The Secret of Happy Families? Regulating (Re)Productive Labor with Agile Family Management

In 2013, a book entitled The Secrets of Happy Families made it on to the New York Times bestseller list.1Bruce Feiler, The Secrets of Happy Families: Improve Your Mornings, Tell Your Family History, Fight Smarter, Go Out and Play, and Much More, New York, HarperCollins, 2013a. Written by New York Times parenting columnist Bruce Feiler, the book is “a blueprint for modern families” that looks to “revolutionize your view of what makes families happy”, aiming to “improve your mornings, tell your family history, fight smarter, go out and play, and much more”.2Ibid. While the book was “inspired by cutting-edge techniques gathered from experts in the disciplines of science, business, sports, and the military”, the core idea behind the book is the application of Agile software development processes to the family, a practice that Feiler refers to as “Agile Family Management”.3Ibid.

Agile is an umbrella term that refers to a family of software development techniques including Extreme Programming, Scrum, DSDM (Dynamic Systems Development Method), Adaptive Software Development, Crystal, Feature-Driven Development, Pragmatic Programming, and others.4For a primer on different Agile methods, see QA Symphony, “Agile Methodology: The Complete Guide to Understanding Agile Testing”. Available at: https://www.qasymphony.com/blog/agile-methodology-guide-agile-testing/ [accessed September 16, 2018]. While each of these methods have their own variations and specifications, the core idea behind all of them is to promote adaptive, iterative, and evolutionary software development. Agile methods are a response to “Waterfall” methods, which revolve around top-down management, large project scopes, long timelines, heavy documentation, and perceived micro management. Agile methods, on the other hand, involve self-managing teams working in a task-oriented manner on short timescales. Both work and process are reviewed at regular intervals, and workers and teams are encouraged to accept change as a constant. Agile software techniques have become highly popular as a production methodology with uptake and adoption by corporations in over 100 countries, from Azerbaijan to Nigeria. For some Agile practitioners, however, adoption isn’t solely relegated to the workplace.

In North America, some Agile enthusiasts began incorporating Agile processes into the family setting in order to “form a highly effective iterative model of management for their home life”5David Starr and Eleanor Starr, “Agile Practices for Families: Iterating with Children and Parents”, p. 1. Available at: http://pluralsight-free.s3.amazonaws.com/david-starr/files/PID922221.pdf [accessed September 16, 2018]. and develop “a system to change and react to family chaos in real time.”6Feiler, The Secrets of Happy Families, p. 5. Inspired by these families and the success of Feiler’s book, Agile Family Management became a hot topic in the business and tech press. With article titles like “Why You Should Run Your Family Like A Business”, and “Treat Your Kids Like A Team of Agile Software Developers And Lower Your Family Stress”, press outlets including NPR, the Harvard Business Review, the Wall Street Journal, Business Insider, and Lifehacker were overwhelmingly enthusiastic about the prospect of what Feiler describes as “taking solutions from the workplace and transferring them to the home”.7Bruce Feiler, “Family, Inc.”, The Wall Street Journal, February 10, 2013. Available at: http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887323452204578288192043905634 [accessed December 4, 2018]. See also: Max Nisen, “Why You Should Run Your Family Like A Business”, Business Insider, February 12, 2013. Available at: http://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-apply-a-management-strategies-to-a-family-2013-2 [accessed December 4, 2018]; Whitson Gordon, “Treat Your Kid Like A Team Of Agile Software … Continue reading

