Being Agile in a Quarantined World
Let’s agree that the last few weeks were somehow closer to a movie script than life as we knew it. Let’s agree that, when dealing with such radical changes, being A G I L E is the key in finding your part in the new reality and making it work. But one has to master the art of agility well enough beforehand, in order to be able to implement it in this dynamic sphere we are into.
The 24h after the announcement
Long story short, on the 11th of March, well ahead of the official call to the business world, Stoiximan/Betano Management took the bold decision to put as many of us as possible, in a remote working mode starting from the following day. “People First” is one of our core values and Stoiximan proves it in every action it takes. We knew that the company has always given top priority to our safety, and we knew that this time it was on all of us to make it happen. Without any delay, our “invisible” heroes in the operational teams began making the necessary changes to the infrastructure in order to support the entire company going #remote. Despite the constraints and the limited time, they succeeded and within 24 hours, the whole Tech team, along with the largest part of the other company functions, were already working remotely!
“We made the impossible, possible!”
So what did we do?
Info top-down, the critical information was channelled from our CTO to the Tech Heads and Scrum masters to every member of the team. Next step was hands-on and practical; We began transferring the necessary equipment (monitors, laptops, even keyboards and cables in some cases) in our cars, ready to go. An “easier-said-than-done” task as, apart from the operational things to monitor, we were also handling the anxiety of our people towards the unknown. The #oneteam spirit worked once more. Our first priority was to keep everyone, all employees and their families, safe.
The next day, we woke up in a different routine. We did not use our cars or public transportation to go to the office, we opened our laptops at home. But right after the check that everyone was connected to our VPN and could be connected at his/her workstation, it was like nothing had changed. We were all connected to our network, continuing work as usual but with even more enthusiasm and commitment. We saw change as an opportunity. We’ve discovered new tools that we could use, adapting to this new reality, and ensuring that the Scrum rituals were taking place. We gave each team the flexibility to use whatever works better for them.
e-Sprinting
So, welcome to our new virtual office world!
Teams start the day with their daily standups and every meeting has its own virtual room, so anyone can join and talk face to face with the rest of the team, just like we were doing back in the office.
We carry on with all Scrum events such as retrospectives, planning and refinements, in the same way, keeping our rituals, timeframes and schedules the way we used to. After some investigation, we identified the proper tools to help our teams perform their events remotely; from online retrospectives tools, in which we could create our own games with virtual sticky notes, to plannings and refinements with fully shared screens from our Product Owners using online whiteboards.
“Where there’s a will there’s a way”
All teams have created their own virtual rooms with members joining, but remaining “muted”, so that they wouldn’t feel lonely or isolated while working. Tackling isolation is a very sensitive must, so making sure that everyone is just an “unmute” button away does the trick for us. As Scrum is heavily based on good communication, we knew that we would have to focus on this challenge from the very beginning. From a Scrum Master’s perspective, we are performing “health check” calls throughout the day, with all teams and individuals. Again, easier said than done! The first couple of days we had so many calls back to back, that we felt like we were working non-stop, as if we were trapped in a loooong day that never ends. But we had to make it work. Our motto in this crisis is “Together we can be invincible!”.
Within a week of working from our homes, we were stubborn enough not to miss our courage; we stuck to our plan and commitment of delivery. We ensured that our teams had resolved all dependencies, as remote working poses additional challenges, but in the end, we made sure that everything was running smoothly. In these new and challenging conditions, we performed major releases for business (eg. integrations) and levelled up our site in more than 50% of our markets, while our teams have still been growing and will continue welcoming new members in the weeks to come.
We are also giving space to our creativity and fun to cheer us up. We are Scrum Masters and that’s in our nature! We found ways to amuse our people by playing virtual Taboo or Pictionary. Some of us found it a good idea to introduce our pets and family members. Our #oneteam DNA proved to be more powerful than ever before. We are all in this together and we can undoubtedly gain valuable experience from this unprecedented change in our everyday lives.
This global crisis is a challenge that we have already accepted and adapted in our temporary reality, in the best possible way. We made the impossible possible. We are Tech and we can work from anywhere!
P.S : WfH is not difficult or scary, it’s just being agile! So, #beagile, #learn, #trynewthings and everything is going to be alright!
This is the story from the fresh eyes of Dimitra Voili and Maria Galani, two Scrum Masters who would like to share “how to be Agile in a quarantine world!”.
