Chasing Agile
There is something about my DNA that abhors fads. I remember when I was working in Costa Rica and it felt like overnight, my people started showing up eating kale chips. I’m still not convinced that kale isn’t poison. My cynicism leaks from my pores when I see something that holds the characteristics of a fad. I won’t lie, when I first started seeing the word Agile rise to the top of my social media feed, I thought, oh no, is this another makeup selling scam?
Harvard Business Review
The March/April 2018 (yeah — a year and a half ago… I’ve kind of been occupied) issue of the Harvard Business Review, highlighted Agile in HR, titling the article The New Rules of Talent Management…
But I didn’t catch that one on time.
A Focus In Approach
While Harvard was publishing their article, I was transitioning from Washington DC to Nicosia, Cyprus. I had to sell my house, fly the dog, ship the car…
Once on the ground, I was tasked with taking over the daily operations of HR Innovate.
New to the Cyprus market, my initial strategy was a focus in approach, with the first step being to identify and focus in hard on what we do well, and do it even better, while at the same time categorizing the “other” category in a parking lot list of future to-dos or ‘review.
Along the way, I have led and participated in a number of exercises designed to help us focus in. Focus on our audience, our target, our market, our customer needs, our strengths, and our weaknesses. Some of the answers we have come to are based on our core values, and others are driven by our market.
And then there is that beautiful spot where what you want and what the market wants align. For me, that is where our Tech Clients and Candidates live.
[‘Enter Agile’]
We doubled down on tech. Tech clients. Tech Candidates, Tech Exhibitions. I began seriously studying and writing Python. and implementing Machine Learning where I can and where it makes sense. I met Sophie, the world's first Android Citizen at the Reflect Festival in Limassol and spoke at a tech recruiting conference in London called Inspire. It’s truly been a lot of fun.
At every juncture I seemed to run into Agile. With Agile vacancies on our job board like Scrum Master and Product Owner, I said to myself, Self… you need to get in the game.
So to get my feet wet, I signed up for and took a quick crash course on Udemy.
Created by Mauricio Rubio — Agile Guru & Founder of AgileKB | Ureducation
Holy Cow. As soon as I finished, I tasked the entire team at HR Innovate with taking the course. Wet feet? Nah. We are jumping headfirst into the pool.
This entire methodology makes so much sense to me. It’s like, take everything you normally bang your head against the wall about in a project and make it cleaner, easier and faster.
I am definitely no expert in Agile, so I won’t lecture anyone about the finer points — yet. That said, I will share some of my favorite touchpoints so far.
Project Management Software
Did I say Holy Cow yet? I honestly wish this type of software had been on the market when I started my career. I look back and can see about a million things that went downhill quick because of the lack of communication and organization. Early on in my days, back in Washington DC, I was on a Project Management team rolling out a brand new technology platform called online banking. I can’t remember the name of the project management software we used, but I do remember it was clunky and expensive.
I have added links to two free platforms (with upgrade features) but there are many more. Personally, I have settled on Asana for now.
AgileHR MeetUp
After taking our crash course, we sign up for and participated in the AgileHR MeetUp in Limassol. A truly wonderful and inspiring day. I had the chance to meet peers in our community and see newer and older friends. In the video below, you can see my sweet sweet plastic ball passing skills from the breakout session.
Sprints & StandUps
The concept here is to break the work down into doable short chunks with a recommended timeframe of two weeks. Every day, we do a quick review literally standing up of where we are, what’s next and what obstacles are in the way. This is a practice that can be implemented quickly and cost-effectively. I already see how it can help us achieve our goals. My vision for the company is to truly be able to turn on a dime when needed. I can see how Agile is going to help take us across that line.
Moving Forward
After the MeetUp, the team and I went out to lunch to debrief. The feedback was all positive and the tone upbeat. I felt like this event was perfectly timed for our team. I will use the opportunity we had to bring next steps to the floor at our team meeting so that we can work to go full Agile.
On a side note: I had a Philly Cheesesteak Sandwich — and I feel the need to say that calling a beef sandwich “Philly” is aggressive. An east coaster myself, I used to take the train to Philly for a sandwich. Let’s just agree to call it a beef sandwich.
I look forward to the future with hope.
If you would like to chat about this or really anything else including Philly cheesesteak sandwiches or the fact that the symbol on my tshirt is the Kryptonian symbol for Hope and not an S for Superman… let’s connect. https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevinraybrown/