The ethnographic work of Silicon Valley anthropologist J.A. English-Lueck illustrates that the incorporation of workplace values and systems into the family and home has been taking place in technologically-oriented communities for decades, where “the structure of goal, milestone, and evaluation used in high-tech work is superimposed into every aspect of life”.8J. A. English-Lueck, Cultures@Silicon Valley, Palo Alto, Stanford University Press, 2002, p. 74. However, the mainstream popularity of Feiler’s book and the resonance of Agile Family Management in the popular press indicates a shift: the application of technological management practices within the family is no longer a fringe practice relegated to “dogmatic agile zealots”, but a proposed solution for all families to achieve happiness.9Starr and Starr, “Agile Practices for Families”, p. 1. This paper explores the cultural dynamics that have contributed to the rise of Agile Family Management, as well as why it is seen as “inevitable” that people – certain people, at least – would “start taking these tools home to their families.”10Bruce Feiler, “Bruce Feiler: Agile Programming – For Your Family”, 2013c. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6oMG7u9HGE [accessed September 16, 2018]. It will argue that the presence of Agile Family Management in popular discourse can be attributed to the infiltration of corporate logics into all areas of life, a state of affairs connected to the rise of what Melissa Gregg calls “work’s intimacy”, encouraged by the widespread adoption of networked technologies.11Melissa Gregg, Work’s Intimacy, Cambridge, Polity, 2011. This paper will also argue that Agile Family Management constructs a very specific view of what a “happy family” is (or should be), a view that is very narrow in scope and is influenced by historical myths. Finally, it will discuss some of the implications of treating reproductive labor as productive labor through the incursion of workplace values and practices into the familial realm.

Agile Family Management and the Ethos of Instrumentality

Agile development and Agile Family Management are products of Silicon Valley. Silicon Valley is not only a geographic location but also a cultural and socioeconomic imaginary that lionizes creativity, efficiency, networking, innovation, and entrepreneurship.12English-Lueck, Cultures@Silicon Valley.

After ten years of ethnographic research in Silicon Valley, J.A. English-Lueck concluded that work was “the lodestone of Silicon Valley life”.13Ibid., p. 22. No matter what questions English-Lueck and her team asked, they would get answers about work. “Work is a center of discourse”, English-Lueck concluded. “Work matters and workplaces matter”.14Ibid. The technological saturation of the Silicon Valley lifestyle has resulted in an approach to life that English-Lueck refers to as the “ethos of instrumentality”.15Ibid., p. 77. She argues that instrumental reasoning, “the kind of reasoning that calculates the relationship of means to ends”, is core to both the production and the use of technology.16Ibid., p. 42. However, in technological communities, these instrumental logics do not remain at the office, but are also expressed in “courtship, child-rearing, and interpersonal relationships”.17Ibid., p. 44. The ethos of instrumentality that permeates Silicon Valley culture has a technological problem-solving perspective at its root; even family and civic life are subjected to a logic of work that involves “setting goals and objectives, collecting the skills and services needed to meet the objectives, and producing a concrete ‘deliverable’”.18Ibid., p. 68.

This ethos of instrumentality is at the core of Agile Family Management. It is a system of process that looks to solve the “problem” of family chaos by implementing workflow solutions that result in the deliverable of a “happy family”. To achieve this deliverable, Feiler sets out three key tasks: “Improve Your Family’s Daily Routine”, “Define Your Family Brand” and “Narrate Your Family’s History”.19Ibid. The core influence of Agile software methods can be seen in “Improve Your Family’s Daily Routine”, which translates the Agile principles of self-organization, regular check-ins, and short time scales into a family-friendly format. The three steps Feiler suggests for improving the daily routine are creating a morning checklist, scheduling a family meeting, and following the Agile Family Manifesto. The point of the morning checklist is to make children responsible for getting themselves ready for school in the morning, helping them “exert greater cognitive control over their lives” and improving their “self-discipline, avoiding distractions, and weighing the pros and cons of their choices.”20Feiler, The Secrets of Happy Families, p. 32.

The second item on “Improve Your Family’s Routine”, scheduling a family meeting, aims to allow families to assess what is and is not working in the family. For Feiler, the family meeting has six steps: “1.) Ask; 2.) Share; 3.) Connect; 4.) Celebrate Success; 5.) Solve Problems; 6.) Make Magic”.21Bruce Feiler, “The Happy Families Toolkit”, 2013b, p. 7. Available at: https://www.brucefeiler.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Happy-Families-Toolkit-1.pdf [accessed November 27, 2015]. Feiler asserts that the key to achieving these six items is by asking the “right” questions, which are “1.) What went well in our family this week? 2.) What didn’t go well? 3.) What will we agree to work on in the week ahead?”22Ibid.

