The Journey towards Scrum
In our last Scrum blog (translation coming soon) we wrote at the end:
“Now it’s just a matter of successfully applying what we’ve learned in practice, so that the new Scrum era is a complete success and niceshops can continue to grow. ”
And while we haven’t quite arrived in the Scrum era yet, that doesn’t mean we’ve been lazy in the meantime 😉
In fact, our Saaz team is already contesting its 6th sprint and the two Graz teams are waiting in the wings.
But now let’s start from the beginning: How did we ultimately go about actually putting into practice what we learned theoretically in the workshop? How did we manage to keep our colleagues motivated?
Enablement
It all started with two workshops in mid-October – our colleagues’ first cloth feelings with the framework “Scrum”.
During all this time, in the background it was: planning, planning, planning & recruiting, recruiting, recruiting.
We were looking for real Scrum heroes, found them partly in our own ranks and recruited the first Product Owners – and they really got down to work!
They worked on the first projects with our customers, in our case the internal department leads, they practiced writing epics and user stories and the first “practice refinements” took place.
These refinements were a chance for our developers and POs on both sides to get to know their role in the Scrum framework better. At the same time, this way Scrum itself stayed on the radar for the developers and everyone had a playground to experiment. Not to mention the learning effect of the exercise:
Developers learned to value their workload and were able to discuss and understand tickets in one session instead of constantly chasing others. POs learned where their team was failing. They see when and why a user story is not mature enough, they learn about how developers work, and everyone knows more after each refinement than they knew before.
And while everyone was practicing and learning, behind the scenes we were still going on: planning, planning, planning & recruiting, coffee, more coffee, recruiting.
(At least were able to find some Scrum Masters and the occasional PO).
Action
The first team to fully commit to Scrum in 2021 was our team in Saaz, which we affectionately christened the Saazer Power.
The learning effect this team took with them after each completed sprint was great. A list of issue-legacies, interventions, test stress and YouTrack mishaps could do nothing against the motivation of our teammates.
It was and is such a great pleasure to see how each individual is fully behind this “Scrum” endeavor – everyone is doing their absolute best and the feelings of success clearly outweighed the uncertainties and annoyances: Teamwork, more time to develop, relief from the PO, shared sense of achievement and fun.
What’s to come
The first teams in Graz are already waiting in the wings:
Soon it will be time for our Customer Care Champions and Shop Management Heroes to take off.
Epics have been written, User Stories refined and the first test tickets have already been implemented in Scrum style. We are just waiting for team reinforcement in the form of a Scrum Master and two Product Owners, then the party can finally begin.
And while we’re all celebrating every success (remotely) and we’ve gotten off to a great start, we’re nowhere near the end and it’s still:
planning, open beer, toast, rejoice, planning, planning & recruiting, recruiting, recruiting …
