ScrumMaster, Snakes and Crocodiles!
About 2 months ago, the Foundation of the Vivarium of Lausanne contact us. They have a portfolio of small to medium projects and they want to better manage their priorities.
Most of their employees in charge of projects, are also responsible for operational work. Of course, like any organisation working with visitors and indoor exhibition, a rainy day and the number of visitors explode. Therefore, a huge difficulty to free time for projects.
That’s where Scrum comes to help. A good implementation of this Agile methodology can easily support a team, like the Vivarium team, as much to manage their projects, than their operational work. Nevertheless, a good implementation doesn’t come out of a hat!
“Michel Ansermet, ScrumMaster of the Vivarium of Lausanne, busy in target training…”
We had given them the recommendation to take several critical points into account, like the analysis of the existing organisation, the participation of everyone, the training effort and the necessary coaching to maintain a long term successful implementation.
So we have decided to proceed the following way within a duration of 6 Sprints.
- We have made an analysis of the existing organisation and their projects’ portfolio
- We have trained the entire organisation, included the management team
- We have done a custom implementation of the Scrum techniques, tools and meetings, following and supporting the team within the first 2 Sprints
- We have provided additional coaching to the ScrumMaster and the Product Owners during the 4 following Sprints
The training has offered to everyone the possibility to better understand the basics of the Scrum framework and our Scrum game “AIREING” has given them a chance to practice immediately their learning.
“A training based on practicing and teamwork!”
Finally, because the Vivarium remains open every day, we have chosen a 7 days Sprint, matching the team’s weekly pace. We have defined 4 backlogs and Product Owners to cover the main Vivarium domains. In additional, we have included an operational Sprint within the Projects’ Sprint, to better manage and understand the impact of the operational work.
Of course, certain things have been fixed step by step, nevertheless, the retrospectives have given everyone the option to share their experiences, also to enhance and adapt the implementation more closely to the team needs.
“6 weeks later, the changes are incredible!”
After 6 weeks of hard work, after the first doubts linked to the changes brought by Scrum, the team has become more united, engaged and capable of managing priorities to delivery exciting projects and to maintain the expected high quality operational work, under the inspection of the most difficult customers of the world, Snakes and Crocodiles!
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