For Feiler, the family meetings were “the single most impactful idea we introduced into our lives since the birth of our children”, responsible for “transforming” the relationship that he and his wife had with their children and each other in a mere 20 minutes a week.23Feiler, The Secrets of Happy Families, p. 18.

The final step in improving the daily family routine involves following the “Agile Family Manifesto”, which requires family members to “commit to constant improvement – innovate and practice, practice, practice”.24Feiler, “The Happy Families Toolkit”, p. 7. It provides the following guide for the Agile family:

  1. “Solutions exist: Don’t rely solely on a family expert; talk to anyone who’s an expert in making groups run smoothly. […]
  2. Empower the children: teach them executive skills by allowing them to take a role in their own upbringing. Let them plan their own time, set weekly goals, evaluate their own progress, suggest rewards, and set appropriate punishments.
  3. Parents aren’t perfect: break free from the all-knowing parent and give everyone an equal say.
  4. Build in flexibility: Evaluate and adapt – and always remember it’s okay to change.”25Ibid.

Beyond the pervasive use of corporate management language, it is in the Manifesto that the biggest influence of corporate tech culture can be seen. Here, the family is positioned as a self-managing team with a horizontal power structure. Unlike the traditional “Waterfall” family structure where dictates come from parents at the top, all family members have “equal opportunity” to contribute. Children learn “executive skills” in both the cognitive and corporate sense as they apply the logic and practice of self-management, setting goals and objectives, producing deliverables on schedule, and facing consequences if their obligations are not met. When faced with obstacles, the family is urged to rely on research and ingenuity to find the answer. In this paradigm, there are no problems without solutions, no matter how intractable or structural, and all family members are expected to contribute, independent of their capabilities.

The framework of Agile Family Management is based in corporate group dynamics, where functioning without ‘friction’ is the ultimate goal. Citing Harvard researcher Salvador Minuchin, Feiler asserts that operating with minimal stress and being “rapidly adaptable” is “the most important characteristic of families”.26Feiler, The Secrets of Happy Families, p. 19. However, getting all ‘stakeholders’ on board with this vision can be a challenge. In an “influential 2009 white paper”27Ibid., p. 18. documenting their family’s practices, software engineer David Starr and his wife Eleanor Starr explained that, “Teamwork makes family life more pleasant for everyone and fundamentally defines a healthy family. However, parents know that group commitment is extremely difficult to manifest in a group of myopic, self-interested children.”28Starr and Starr, “Agile Practices for Families”, p. 2. From this perspective, applying Agile techniques is the most efficient way to address this motivational “issue” and improve “behaviors and satisfaction with being part of a family team”.29Ibid. p. 6. From the parental perspective, the Agile lifestyle has two beneficial outcomes: a family that is closer and functions more smoothly. As the Starrs explain, “While increased productivity is a valued outcome of this process, the real value has been in the increased communication between family members.”30Ibid.

In Counterproductive, Melissa Gregg explains that for middle-class users, productivity-oriented practices and tools offer “a reassuring if topical salve for a period of perceived ontological volatility” characterized by instability, improvisation, and a relentless pace.31Melissa Gregg, Counterproductive, Durham, Duke University Press, 2018, p. 6. Given that Agile Family Management is meant as a solution for family lives with exactly these characteristics, its appeal amongst certain social groups is perhaps not so surprising. However, these programs are more than simple suggestions for making things run smoothly; they are moral discourses in checklist form. Eva Illouz argues that early self-help texts made access to social mobility dependent on “the exercise of virtue obtained by the combined effect of volition and moral spine”, and this ethos is at the heart of both Agile Family Management and Silicon Valley culture more broadly.32Eva Illouz, Cold Intimacies: The Making of Emotional Capitalism, Cambridge, Polity, 2007, p. 41. As English-Lueck notes,

“The cognitive infiltration of technology goes far deeper than a few amusing metaphors. People transfer the engineering and entrepreneurial approaches to their understanding of the social world. ‘Instrumentality’ and ‘economic rationality’ are philosophical assumptions of engineering that are recast into a notion of social efficiency […] They stop being qualities of technical reasoning and become virtues in and of themselves. ‘Useful’, ‘efficient’, and ‘good’ merge into a single moral concept.”33English-Lueck, Cultures@Silicon Valley, p. 75.

