Scrumy FatherThe guide / Page 4 of 5
The family sprint lifecycle
How a family week moves from planning (inception) through daily iterations (construction) to the weekly release and retrospective (transition).
Inception
- Initial parenting, planning, and organization
- Initial family vision and funding
- Kids roadmap, parents roadmap
- Envision the future of a stress-free week
- Work schedule, workout schedule, date night
- School, swim class, and other scheduled classes
- Identify, prioritize, and select special activities
- Initial requirements and goals plan
- One or more short tantrums
- Scheduled start time versus actual arrival time
Construction
- Daily items, with the highest-priority ones first
- Iteration backlog: tasks and snacks
- Iteration planning session to select kids’ items and identify parent tasks
- Daily work and a daily coordination meeting
- Consumable solution
- Weekly review and retrospective: chat with the family to set strategy for next week and learn from your experiences
- Awarding and feedback: update goals and star charts
- Family viability (several): financial, homework, schedule, extra help, and so on
- Many accidents producing a lesson learned in life for the child or parent
Transition
- Sufficient functionality
- Baby sitter ready?
- Delighted parent enjoying wine
- Release the solution into life
- Operate and support the solution in life
- Try again, and agree to try next week
- How can homework improve? How can we arrive on time? How can we eat better?
A typical day
- Wake up kids
- Make breakfast
- Pack lunch
- Dress kids
- Drive 1st kid to school
- Drive 2nd kid to school
- Shower
- Plan dinner
- Pick up the house
- Pick up kid #2
- Parent for 2 hrs
- Pick up kid #1
- Go to after-school activities
- Help with homework
- Make dinner
- Pajamas
- Brush teeth
- Book reading
- Kids to bed @ 8pm
- Check messages
- Kid #2 to bed again @ 11pm
- Kid #2 to bed again @ 3am
Want to try it at home? The free star chart template is a one-page printout.
Download the star chart (PDF)