Agile Dad

So on the 8th of November 2017 I became a dad for the first time. Now you can imagine all the lovely emotions that come through when you have gone through the planning phase, estimation phase, implementation phase, continuous deployment phase and finally the little one has gone live and is in production (I was still talking about the baby). You all of a sudden realise that life changes, and its not a bad set of changes but it is changes none the less.

Techies will be used to getting home from work, popping up the laptop and cracking on with some new tech or other, having dinner and maybe some gaming happens and then you kind of yawn and think to yourself “yeah I need to sleep” and off you rock to bed and catch some sleep.

I have learnt that in reality with a new born this is not the case, your whole world is now focused on a little baby that doesn’t talk, doesn’t really move “initially” and all he wants is food and sleep, and this is where the agile part comes in to play. You have to be on your toes and you have to pick your priority correctly, you have to debug the situation and if remedial action is required then how is it patched.

And after a few random paragraphs which you probably thought, what the hell is he banging on about, well being a parent is like following a kanban methodology. You see, you can not predict what your little one will do (thats waterfall out the window), whether he will wee his nappy, or if he wants to bite a toy because he is teething or if he is hungry, so you take it as it comes. Highest priority first and don’t try and complete too many tasks at once. Set a WIP limit, don’t try and change nappies and also at the same time iron a shirt. Get one thing done well, and move on to the next task.

If agile is working for you at work, then adapt it to home life. Tweak it to what you need, when you need it and how you need it. Dont think that there is only one way of doing something.

Think outside the box, you can be agile in life just as much as you are at work.

Speaking of which….ill go tidy up some toys off the floor.