Until recently, this moral framework of pervasive efficiency has been primarily relegated to technologically-saturated communities; however, as the presence of Agile Family Management in popular discourse suggests, these values are now infiltrating the mainstream, primarily due to changes in the workplace and levels of technological adoption.

Over the past two decades, creative, information-based work has become the norm for educated white-collar workers, with 72 per cent of university graduates going into STEM, business, finance, law, arts and entertainment, media, healthcare, and education jobs.34Richard Florida, “Where to Find A Creative Class Job in 2020”, City Lab, March 2, 2012. Available at: http://www.citylab.com/work/2012/03/where-creative-class-jobs-will-be/1258/ [accessed December 4, 2018]. The proliferation of networked technologies such as mobile phones and laptops have transformed Western culture and life to the point that the lives of most white-collar workers in 2018 resemble the lives of the tech workers documented by English-Lueck in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Technologically-enabled and oriented work is now a lodestone for most of Western culture, and as such, has paved the way for a new value structure.

“Life Is A Series of Projects”: The Primacy of Work

English-Lueck contends that there were several factors that contributed to the ethos of instrumentality that began to pervade Silicon Valley culture in the 1990s and early 2000s. The first was the performativity and theater of work life. “Creative work is notoriously hard to monitor”, she notes, “[s]o people make a great show of working”.35English-Lueck, Cultures@Silicon Valley, p. 23. Dedication to the job is demonstrated through long hours and the discussion of work problems after working hours are done. The goal, English-Lueck asserts, is “enhanced performance”, an objective that “seeps out of the workplace into other areas of people’s lives”, including intimate relationships.36Ibid. English-Lueck explains that:

“Relationships are also transformed into products; people ‘work’ on their relationships, making them projects with goals. ‘Working’ on one’s parenting, or on one’s romantic relationships, demonstrates an approach toward family and education that mirrors the practice of an engineer in the workplace. Life is a series of projects.”37Ibid., p. 33.

A major factor in blurring the boundaries between work and home was the technical capacity to work from home that was facilitated by the domestic adoption of networked technologies. As junior-level tech workers in Silicon Valley were given access to cellular phones, pagers, and laptops that connected to work email, it began bringing work into the home in ways that were previously possible only to high-level white-collar executives with access to answering services and home offices with expensive equipment. Referring to these technologies as “umbilical cords attached to the office”, workers expressed concern that work would “invade” their home lives, creating circumstances where they would be “available to whoever wants to call at any time”.38Ibid., p. 69. Furthermore, employees anticipated that the job of setting boundaries between work and home life would fall to them. One engineering executive presciently warned that information technology could “create a scenario that work could become a twenty-four-hour experience” and that it would be “dependent on you and your own self-discipline to separate the church and the state”.39Ibid., p. 89.

Fast forward a decade, and the circumstances that characterized the working lives of Silicon Valley tech employees in the mid-1990s have become standard issue for white-collar workers globally. In her late 2000s ethnography of office life in Brisbane, Australia, Melissa Gregg documented the impact that “presence bleed” – the incursion of work into intimate spaces – had on the lives and relationships of ordinary white-collar workers.40Gregg, Work’s Intimacy, p. 15. The day-to-day circumstances that Gregg describes eerily echo the lives of English-Lueck’s Silicon Valley denizens, despite the fact that the majority of the workers Gregg studied were not tech industry employees. Gregg argues that the “dominant register for modern relationships” is the capitalist marketplace, and that thanks to the affordances of networked technologies that connect the workplace to the home, there has been a shift in values and expectations that have transformed the workplace, the home, and their relation to each other.

