, modifying, and implementing changes
Ask yourself: “What is the simplest thing you can do to create a solution for the start?” Don’t go over the top; just start with what you have
Take the four tendencies quiz (it can be helpful to understand who is on the “team” and how to communicate in a way that will be most receptive for them)
Where Yvonne recommends getting started with implementing the Agile process in your home:
Start with the daily standup (because being able to reconfigure time so that everyone’s time is valued will be one of the most eye-opening spots)
If you start with the daily standup you’ll see the most immediate success
Everyone should provide input so that everyone knows they have a weight in what is going on inside the home
Mentioned in this Episode:
“Agile programming — for your family” Bruce Feiler’s TEDTalk
Yvonne Marcus’ Podcast: Your Agile Home
iCalendarGretchen Rubin — The Four Tendencies Quiz
Ethical Hacking Courses on Udemy
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