When people actually ask for a system back, you know it created value.

Six years ago, the pandemic turned our worlds upside down. 

At the time, my kids were 10, 7, and 5. One day they were at school; the next, they were learning from home. 

My husband and I were both working full-time, so suddenly our family needed a way to coordinate five people's competing needs: work, school, dependencies, frustrations, and priorities. 

So we borrowed something from our professional lives and brought it home: Scrum. 

For those unfamiliar with Scrum, it is an approach built around planning, short check-ins, visibility into obstacles and priorities, and regular adaptation. 

Our entire family participated in weekly "sprint planning" and daily Scrum meetings. 

Yes, even our 5-year-old was an active participant. 

Fast forward six years. 

As our now-teenagers prepare to go back to school, they have asked to bring back the weekly planning and daily check-ins. 

That got me thinking. 

Good operating practices survive outside their original context. 

Scrum originated in a very different environment, but the underlying principles traveled: visibility, coordination, clear priorities, identifying obstacles, and adapting together. 

For years, I thought I had simply brought something from work into our family. 

But the bigger lesson came six years later:  

When people actually ask for a system back, you know it created value.