One key shift, Gregg argues, is the conversion to “work-centered identities and cultures”. Similar to the instrumental concept of “enhanced performance” that governed the lives of English-Lueck’s Silicon Valley employees, Gregg argues that “paid employment is the most compelling demonstration of virtue, accomplishment, and self-identity that society makes available” in our current moment.41Ibid., p. 13. However, the validation and achievement offered by this work relies on a highly self-regulatory and arguably panoptic mode of existence. Gregg’s participants were subject to a “constant stream of requests to assess their own productivity in compliance with efficiency targets”, a process that resulted in the internalization of disciplinary techniques such as self-monitoring and individual goal-setting.42Ibid., p. 24. Gregg contends that “The autonomy of salaried work comes at a price: to constantly prove responsibility” while simultaneously demonstrating “flexibility” and a “capacity to deal with change”.43Ibid. However, it is not the omnipotent boss that is the target audience of these efforts, but “the team”, a “mythically egalitarian playing field in which all colleagues work together, sharing responsibility for the organization”.44Ibid., p. 74.

It is not too difficult to see the many parallels between the core tenets of the contemporary white-collar workplace and the discourses (and vocabulary) invoked in Agile Family Management. The family is a “team” where all members share responsibility on an equal playing field; change is seen as a constant and “flexibility” a virtue; each family member is encouraged to set their own goals, self-monitor, and self-assess. It is in these parallels that we can see why and how Agile Family Management is proposed as a New York Times bestselling solution for families to achieve happiness: it clearly mimics the logics and behaviors that white-collar workers have been encouraged to internalize and perform in the workplace.

Gregg asserts that “the home is the place where laboring identities are produced and reproduced on an individual and generational scale”, and that part of growing up as children of work-oriented parents is being privy to (and internalizing) the habits and practices that are “necessary to secure their destiny as middle-class professionals”.45Ibid., p. 136. In this way, Agile Family Management is simply a more explicit methodology for inculcating future workers with middle-class professional values; namely, that productivity is the key to satisfaction in all registers of life, and that ultimate fulfillment is to be found in passionate and creative work. As Gregg warns, however, the “fantasy of challenging, satisfying work” is a dangerous trap that results in perpetual labor:

“When iPads and smartphones function as the utopian signifiers of what it means to live the good life, freedom no longer entails liberation from labor. It is rather to be found in the recognition and release of personal productivity in an ever growing number of locations, with technology a mere conduit.”46Ibid., p. 170.

Identity and the Good Life: What Does A “Happy Family” Look Like?

While perpetual labor may sound onerous and unappealing to most, Gregg argues that for well-paid employees who enjoy their work, the concept of work-life balance is based on a false dichotomy; only when work is alienating is the balance of “life” required.47Ibid., p. 17.Furthermore, some find the intimate realm to be more laborious than that of employment; citing Hochschild, she points out that “the work world offers a range of consolations when one’s private life may demand more effort and less reward than the clearly defined, routine satisfactions of paid pursuits.”48Ibid., p. 17. Indeed, Agile Family Management is predicated upon the idea that the work environment is more streamlined and satisfying than the disorder of family life, and that true success and satisfaction can be gained by shaping one in the image of the other.

However, despite “a whole apparatus of cultural incentives” that have pushed this idea into the mainstream cultural zeitgeist, only a very narrow swath of individuals are included in this particular view of success.49Ibid., p.171. In his TED talk, Feiler explained that “the last 50 years has seen a revolution in what it means to be a family, describing “blended families, adoptive families, nuclear families living in different houses, divorced families living in the same house”.50Feiler, “Bruce Feiler: Agile Programming – For Your Family”. Despite the differences in their circumstances, Feiler asserts that “nearly everyone is overwhelmed by the chaos of family life”.51Ibid. Although Feiler pays lip service to the various types of family units that have purportedly emerged over the past half-century, a closer analysis of the materials written about Agile Family Management – whether manuals, toolkits, books, press articles, or blogs – reveal a very specific construction of the family that is incredibly narrow in scope.

