It was great to get the chance to be part of the agile transformation of our production team. We’ve started with this transition last year and it is great to be part of it. We have been coached by Boris Kneisel, who is an external scrum coach. He is an excellent coach to adapt agility for development teams and guide them through a transition.
In the first sprints when we tried to adapt the methodologies into our daily work it pretty felt just like this picture:
(Picture from Flickr under Creative Commons: https://farm9.staticflickr.com/8121/8659643962_493899cb9f_o.jpg)
Team – here is the handcar – just jump on the bandwagon and get it move forward.
In those early days there have been a lot of confusion, questions, different roles and uncertainty. But over the days the team found a way just to get things done within the scrum process. We have found a great way to improve ourselves every day and perform better.
Right now we are still at the beginning, so our current status after four sprints (one sprint is just one week) looks a little bit more like this:
(Picture from Flickr under Creative Commons: https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7003/6461721441_c168bd15fc_b.jpg)
We have delivered the committed workload just in time twice, and the sprint goal, too. So we are still in the beginning of our agile journey and the transition just started. It is great to see each team member in his role trying to adapt the process and delivering value in each and every sprint. Even more quiet team members are now involving themselves into scrum activities and meetings.
I believe the vision is clear. We are performing and getting better every day, and the bandwagon will evolve over time into a well-engineered German vehicle – to correspond with the pictures before I have chosen an ICE train:
(Picture from Flickr under Creative Commons: https://farm1.staticflickr.com/85/240094193_51b5d9afce_o.jpg)
There is still a longer way to go, but I am not afraid of it. Since the introduction of Scrum and agile methodologies I have changed the way of my work and how to deliver better results and more value to the company. And to my surprise, it feels much more productive what I have done so far. There have been various changes to more “old school” styles like writing sticky notes and less technology. And it feels good thinking outside this box, less digital, but more down to earth and grounded. There are a lot of little helpers each and every day, the same with methodologies to be more productive. But Scrum really helped me to focus more on things, that really matter and deliver a better result. So for me I can say Scum is like a life changer. But I am trying to adapt it every day. And this is just the beginning. Boris taught us a nice concept to self-reflect which is common in martial arts: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shuhari
So far I am at the Shu level, trying to adapt fundamentals, techniques, heuristics and as much as possible – enjoying this time to learn and evolve.
Scrum literature which is available online or at your favorite bookstore really helps to evolve every day. My resources right now:
- http://agilemanifesto.org/
- http://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html
- http://www.scrumalliance.org/
- http://www.scrumalliance.org/why-scrum/core-scrum-values-roles
- http://www.craiglarman.com/wiki/index.php?title=Book_-_Practices_for_Scaling_Lean_and_Agile
- http://www.craiglarman.com/wiki/index.php?title=Book_-_Scaling_Lean_and_Agile_-_Thinking_and_Organizational_Tools
- http://specificationbyexample.com/
- http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/books/user-stories-applied
Feedback? Comments? Please share your thoughts.
Patrick Sauerwein | @virtual_patrick 
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