Family Planning goes Agile

Five years ago, I walked in to my first Agile conference and I remember thinking “It’s taken a group of techies to teach us how to speak to each other again.” Since then I have become rather smitten with Agile. Specifically, how we can apply the values, principles, and practices to positively transform our traditional organisations. In my view, when it comes to Agile there are concepts and practices that can be applied to leadership and teams, but will need to be somewhat adaptive in application. This is because we are not all building systems; meaning we can’t always define our MVP (Most Viable Product) clearly; we can’t always section our work into sprints; and we certainly can’t work independently of the organisational process that are in place. This way of ‘agile’ working is much easier for organisations just starting out or that are small enough to be this adaptable, but when we are looking at large established corporates we need to be agile in becoming Agile. (yes, the pun was intended).

But what has really melted my heart and sealed the deal for me when it comes to Agile practices is the ability to apply it to running a family. I came across this inspirational Ted Talk on Agile programming for your family by Bruce Feiler, when we were curating content for our Agile Academy.

In this talk he explores how Agile can be applied beyond business and software development to help families. It also offers an easy and fun way to understand what Agile management is. I hope you enjoy it and I would love to hear your feedback on how you’ve applied agile and some of the challenges you may have come across.