Historian Stephanie Koontz explains that the social construction of the “traditional family”, particularly the traditional nuclear family in the “golden age” of the 1950s, is an “ahistorical amalgam of structures, values, and behaviors that never coexisted in the same time and place”.52Stephanie Koontz, The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap, New York, Basic Books, 2000, p. 34. She further notes that in this particular vision, the husband and wife are positioned as “friends who patiently devise ways to let the children learn by trial-and-error”, prizing themselves on the “modernity” of parent-child relations and denigrating ideas about child raising that are perceived as old fashioned.53Ibid.

This fantasy of the nuclear family and the parenting strategies associated with it are on clear display in Feiler’s work, and he describes a suburban family of four with a stay-at-home mom as the “typical American family with typical American problems”.54Feiler, “Bruce Feiler: Agile Programming – For Your Family”. According to Feiler, the problems faced by this family mostly revolve around scheduling and getting their children to their after-school activities and responsibilities on opposite sides of town. While this is no doubt stressful, it certainly is far less stressful than raising children in a single-parent household on a minimum-wage income that barely cracks the poverty line, or in a two-parent, two-income household where neither parent can save for retirement because all of their extraneous funds are being used to pay off their overwhelming student loan debt. However, financially struggling families are not included in the audience that Feiler is addressing, nor are they the families that are using Agile Family Management to streamline their lives. The families who are (or at least doing so publicly) follow a very specific pattern: they are heterosexual families with married parents, at least two children, and at least one parent working in the technology industry as a salaried employee.55Feiler, “Bruce Feiler: Agile Programming – For Your Family”; Martin LaPointe, “How Scrum Made Us A Better Family”. Available at: https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/the-agile-household-how-scrum-made-us-a-better-family [accessed December 4, 2018]; Maritza Van den Heuvel, “Becoming An Agile Family”. Available at: https://scrumfamily.wordpress.com/ [accessed December 4, 2018].

Feiler further echoes Koontz in his claim that “these days, the old rules no longer apply”.56Feiler, The Secrets of Happy Families, p. 8. He insists that guidance offered by “shrinks, self-help gurus and other family experts” are “stale”, and that instead parents should look to the business world – particularly the “internet startup world” – where there are plenty of new ideas for making “groups and teams work effectively”.57Feiler, “Bruce Feiler: Agile Programming – For Your Family”. This insistence on rejecting past wisdom and replacing it with solutions from internet startups is reflective of what Hakken refers to as the “dazzle effect”, which presumes that the most technological solutions are the best ones, and that innovation is preferable to the tried-and-true.58David Hakken, “Computing and Social Change: New Technology and Workplace Transformation, 1980-1990”, Annual Review of Anthropology, 22, 1993, pp. 107-132.> As English-Lueck notes, Silicon Valley tech workers “view the daily conflicts of life as ‘social engineering problems’ that can be ‘solved’ if given a thoughtful and systematic appraisal.”59English-Lueck, Cultures@Silicon Valley, p. 76. The issue with this sort of ‘social engineering’ is that in a milieu where “cultural identity is often viewed only as an accoutrement or commodity”, the very real challenges facing marginalized and minority populations are often discounted, if not ignored entirely.60Ibid., p. 101.

As such, the issue with Agile Family Management is not that a handful of technologically-oriented, middle-class families are using it to make their households run more smoothly. The problem is that a solution that is feasible for (and arguably, appealing to) a small cohort from a very specific social position is being normalized as the solution for all families to achieve harmony and happiness, no matter their circumstances or makeup. Also problematic is the idea that if Agile Family Management doesn’t work for your particular family, the issue is with you; after all, as the Starrs explain, “keeping the system working simply requires persistence”.61Starr and Starr, “Agile Practices for Families: Iterating with Children and Parents”, p. 6.

