We have been enjoying great success applying Agility at work.
In fact, we are trying to apply principles and practices of Agility to various departments within the company. However, when Felix Figuereo, a manager narrated his experience of applying principles of Agility for Bible study, I was thrilled. Here is his email:
“My family and I, my wife, my 13 year old, my 9 year old and my 5 year old have been conducting bible studies at home Wednesday evenings for years now. After sitting through your Agile process class - I had a thought of applying what I had learned with you to my home bible study session. It just might work.
I got home and quickly pulled out some post it notes, wrote down five tasks - Prayer, song selection, reading, developing the topic, conclusion.
I then explained the new process we would go through to get through the bible study in an orderly and timely manner, and they agreed.
We began with my 5 years old picking first - he chose prayer. He likes to do that and heard the other family members who objected to him doing it. We over ruled any objections that were not valid or real or based on opinion. Next, my 9 year old picked song selection, and 13 year old reading the bible.
The interesting part of the evening came when my wife’s turn came to pick and she picked developing the topic. At her selection all the kids screamed out “NO WAY MOM!” and when asked why they objected - the raised the point that “mommy takes too long.” something which, by the way - I had voiced to her in the past but she did not accept it coming from me. She argued at first that she did not take long, but the kids insisted that she did. She agreed finally to keep it to five minutes at which we were all in favor of. I got the conclusion part with no objections.
Gunjan - like I said before, we have done this for years and I was at a point lately where I dreaded doing it, because there was always strife about who did what, and the kids getting tired quickly as the session dragged on. But, last night was nothing short of fun, productive, instructive, qualitative, and plain old good for us for once!
I am looking forward to using Agile techniques in things like planning and preparing for a family trip, going to the super market - as we buy our kids school lunch, and for simple household chores which would require all our family’s hands or support.
Thanks man. If you have some of the process documented, please send me some attachments. I would love to continue to read up on Agile process :0)”.
It is really interesting to see how simple principles like self-accepted responsibility scale everywhere.
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Gunjan, you have provided another example of how agile processes work in a group setting. In my view, family situations provide the greatest challenge as “family history” and role expectation often clouds what should be the clear objectives of the group. In fact, one night a week, my wife, sons and I have a small group of others at our home to have a time of prayer, Bible study, and singing. Often, in that setting, as with your wife, the group provides a collective wisdom, that once explained by group memebers, over comes the misinformation or ill informed ideas of other memebers. Again, another example of agile principles at work.