When Wang Man and I were both employed at the German Chamber of Commerce in Beijing (that was like two decades ago), Wang Man regularly conducted Customer Satisfaction Surveys and that is when we both learned to ditch uneven scales because too often, respondents float to this wishy-washy middle ground, which is just not helpful if you want to learn where to improve.

An Agile Parent is an agile manager on Oxytocin

Brigitte Neumann

When we started practicing Agile Parenting, we simply took to our homes the mindset and methods that had worked well in this office. We had read books and articles about Design Thinking, SCRUM mastery and how to be a good Product Owner, e.g.

• The Professional Product Owner by Don McGreal and Ralph Jocham
• Nea Machina – die Kreativmaschine by Thomas and Martin Poschauko
• Management 3.0 by Jurgen Appelo

Description

In a way, we love the flexibility and the lack of dogma of the agile world. At the same time, this can be frustrating due to this lack of metrics for our learning journey. We decided to change this and to create an Agile Parenting Self-Assessment. To keep it simple, this covers three categories. First, please reflect on how your family may perceive you as a parent. Secondly, think which values you get across. To wrap it up, ask yourself how you manage your family.

What makes this an agile parenting tool?

Once you have taken the assessment, think about areas where you would like to improve. Never stopping to learn and to evolve is a genuine driving force which is characteristic for the agile community.

Please drop us a note in the comments section how well you can relate to the result and where the assessment tool can do with improvements. This is an MVP and it would be great to make it more mature with your help.

The post On a scale from 1 to 6 – how Agile Parent-ish are you? Are you ready to find out? appeared first on Agile Parenting.

According to the tech analysis blog Techspot from 2022, adults in the US check their phones a whopping 352 times a day, four times more than in 2019. Of course, Chinese easily top this since daily necessities like transferring the utility bill, paying at the market or hailing a taxi are all done via apps and mini-programs. Chinese mobile users spent, on average, 6.2 hours a day online on their mobile devices.

We are not going to chime into the usual lamenting about this fact of live. On the contrary, this makes our free, downloadable Wallpapers even more valuable.

Brigitte has taken inspiration from the Wallpapers available at the blog page of TheMinimalists who she has been following for years and always enjoyed being reminded of simple truths throughout the day.

How does it work?

For Android phones:

1. Download the picture you like best to your phone and open it in your phone’s Gallery app.
2. Tap the three dots in the top-right and select “Set as Wallpaper”.
3. Choose between using this photo as wallpaper for your home screen, lock screen, or both.

For Apple phones:

1. Download the picture you like best to your phone.

1. On your phone’s Home screen, touch and hold an empty space.
2. Tap “Wallpaper & style”. If you don’t see “Wallpaper & style,” tap “Wallpapers”.
3. Tap “Change wallpaper”. To use the downloaded Agile Parenting image, tap “My photos”.
4. At the bottom, tap “Set wallpaper” or “Done”.

Let’s do it!

We can’t wait spotting the first strangers in the subway or a coffee shop with the Agile Parenting wallpaper on their phones!

What makes this an agile parenting tool?

Enjoy the positivity, feel the connectedness and love being a parent! Try it out now. It is easy, it is for free and you can always change it back if needed.

The post Make the most out of your mobile phone addiction: Wallpapers for your regular dose of Parenting Om appeared first on Agile Parenting.

We regard Agile Parenting as a Startup – without a clear business purpose – yet. It could also become a movement. Let’s see where this takes us.

Anyway, it is never to early for some startup megalomania and to highlight this attitude we decided to get t-shirts printed. When we discussed the design with Sarita we decided that first of all the wearer must look stunning. This is not the case for the regular startup t-shirt. But, hey, of course we dare to be different.

The material is cozy organic cotton and all products come in sizes S,M or L and in a body-hugging style and a straight shape.

If you want to wrap yourself in the Agile Parenting style, drop us a message.

The post Agile Parenting in Style: Show the Spirit of Being a Parent in the Growth Zone appeared first on Agile Parenting.