Even if this were true, the implications of such persistence are disconcerting at best. Gregg warns that “if our capacities for intimacy are most regularly exercised in the pursuit of competitive professional profit, we face the prospect of being unable to appreciate the benefits of intimacy for unprofitable purposes.”62Gregg, Work’s Intimacy [Kindle Edition], Kindle Locations, pp. 298-300. The use of workplace technologies in intimate realms is only going to become more commonplace, as illustrated by a recent spate of popular press articles about people who use the office messaging platform Slack to navigate their personal lives.63Sarah Kessler, “Slack With Friends, Lovers, And Geeks: How The Hot Workplace App Is Getting Personal”, Fast Company, June 3, 2015, Available at: https://www.fastcompany.com/3046889/slack-with-friends-lovers-and-geeks-how-the-hot-workplace-app-is-getting-perso [accessed December 4, 2018]; Parmy Olsen, “How a Hacker Turned Slack Into His Family Control Room”, Forbes, February 11, 2016. Available at: https://www.forbes.com/sites/parmyolson/2016/02/11/slack-bots-family/#45abf4f8795b … Continue reading What happens, then, when the tools we use to pursue both professional profit and intimacy are one and the same? Who truly benefits when the messiest, unruliest, most unpredictable facets of life – love, intimacy, emotional expression – are rationalized in the service of efficiency?

In all likelihood, it isn’t families.

 

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 801215 and the University of Edinburgh Data-Driven Innovation programme, part of the Edinburgh and South East Scotland City Region Deal.

