henrik kniberg: agile at home
TRANSCRIPT
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
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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!”
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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)
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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!”
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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.
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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”
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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.
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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)
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After coming we could already cross some things off the Dream
Gallery (such as the double decker bus)...
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... and we could turn our learnings into concrete actions (such as ”buy
a better baby carriage”).
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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.
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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.
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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!
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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.
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To implement this, they put all their clothes in one place (a ”temporary inbox” you
might say)
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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!)
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Voila! Tidy room!
And, more importantly, a room that has few enough things, so the kids can realistically take
responsibility for keeping it tidy.
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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....
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Each person has their own ”set” of 8 things, in a dedicated place in the
drying tray.
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”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)
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1 Mon 7:00
2 Mon 11:00
3
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.
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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!
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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.