Lapbooking is making mini-books covering details that you’ve studied. After making a variety of mini-books about a larger topic, it is a nice idea to put all the books together into a large folder. The finished product is called a lapbook because it’s large and covers your lap. Learn more here.

What do you need?

• carton
• paper, pens, pencils, crayons, glue, tape, sissors
• maybe magazines where you can rip out illustrations
• maybe a computer and a printer if you want to use materials you found online
• 30 min. to get your kid organized, started and into the lapbooking mood

Let’s do it!

1. Choose a topic with your kid – it could be anything from potato to Black Hole, from Confucianism to Egyptian history.
2. Choose different knowledge areas to set up the topics for the mini-books in the lapbook with your kid.
3. Decide with your kids which mini books they can do completely by themselves and for which they need your help. (You can use delegation board to visualize it)
4. Design, setup and complete the mini-books.
5. Put mini-books into the lapbook. Decorate the lapbook as you like.
6. Take time to discuss how the kids like to set up the framework of the lapbook before you start. Topics such as the timeline, how detailed you will go for the research can be discussed and aligned.
7. Take 10 min. to review the result every evening/morning before you start and make adjustments. For example, you can plan one mini book per day. This depends on the complexity of the mini book, you can adjust the time accordingly.
8. Tell your story: After all this hard work, now it’s time to present. You can showcase the lapbook together with your kid, or they can do it by themselves in front of the family, or you can take a video and you can share with us.

What makes this an agile parenting tool?

• Your kid is the owner of the activity. The parent is just the SCRUM master. No top-down instructions.
• In the end the kid has the opportunity to present the result. This is step is taken from Design Thinking.

Now, think for a moment! Have you listened to a controversial dinner conversation lately, like the benefits and risks of vaccinations, or female entrepreneurs in Africa? Did you discuss something in your family and came to the conclusion that it would be nice to know more about this topic like tulip flowers or Chinese silk? These would be perfect for a little lapbooking project. Do not forget to tell us how it went in the comment box below!

The post Lapbook: Create a Mini-Book of Your Learning, Present Ideas in a Tangible and Attractive Way appeared first on Agile Parenting.

My daughter Antonia enjoys playing Roblox with their best friend, who lives in Australia. In general, I think, playing computer games is part of a healthy childhood and it warms my heart when I hear Antonia’s and her friend’s voice when they discuss their moves in the MS Teams meeting they have in parallel to playing the game.

However, I try to limit my daughter’s screen time since there are so many other things to explore. Therefore, my daughter has less chance to accumulate credits, which are awarded by the game and she cannot purchase fancy outfits for her avatar, upgrade her virtual home or get better digital toys.

This frustrated her and we had to find a solution. First of all, she educated me in the workings of the game “Adopt Me” and I learned that you can either earn credits or purchase Robux with real money using the parents’ credit card.

I have to say, it looks like a complete waste of money to me, spending real money on tokens in a virtual world without getting anything physical in return. This said, I need to face the fact that I am not a 9-year old digital native. It might be me who is not comprehending things properly, not her.

Let’s do it!

We came up with the idea that she could still earn her purchasing power in the virtual world. Instead of accumulating riches by playing hour after hour by herself, she would complete tasks in the real world and I would reward her in exchange. Antonia claimed that she would need around 1300 Robux to fulfill her wishes, which cost around EUR 15.

Next, I laid out what I wanted her to do, which was:

1. Practice creative writing in German – which she dislikes
2. Experiment with the website toolbox I had installed on her ipad
3. Create content for that ipad. She had been toying with the idea of building up an animal lovers/activist community 😉
4. Help me in the household

Based on this list Antonia made a calculation, which would allow her to earn the required Robux within one week if she worked really hard.

These were her assumptions:

• For creating one piece of writing she would get 100 Robux.
• Experimenting with her website toolbox for one hour would be another 100 Robux.

Now comes the hard part…

These were the two hardest, most tedious and boring tasks. This is what “complexity” is to a 9-year-old, I assume.

