Resolve to Commit to Change

The end of the year is a very natural opportunity for reflection. All around me, people are talking about New Year’s resolutions right now. Some do so with a snigger and a laugh. For many, however, making those resolutions is an important annual ritual. It’s their way to clear out the cobwebs of the past year so they can welcome the new year with its yet to be written future. How disheartening it is, therefore, that most such resolutions don’t survive the first week of January, let alone an entire year.

Last year this time I wrote about not feeling any need to make New Year’s resolutions since embracing the power of continuous improvement in my life. That has not changed. In fact, I feel even stronger about that this year, looking back at the numerous small changes that have combined to help our family build a better and happier life on many fronts. But with all the resolution talk going around again, I started pondering why New Year’s resolutions fail so many.

Is it because people are simply not disciplined enough to follow through and stick to their good intentions? There is something in that, I believe. We humans, for all our noble endeavours to improve ourselves, are not very consistent in acting on our dreams and plans.

Fundamentally, however, I believe New Year’s resolutions set us up for disappointment by trying to force change in an unnatural and unsustainable way. They are inherently flawed in that they often reflect an idealized reality – goals set far beyond the realities of now. They are often made in a split second, with no clear course of action tied to them to help us achieve these remarkable goals we set ourselves.

But that is not how you create lasting change in your life. Change comes slowly, creeping –  the way dusk gently settles at the end of the day to suddenly cloak the world in darkness, surprising everyone that the light has gone. Change is the product of a series of conscious and principled decisions and actions over time. Some changes take weeks, some months and others yet take many years to play out fully in our lives.

So instead of setting yourself unattainable goals for the coming year, why not commit to one thing only? Commit to seeking and embracing change in those areas of your life where you think it’s needed. Commit to learning from every action and decision in your life, and to applying that learning to positive growth in yourself, your family and the world around you.  And although change may not come as fast as human impatience insists it should – it will come.

As surely as the sun will set tonight, change will come.

A Merry Personal Kanban Christmas

Things have been a bit quiet on the Scrumfamily blog since October. With Silly Season in full swing our Personal Kanban strategies have been working overtime, though. How else do you survive the merry-go-round of school concerts, end-of-year functions,  as well as preparations for family and holiday events while winding down your work year?

With our household settling down happily after Christmas Eve dinner, I’ve taken some time out to share with you how we’ve stayed sane in the run-up to this year’s festivities, using Personal Kanban in both hi-tech and lo-tech ways.

Keeping Track of Gifts

Inspired by this lovely example of kids creating  a prioritized Santa Backlog, we decided to do the same this year, incorporating a variety of our existing Personal Kanban tools and practices.

Gift backlog, with blank stickies for new requests

Step 1: Creating the Backlog

On the first weekend of December, we hit the major toy shops with the kids. They had a ball roaming around, handling and pointing out items to add to their lists. Dad and I trailed along, iPad in hand. For each new request, the kids helped me create a card (different colours for each child) in an iKanban project. Cards were ordered by priority, and moved up and down as reconnaissance continued.

Step 2: Grooming the Backlog

At home that evening, I converted their gift backlog to a physical backlog with stickies. Over the next week, they could review and move items around, or add new items.  By the end of that week, they had to be sure of their priorities so we could write Santa and mail the letters on time.

Step 3: Communicating the Sprint Backlog

Communicated Sprint backlog

On the following weekend, the boys wrote their Santa Letters, running up the stairs every so often to check their gift backlog on the upstairs landing. Writing these wish lists had never been this easy. Each of them knew exactly what they wanted and we were done in no time. We popped their letters in their tree stockings, ready to be mailed the next time we passed the Santa mailbox at the local toy shop.

We are now patiently tracking Santa to monitor final delivery. We have it on good authority that the elves wrapped up their part of the work almost two weeks before Christmas.

Preparing for Christmas Weekend

I enjoy the trappings of Christmas, especially cooking and baking up a storm. Nothing spells home comfort to me quite like the smell of cinnamon wafting through the house.

But with us celebrating on our own, without the extended family, I was to be chief cook and bottle washer this year. And  since I was still working until the 23rd of December, I had to plan carefully to make sure that everything got done on time.  This was one project where the deadline was rather firm and could not slip!

One Week: Breaking Down the Work

To help me manage the various value streams, I relied on iKan. It was the first Kanban app I ever installed and I still prefer it when I need multiple ad hoc projects that require quick and easy setup and simple prioritization.

