Thinking agile Part I: Working in a Scrum setting at sofatutor
Sudden new requirements for the work of the team in the middle of an ongoing process? Technical innovations that need to be implemented quickly? Agility in mind and work makes it possible to react quickly to all such internal and external changes.
In a small blog post series we introduce the sofatutor way of agility to you. Among others, you will get some insights by one of our Agile Coaches in Product and Tech, Veronica. In this first post you will also get a short introduction into scrum by Viviana, People Business Partner for our content team, who recently certified as ‘Scrum Master’.
In particular, the productivity of cross-functional teams, in which many experts from different disciplines work on the same mission, such as the development of new learning features, is promoted by working in agile frameworks.
Our five teams in the Product and Tech area work in a mostly Scrum framework. Our Agile Coach Veronica supports them with an outside perspective on their tasks, workflows and missions. In close cooperation with Team Yellow, working on our early learning product, and Team Orange, responsible for the student learner experience, she helps to progress an agile mindset and its efficient implementation.
As an Agile Coach of more than 12 years, Veronica doesn’t focus only on the implementation of a single framework such as Scrum. Rather, she draws on approaches from different frameworks and thus remains relatively free and flexible in her solution design and action competence.
It is important to us to think and live agile company wide, which is why we are trying to gain and spread expertise across all teams.
Viviana recently took part in a workshop by ‘Scrum Alliance’ and received her certificate as ‘Scrum Master’. The perfect source to delve a little deeper here!
In a Scrum framework, our five agile teams in Product and Tech work with various ceremonies (=regular appointments). Within sprints (=defined time periods) of two weeks, they get together on a daily basis in stand ups and single sessions, such as plannings, reviews and retrospectives. Based on the approach of ‘build, measure, learn’, those Scrum-elements aim to react flexibly to structural and strategic changes, both internal and external wise. By measuring relevant data and the effects of a ‘Minimum Viable Product’ a learning process can be derived in order to improve the product as quickly as possible or to adapt it precisely to customer’s requirements.
While working with agile methodologies might work best in Product and Tech, it also offers potential for other teams. Looking into our company-wide calendar you’ll therefore also find Scrum-elements, such as our weekly Monday Stand Up or Friday Review, in which all team members take part.
A consequence of our agile work environment and fast growing team is that we continuously look for new team members. You might find the position perfectly matching your profile right away on our website.
You want to join our mission on innovating digital learning, but couldn’t find a fitting job yet? Please apply either way! We look forward to getting to know you :)
Coming soon: Chats with Valentina (Engineering Manager Team Purple) and Chris (Engineering Manager Team Green). The two will give some insights on working with Scrum from an internal team perspective.