I know it has been a little while since I have posted an article, but there has been a good reason. My family and young children have been going a bit stir crazy with the lockdowns and social distancing over the past few months, so my wife and I decided to put all that untapped energy to good use.  We have been focusing a LOT of attention the past 4 months on designing and building a deck plus beginning the arduous task of finishing our basement. Mind you, I did not opt to go with a turnkey solution, but rather, with some help from carefully selected experts, I am subcontracting along with much effort from your’s truly wherever I felt like I could expand my skill set.

The tasks have been challenging to say the least, but they have also been a fun and exciting creative outlet for both of us and the children over the course of the summer months. My kids now know way more than I anticipated about construction, framing, plumbing, electrical and so on as we work through each phase.

As I have been working on this, I am reminded of how much transformation really fascinates me.  There is nothing like envisioning a desired concept and then, from the ground up, determining piece by piece how to architect the entire solution from start to finish. Even the concept of working with the various experts for bids and ideas and then incorporating a hybrid model of those into a carefully executed plan step-by-step to deliver the end result is thrilling, to say the least.

This gave me pause to just return to some of the basic core tenants of what I do daily at work and apply them in the home construction area:

  1. Employ design thinking at every stage – Consider the family pain points and what you are trying to solve. How will you make things better and provide solutions for everyone to meet their individual needs, while still solving for the collective goals? Are you continually testing with the users to confirm the design still solves the issues and provides delight?
  2. Use agile development – Develop your story of what you want to happen at each stage. Break that down into details and eventually the building blocks that can be dealt with in an iterative, sprint-based approach with regular checkpoints to make sure things are progressing as expected. Use each checkpoint to revalidate feedback based on the design thinking goals.
  3. Track your Net Promoter Score (NPS) trend – I use NPS all the time at work and it is no different at home with a construction project.  I need to validate with my wife and especially my 10, 7 and 5 year olds that things are improving and moving along at the desired rate and expected outcomes.  If for some reason it is not, stop, assess what your are doing and put together a recovery action plan.
  4. Make use of the feedback loop: listen and act – NPS is a great quick gauge, but nothing replaces good old customer feedback. Ask for regular input and be willing to recognize shortcomings and adjust as necessary. This should become a regular part of each iteration, allowing for an improved overall outcome.

By simply applying these core development principles in our deck project, we achieved an outcome that far exceeded our expectation and I’m shooting for the even better result to the basement efforts.

I hope you and your family are doing well during this challenging 2020 and using the opportunity to find renewed excitement in some areas of your life and vocation.