How do I implement Agile methodologies for my family?

Once, my nearly 4 year old daughter sat across at the kitchen table from me and said , “Mamma … At my birthday party, I want flowers…! And a big, brown circle cake with berries… and a teddy!”

“Oh ….?” I mumbled. A family project.

“LOTS of berries… and I want to play the Pass-the-parcel…”

Her sweet little face was serious, her arms wide and animated, gesticulating the size of the cake.

My eyes wandered across the kitchen to the real-life Kanban Task board waiting, silently, on the family refrigerator.

“Oh….?” I said. “What else would you like?”

Like a truly passionate Product Owner articulating their Vision, her brown eyes widened and lit up.

“…. I want to wear a dress, but it has to be my white sparkle dress… I want you to make sausage rolls, with the red sauce not the brown sauce… I want you to do face painting with LOTS of colours…. ”

This Flower-Berry-Festive party was getting quite detailed.

I pulled out my post-its and jotted down her User Stories, with their acceptance criteria.

“Oh…?” I said. “What’s the most important part?”

Her brow furrowed. “Hmmmm.” She thought. “The flowers.”

“Got it.” I said, bumping the User Story to the top of the notes sprawled across the table.

We prioritised the rest of the Product Backlog, moved to the Sprint Planning Meeting and broke the User Stories down into tasks.

Over the next week, the tasks moved across their swim lanes on our family refrigerator in mini-sprints and increments until the day of their delivery.

The brown cake with berries was made with minutes to spare - thus, still cooling in its cake tin. (I had forgot to put candles in the acceptance criteria!)

Project Done.

Here’s me face-painting.

A flowerless chocolate-circle-brown cake … it was unbelievably delicious, despite appearances!

Teddy and flowers got in there too!

Conceptualising and communicating Agile delivery can be challenging, but also an opportunity to be creative and fun with storytelling, bringing Agile into everyday environments to educate and inform organisations and their staff.

For more stories and posts, see my my blog here: Accolades to Agile. ?

First answered and published here on Quora, and on my blog, Accolades to Agile.

If you like this article, you may also like this this one, Do you suggest using the Scrum methodology for planning personal life? - Accolades to Agile