With Christmas Eve 7 days away, I created three projects to track the Christmas Baking I planned to do each evening, additional Christmas Goodies to buy and the Christmas Menu I was planning.

This approach worked like a charm. By Thursday evening, I deleted the Christmas Goodies project, since there were no outstanding items to buy to support the other two projects. By Friday evening it was clear that I had planned to do too much Christmas Baking. There were two more items on the backlog, but the cake tins were  full. I guess they didn’t make it into this Christmas edition.

Kitchen Kanban on a Tray - Compact and Mobile

One Day: Getting to Done

On Christmas Eve morning, I converted the items from the Christmas Menu project to a physical kanban that the whole family could see and participate in. I wanted to keep it in the kitchen – the hub of the remaining cooking activities – but I couldn’t spare any workspace.  A small melamine tray turned out to be the answer, since we could move it around as needed.

Although I had to drop a dish from the menu, and Christmas Eve dinner ran an hour late due to unforeseen technical challenges, both the family and I were wholly satisfied with the delicious outcome. Best of all, I haven’t felt anywhere near the kind of stress that the home stretch of  preparations usually brings with it when I’m the only Christmas Cook. Quite the opposite in fact. Apart from a period of about 30 minutes, when all the dishes were being finalized, I never felt under pressure or that I’d missed something.

And with everybody now happily off to bed, I can turn out the lights to signal Santa that we’re ready for Sprint Review. Let me just  move the “cookies and milk” sticky on the tray …

Explicit Policies Make Life Simpler

With the start of a new school term upon me, I thought I’d round off my weekend blogging marathon (3 days, 3 posts) with a somewhat more reflective topic.

Until a couple of months ago, I hadn’t thought too much about the Kanban concept of policies in the context of our use of  Personal Kanban at home. Policies seemed like such a formal concept that has little place in a family context.  This seems especially true if you read the Business Dictionary definition of policies:

A set of policies are principles, rules, and guidelines formulated or adopted by an organization to reach its long-term goals and typically published in a booklet or other form that is widely accessible.

Just reading this definition conjures images of long, convoluted policy documents that you’d rather use to stack under your computer monitor than actually digest and apply. But policies in Kanban are defined very simply as the mechanisms, rules or processes that govern how a system works. By making these policies explicit, it becomes easy for others observing the system to understand it, and for those inside it to continually evaluate and improve the current mechanisms where necessary.

Here’s a typical example of a policy for a software development team using Kanban taken from this article by David Anderson:

If total WIP is 12 and we have a policy that 50% will be high priority then we want to ensure that 6 items are high priority.

Anybody studying this team’s board will immediately understand why there are 6 high priority items, and 6 items of a lesser priority.  Over time the team can assess whether this policy adequately addresses their operational needs or not, and change it to better fit the current circumstances.

More importantly, the moment someone in the team tries to pull a 7th high priority item, the team will be able to say “No! We already have 6 high priority items on the board.”  without having to think about and discuss the pros and cons of taking on a 7th item.

Taking the pain out of decisions

For me, this is the fundamental underlying importance of policies:

• Policies reduce the mental energy required to make snap decisions.
• Policies reduce the likelihood of giving in to a special request under duress.

By encapsulating recurring decisions in explicit policies, you spend the energy once on defining the acceptable outcomes for a given situation, effectively removing the stress of  spot decisions (so-called decision fatigue) and eliminating delays in getting work done efficiently.

Sticking to the rules sets you free 

But where does this fit in with families and life in general, you ask? Families don’t publish booklets with principles, rules and guidelines.

No, but every well-functioning family I know has a set of house rules that govern family behaviour and interaction. And everybody in the family clearly knows what they are and what the consequences are for breaking them, where applicable. Some families even have their rules written up in a visible spot in the house.  In fact, the more explicit and understood the house rules, the less energy the family spends in fighting the same battles, time and again, leaving them more space to get on with the simple joy of living.

And once you start looking around you, you realize how much of our lives is in fact built on explicit policies or rules. From the Ten Commandments that underpin ethical and moral decision-making if you’re a Christian, to simple rules for healthy living and parenting such as “don’t eat anything within 2 hours of going to sleep” or “bedtime on school nights is strictly 8 pm” – they’re all examples of explicit policies in action in our daily lives.

And without them, being human would be an even tougher challenge than it already is, sometimes.

What about you? Does your family have explicit policies or rules?  How do they make your live simpler? How did you arrive at them? Please share your thoughts in the Comments section.