I’m half time on paternity leave so this blog entry will have a touch of my life at home with my 1-year-old son Oliver.
Even though they can’t speak, those young citizens have a lot of power since their screaming can make a father do anything they want and do it now. Similarities to eager product owners are not too far away 😉
But what has daily home life with Agile to do? A lot I would say but this time I will concentrate on the technical debt or debt in general and having releasable as part of definition of done.
Let’s say you choose the easy way out all the time. When your child wants food you cook and when your child likes to play you leave everything to go playing. What you leave behind is dishes and a messy home. The next time it’s time to cook it will take longer time since you first need to dish some pots and you have less free space left to use while cooking (because of the dirty pots). The longer you wait before dishing the slower you will be cooking and more frustrated will your child be. And when your baby goes to sleep and it’s time for you to catch up on emails and writing in your blog you can’t because you have to take care of your home first. And since your home is so messy your energy flies out of the window the very first moment you look at the mess so cleaning will take plenty of time because of the lower efficiency or should I say lower motivation. Oh yes, it also takes longer time to dish when the scraps of food in the pots are stuck which is not the case when you dish immediately.
Another way and what I will say a better way is to always dish when you have cooked and clean the table when you are done eating. Every step takes longer time but the total will be faster. There’s no debt that slows you down, you feel good and you can release whenever you want. So now I have time to write this :-).
Good luck dishing.
/Tomas Björkholm