• On top of this, she promised me to write three pieces of content for her website, which would cost me about 50 Robux each. She would probably need one hour for each of these texts including research but since this is something she enjoyed, it was “cheaper”.
• Helping in the household would be around 10 Robux per day for an unspecified amount of work. This was so little since she accepted the fact that this actually are duties she should not get paid for.

When I looked at the result, I realized that Antonia had naturally come up with a logic that resembled story points in a kind of reverse-engineering kind of approach. Agile (IT) project teams utilize story points as a metric to estimate effort. The rule is that the people who will do the work and know best what is easy and what is hard for them do the story point estimation. It takes the actual skill level and context of the team in account. It is important to highlight that the unit of measurement is not time. There is no clear definition of it or Excel tools for calculation. Story points are by nature unprecise and include qualitative aspects of a task and therefore always had looked a bit esoteric to me.

“Time needed” is not the right metric to assess enjoyable tasks and yucky stuff.

Now finally, I understood: A story in German, written according to a fixed structure and with no spelling mistakes allowed, is a pain and therefore must cost double of the inspirational task of composing a story about adorable animals in danger of extinction, illustrated with lovely pictures. This made total sense even if the time to do them might be exactly the same.

Story points are so confusing in real IT projects because they do neither help to predict billable hours nor delivery dates. Still, Antonia has applied something like it without prior knowledge. I suddenly realized where the power of story points lies. It is the fact that it acknowledges the struggle by an individual or team to do something well. This is an empowering experience and fair.

What makes this an agile parenting tool?

• Story points highlight the effort someone needs to get somewhere. At the same time, it reflects value which is directly linked to respect and appreciation.
• As always, communication and alignment are key. You might have a different idea about how hard something is than your team members. Only the one who does the job knows how much it costs her. This should be heard.
• Our usual metrics like time spent on a task, pages written for an essay, mark of a test, certificates do not necessarily reflect the amount of real learning. Agile parents value the process not just the result.

Please share with us your thoughts on metrics that reflect progress for your kids or your family. This could be hours NOT spent on the ipad, number of peaceful dinners per week without aggression and finger-pointing, times your son initiated to take a bath without you having to drag him there. What do you think? Please share your thoughts in the comment box.

The post Apply the Fuzzy Concept of “Story Points” to Your Kid’s Chores appeared first on Agile Parenting.

Wang Man is a KANBAN enthusiast and regularly transforms her home into SCRUMtopia. This is strongly motivated by the need of being super organized and, more importantly, having self-organized kids in order to juggle a business, a family, friends, time at the gym, and other interests.

Her two daughters have a KANBAN board to help them with the things they have to do when they come home from school and kindergarten.

What do you need?

You do not need much. Paper, stickers, pens, a location where you can stick everything on the wall.

1.List all things that need to be done from the moment you are entering the door at home. As always with agile, communication is key. If parents write household chores on stickers and kids have to execute, this is not agile. It is maybe pseudo-agile. (We see this a lot in the corporate context. You can do better than this 😉) It is important that you start with a broader idea, let’s say “We want to have dinner together and after that play or watch a movie three times a week. This is only possible if we free up mum’s time by doing things like clearing our snack box ourselves”. Based on this, kids can define tasks they will do to make this happen. They either write or draw to-dos.

2. Draw a Kanban board with three sections: To Do, Doing and Done

3. Paste the necessary to-dos on the Kanban board (in a sensible sequence)

4. Take 5 minutes before kids go to bed and adjust the to-dos according to the results and plan for tomorrow (review)

What makes this an agile parenting tool?

1.The Kanban board is the most widely used SCRUM tool.

2. It reflects key aspects of agile like transparency, responsibility and getting-stuff-done.

3. It is great to develop the sense of ownership in children (and adults alike).

Start today: Where do you want to see change in your family’s every day life? Please share with us in the comments section where the Kanban board could help to make family life better.

The post KANBAN Board: Wang Man’s Kids Use it to Organize Themseles After School appeared first on Agile Parenting.

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!

The post Agile Holiday: The Family Shares Their Wishes And Also Concerns For A Robust Planning appeared first on Agile Parenting.

