Motley says: "Use Scrum in my personal relationships?!? Don't be such a geek."
Summary
Motley: Use Scrum in my personal relationships? Don't be such a geek.
Maven: You can apply the same lessons as Scrum teaches to your personal relationships - lots of communication, planning, iteration, and retrospectives focusing on continuous improvement. Just translate the really hard stuff (relationships) to the what we geeks understand.
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[Context: It's Monday. Motley is not a very happy developer after spending the weekend with his girlfriend]
Maven: Hey, Mot. You look a little depressed today. Did you not have a good weekend?
Motley: Personal stuff. Leave me alone.
Maven: Ah, c'mon. Maybe I can help.
Motley: Dude - you write software for a living. You have no personal life. You don't know the first thing about relationships. Ah, crap. I already gave too much away.
Maven: Girl troubles. I see. What's the problem?
Motley: Ok, I'll humor you. I may as well tell someone my problems. It helps to get them off your chest. It's pathetic that I have to resort to you, however. Anyway, I have a great relationship with my girlfriend - usually. We are going through a rough patch. We haven't been communicating as much as we should, expectations are not being set appropriately, and I feel like we keep digressing to old behavior.
Maven: Typical problems in a more mature relationship. I remember you saying you live with her, so I presume it's mature. How about starting with some examples? What's the communication issue?
Motley: Wait a second. You see James listening again hoping for some blog material? Hah. Not getting anything this time. For once we are having a conversation about a topic that has nothing to do with software engineering! Sucker.
Maven: Knowing him he'll turn this into a software engineering topic somehow.
Motley: Anyway, one of the main issues in my relationship centers around chores. She has some responsibilities and so do I. The problem is that she does a poor job at the chores and I have to clean up and finish. It is frustrating.
Maven: It's your fault.
Motley: What do you mean it's my fault?!? She does the chores!
Maven: Have you sat down and communicated expectations you have for the chores? The two of you have not specified the completion criteria for the chores, so there is a misunderstanding of what needs to be done.
Motley: That sounds so robotic, dude. But, fine. I guess if we don't talk about expectations, that leads to issues. I'll have a chat with her about that.
Maven: What are the other problems?
Motley: Still related to chores, when she starts on something, it takes forever to finish it. She just bites off way too much at one time. And by the time it's done, it's too late to be useful. Yeah, yeah - you want an example. Well, she started working on the yard in mid-summer - bought all the plants, and by the time the plants were all in the ground it was fall and they died off shortly thereafter. Definitely not the way I would have done it.
Maven: Have you encouraged her to split the larger tasks in smaller pieces? Instead of doing one big task she could do a bunch of smaller tasks and adjust as needed. If the yard is taking much longer than expected, she could adjust what plants to put in the ground to be more seasonal.
Motley: Probably not a bad suggestion. I'll bring it up. While I am in a whine mode, another thing I am not happy about is that many chores get overlooked. Taking out the garbage is a regular thing - if you don't do it, you miss garbage day and have to put up with a nasty odor for a week. Don't you just love the smell of two week old rotten vegetables?
Maven: Perhaps what you two should do is have a brief discussion at the start of the week to come up with a shared to-do list of tasks you need to accomplish. Think of it as a family meeting or something.
Motley: Have you ever had a relationship? Never mind - I withdraw the question. Your suggestion is way too formal! She will likely laugh in my face.
Maven: It doesn't need to be formal, and it goes back to setting expectations. If you clarify the plan for the week, you will save yourself some stress and headaches later. Write it down so there is no confusion, and then you get the pleasure of checking off the task when it is complete, as we talked about previously in our checklists conversation.
Motley: I am not going to bring it up as a "family meeting", but the concept is reasonable.
Maven: If you do a daily check-in as well, you ensure that things are kept on track for the week. Just bring it up in everyday conversation.
Motley: I am afraid that if we take these suggestions that we will be back to our same old selves at the end of the first week.
Maven: Change is hard. We have talked about that too. When you make up your plan for chores for the next week, think back about the previous week and talk about how you can make the next week better. Scrap the to-do list if it isn't working. Make more time to talk if that's what it takes. Additionally, have a chat about what went well, and continue to do those things.
Motley: I don't know if I can sell all of this to her. I am obviously going to have to rephrase everything that you have just said in a way that she can understand, and not sound so ridiculously formal. All of this thinking sounds familiar though, but I am having a hard time placing it.
Maven: At this point you likely think I am completely off my rocker (crazy), but in a previous relationship my girlfriend and I were seeing a counselor and he recommended everything above. I thought it sounded very familiar to the work environment, and then it hit me like a tire on the side of the head - it's Scrum! Who knew that you could apply Scrum concepts to your personal life. I didn't.
Motley: Scrum. Yeah, I thought that sounded familiar. You just ran over planning, the meaning of "done", doing work iteratively, the daily check-in meeting, updating your backlog, and retrospectives. You are such a geek. You did say "previous relationship" with your girlfriend, so I am assuming this didn't work. Why bother?
Maven: Don't be a wise guy. Apply all the stuff we just talked about to both your relationships and to software engineering and you will be fine. Just remember to apply some right brain thinking when you use it with your girlfriend.
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Maven's Pointer: Building and maintaining relationships is often hard for techno-geek logic-based beings like software developers. It is amazing how the metaphors that we apply in everyday software development also apply to life in general. The counselor in the story above had no idea whatsoever what "Scrum" was, but he presented all the concepts in his language. Many concepts that we leverage as developers are applicable to other domains and disciplines. You just have to look for it.
Maven's Resources:
- Yeah, right. This topic is pretty far out there. If you find any related resources, be sure and let me know!
