Agile Holiday: The Family Shares Their Wishes And Also Concerns For A Robust Planning

Description

Home schooling made holidays a whole lot different for everyone. After staying home for most of the year, my kids Sophie (9) and Annabelle (6) were getting used to sleeping late and lazing around a couple of times a day on their free will. When every day is a holiday, it is hard to get the real holiday feeling. Approaching the festive season, all of us four (parents and kids) were confronted with the question: What should we do to make it a special? After our positive experience with the agile home-schooling, we wanted to try an agile holiday.

We used the agile framework to make a new product: a fun, rich-learning, relaxing holiday with friends and family! This became the vision for our product.

One of the core elements of agile is a self-driven team. Sophie and Annabelle were excited and motivated from the start. We decided to involve them in the planning of their own holiday. They needed to feel that they have the control over decisions and, therefore, should also commit to their plans. 

What do you need?

First of all, you need a product vision depending on your target. Maybe you and your family want to do a minimalist experiment and travel as long as possible with just EUR 500. This means you would go by bike, camp most of the time and always cook your own food. Planning would look different from the planning we did.

Secondly, you need paper, stickers and pens or crayons for your holiday backlog.

Let’s do it!

Here is how we planned our holidays.

Sprint 0: Defined Product Backlog

In sprint 0, our two little product owners planned their product backlog which shows their expectations for the holidays. They planned the things THEY wanted to do and, more importantly, learned to prioritize among many wishes. We even used another agile tool, a delegation board to define which tasks they can do by themselves, which tasks they needed help from us.

Sophie’s Product Backlog:

1. Fun holiday on a beach with family and friends
2. Go to the Great Wall with Annabelle
3. Everyday 20 – 30 min. reading time
4. Ice-cream eating with Annabelle
5. Cook with Theromix
6. Pirate ship play in Chaoyang Park
7. Play a new song on the piano
8. Trampoline in Chaoyang Park

Annabelle’s Product Backlog (with the translation from Sophie):

1. Watch a kids movie
2. Do sport
3. Painting
4. Go swimming with her shark toy
5. Read Micky Mouse book
6. Learn rope skipping
7. Read Donald Duck book
8. Holiday with family

We divided weeks into sprints. One sprint = one  week. We had 8 sprints in total. Some sprint had one item from the product backlog, and some sprint had two items. Accordingly, each sprint had a sprint backlog for the current tasks. At the beginning of each sprint – Monday mornings, Sophie and Annabelle selected items they wanted to do from the product backlog. Together we broke them down into smaller tasks for the sprint backlog.

For example, one of Sophie’s product backlog items was “to go to the Great Wall with Annabelle”. We divided it into smaller tasks for the sprint backlog:

• Find a hotel together near the Great Wall
• Ask (their) friends if they would like to come along
• Plan activities at the Great Wall
• Plan what to pack for the trip

Review & retrospective:

At the end of each sprint, we had a short meeting to review our backlog and give feedback. We discussed the questions:

• What did we do in the sprint?
• Did we finish all tasks in the sprint backlog? If not, why? Should we take more time for certain tasks?
• Are you satisfied with the results?
• What went well? What did not go well?
• How can we improve?

Needless to say, the girls were thrilled to be given such grown-up tasks and to have the ownership of their holidays. They rejoiced at the opportunity to be creative on their Kanban boards (in the beginning checking for changes every few minutes). They liked to see the completion of their tasks and the retro that followed afterwards. As the holiday came to an end, our little girls became real agile experts using the professional lingo and tools with ease. At the closing dinner party, they declared it the best holiday ever. Happy kids = happy parents. Mission accomplished! 

What makes this an agile parenting tool?

• The kids take ownership and have the possibility to co-shape the holiday according to their ideas and needs.
• The whole family has transparency about the planned activities and their completion.

Let us know your product idea for a successful holiday! Please inspire the rest of us and share it in the comments box!