When thinking about their holidays, every family member has different objectives. Furthermore, time and budget are limited. By playing this game, each parents and kids can create a rounded picture about their wishes and prioritize together.

What do you need?

Playing cards:

1. You can use a deck of playing cards and put stickers with activities and the respective points/”price” on them.
2. Or you can download our playing card template and write or draw on them.
3. Of course, you can always use post it stickers or any kind of paper if you want to keep it simple. Wang Man just thought playing cards creates a competitive setting which is a suitable frame for the haggling and bargaining which is at the core of this game.

Pens and crayons to write and draw on the cards

Coins, toy money, tokens. Each has the same face value.

Let’s do it!

First of all, all members make up their minds about what they want to do during the holidays.

Then you agree on the rules.

We suggest, each member gets 5 coins with a face value of 10 points each. For a family of 4, this means in total, you can purchase activities for 200 points.

As a next step, each family member gets empty cards and writes or draws (depending on the age and creativity) the activities they want to do on the cards. There is no limit to how many cards one may use. The writer of a card also indicate the “price” of the activity. There are three different price categories: 10 points for small, 20 points for medium and 30 points for large. Later on, there might be some discussions on the correct price. For instance, a child might value playing a game at 10 points. If the parents do not particularly enjoy playing it, the value might go up. Defining the correct t-shirt-size of a story is an art in any agile project and needs practicing. Here you can learn more about our experiences with story points, if you want. (link zu story point Artikel von Brigitte)

Once done, all cards are laid out in the middle of the table.

Now, the shortest player buys the first feature. Buy the activities that you value the most. Each time you buy one activity, you need to explain to the whole family why you want to buy this activity and what is the value for you.

Discuss and negotiate for expensive activities: You can of course pool your money together to buy activities, but how can you convince your family members to fund the activity you would like to do?

The game ends, when all family members are content with the activities they have bought. It’s OK for money to be left over at the end.

What makes this an agile parenting tool?

The whole group, parents and kids alike, have the following learning targets:

• Practice prioritization to find a good solution that suits everyone
• Manage your stakeholders
• Communicate effectively

These were Wang Man’s takeaways

1. The Holiday Planning game shows the prioritization approach that helps you to define what you really want from a long “wish list”, as your resources are limited.
2. It is a quick method to evaluate a large set of wishes.
3. It gives the members the opportunity to prioritize their desires as a family.
4. In the end, you receive a  high-level prioritized plan based on family members’ preferences, perceived value, and expectations,
5. It enhances your understanding of what your family members really want.

If you try this game, please share your experiences and takaways in the comment section below. Thank you and enjoy playing!

The post Holiday Planning Game with Playing Cards: Market Place For Activities During The Holidays appeared first on Agile Parenting.

(Competing) teams have to build tall towers with the provided resources. This game is a creative engineering task that requires planning but also experiment. The goal is to translate an idea into practice. As always in life, talking about something is much easier than doing it 😉 In the corporate environment, this is a classic fun team-building activity since it requires good communication to get it done quickely.

What do you need?

• One pack of spaghetti, shashlik sticks, toothpicks or straws
• One marshmallow per team
• One roll of scotch tape
• One scissors per team

Let’s do it!

Teams need to build a tower as high as possible with a marshmallow on top within a limited time, e.g. 5 minutes. The highest tower wins – the marshmallow is the measuring point.

In order to win, the tower needs to stand free on the floor or the table and it needs to stand longer than 10 sec before it collapses.

What makes this an agile parenting tool?

Participants can do a review after the activity and reflect about the result of their work:

• How many ways have we tried until we found the right way?
• What did you learn from the fails?
• What would you do differently when we play the game again?

Furthermore, participants can do a retrospective, reflecting more about the team dynamics:How did you support each other to make the tower?

• How did you support each other to make the tower?
• Did we have a good way to make decisions?
• Did we enjoy working on this together?

Play with us!

Do you know a similar activity that triggers discussions on how to enhance work results and communication? Please share your ideas with us and the agile parenting community and write them into the comments box.

The post Agile Game – Marshmallow Fun: Practice Review And Retrospective appeared first on Agile Parenting.