References
1 Bruce Feiler, The Secrets of Happy Families: Improve Your Mornings, Tell Your Family History, Fight Smarter, Go Out and Play, and Much More, New York, HarperCollins, 2013a.
2 Ibid.
3 Ibid.
4 For a primer on different Agile methods, see QA Symphony, “Agile Methodology: The Complete Guide to Understanding Agile Testing”. Available at: https://www.qasymphony.com/blog/agile-methodology-guide-agile-testing/ [accessed September 16, 2018].
5 David Starr and Eleanor Starr, “Agile Practices for Families: Iterating with Children and Parents”, p. 1. Available at: http://pluralsight-free.s3.amazonaws.com/david-starr/files/PID922221.pdf [accessed September 16, 2018].
6 Feiler, The Secrets of Happy Families, p. 5.
7 Bruce Feiler, “Family, Inc.”, The Wall Street Journal, February 10, 2013. Available at: http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887323452204578288192043905634 [accessed December 4, 2018]. See also: Max Nisen, “Why You Should Run Your Family Like A Business”, Business Insider, February 12, 2013. Available at: http://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-apply-a-management-strategies-to-a-family-2013-2 [accessed December 4, 2018]; Whitson Gordon, “Treat Your Kid Like A Team Of Agile Software Developers and Lower Your Family Stress”, Lifehacker, March 19, 2013. Available at: http://lifehacker.com/5991385/treat-your-kids-like-a-team-of-agile-software-developers-and-lower-your-family-stress [accessed December 4, 2018].
8 J. A. English-Lueck, Cultures@Silicon Valley, Palo Alto, Stanford University Press, 2002, p. 74.
9 Starr and Starr, “Agile Practices for Families”, p. 1.
10 Bruce Feiler, “Bruce Feiler: Agile Programming – For Your Family”, 2013c. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6oMG7u9HGE [accessed September 16, 2018].
11 Melissa Gregg, Work’s Intimacy, Cambridge, Polity, 2011.
12 English-Lueck, Cultures@Silicon Valley.
13 Ibid., p. 22.
14 Ibid.
15 Ibid., p. 77.
16 Ibid., p. 42.
17 Ibid., p. 44.
18 Ibid., p. 68.
19 Ibid.
20 Feiler, The Secrets of Happy Families, p. 32.
21 Bruce Feiler, “The Happy Families Toolkit”, 2013b, p. 7. Available at: https://www.brucefeiler.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Happy-Families-Toolkit-1.pdf [accessed November 27, 2015].
22 Ibid.
23 Feiler, The Secrets of Happy Families, p. 18.
24 Feiler, “The Happy Families Toolkit”, p. 7.
25 Ibid.
26 Feiler, The Secrets of Happy Families, p. 19.
27 Ibid., p. 18.
28 Starr and Starr, “Agile Practices for Families”, p. 2.
29 Ibid. p. 6.
30 Ibid.
31 Melissa Gregg, Counterproductive, Durham, Duke University Press, 2018, p. 6.
32 Eva Illouz, Cold Intimacies: The Making of Emotional Capitalism, Cambridge, Polity, 2007, p. 41.
33 English-Lueck, Cultures@Silicon Valley, p. 75.
34 Richard Florida, “Where to Find A Creative Class Job in 2020”, City Lab, March 2, 2012. Available at: http://www.citylab.com/work/2012/03/where-creative-class-jobs-will-be/1258/ [accessed December 4, 2018].
35 English-Lueck, Cultures@Silicon Valley, p. 23.
36 Ibid.
37 Ibid., p. 33.
38 Ibid., p. 69.
39 Ibid., p. 89.
40 Gregg, Work’s Intimacy, p. 15.
41 Ibid., p. 13.
42 Ibid., p. 24.
43 Ibid.
44 Ibid., p. 74.
45 Ibid., p. 136.
46 Ibid., p. 170.
47 Ibid., p. 17.
48 Ibid., p. 17.
49 Ibid., p.171.
50 Feiler, “Bruce Feiler: Agile Programming – For Your Family”.
51 Ibid.
52 Stephanie Koontz, The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap, New York, Basic Books, 2000, p. 34.
53 Ibid.
54 Feiler, “Bruce Feiler: Agile Programming – For Your Family”.
55 Feiler, “Bruce Feiler: Agile Programming – For Your Family”; Martin LaPointe, “How Scrum Made Us A Better Family”. Available at: https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/the-agile-household-how-scrum-made-us-a-better-family [accessed December 4, 2018]; Maritza Van den Heuvel, “Becoming An Agile Family”. Available at: https://scrumfamily.wordpress.com/ [accessed December 4, 2018].
56 Feiler, The Secrets of Happy Families, p. 8.
57 Feiler, “Bruce Feiler: Agile Programming – For Your Family”.
58 David Hakken, “Computing and Social Change: New Technology and Workplace Transformation, 1980-1990”, Annual Review of Anthropology, 22, 1993, pp. 107-132.
59 English-Lueck, Cultures@Silicon Valley, p. 76.
60 Ibid., p. 101.
61 Starr and Starr, “Agile Practices for Families: Iterating with Children and Parents”, p. 6.
62 Gregg, Work’s Intimacy [Kindle Edition], Kindle Locations, pp. 298-300.
63 Sarah Kessler, “Slack With Friends, Lovers, And Geeks: How The Hot Workplace App Is Getting Personal”, Fast Company, June 3, 2015, Available at: https://www.fastcompany.com/3046889/slack-with-friends-lovers-and-geeks-how-the-hot-workplace-app-is-getting-perso [accessed December 4, 2018]; Parmy Olsen, “How a Hacker Turned Slack Into His Family Control Room”, Forbes, February 11, 2016. Available at: https://www.forbes.com/sites/parmyolson/2016/02/11/slack-bots-family/#45abf4f8795b [accessed December 4, 2018]; Peder Fjällström, “My Family of Four Uses Slack and Now We Can’t Imagine Life Without It”, Quartz, February 4, 2016. Available at: https://qz.com/609522/my-family-of-four-uses-slack-and-now-we-cant-imagine-life-without-it/ [accessed December 4, 2018].

Dr. Kate M. Miltner is a TRAIN@Ed Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Edinburgh. Her research agenda focuses on the intersection of technology, social location, and structural power. Her current research project, which is co-funded by the European Research Council and the UK and Scottish Governments, focuses on issues of inclusion and belonging within digital skills initiatives.