Agile Development is Missing a Step
Hey Dev Shops! Integrate the great outdoors into your development process…
There’s a Connection Between Development Sprints and the Great Outdoors?
At Lewis, we think there is. Hear us out:
In 1953, Toyota developed the Kanban system to streamline production and increase efficiency on the factory floor. In Kanban, tasks on the production board move from left to right — from to-dos, to in-progress, to testing and quality assurance, to approval and finalization. And there are hundreds of them, each assigned to a worker and priority-weighted before moving across the task board (and through the assembly line), emerging finally as a tested component ready to take its place within a complex interdependent precision product.
Today, Kanban principles have been adapted by software development shops to visualize workflow and structure sprints to build new features and deliver product updates. Sprints can be satisfying, but they’re also intense. So we at Lewis believe there’s room for a new step at the end of the process that opens the opportunity for the team to breathe, to recoup, to see something new and, importantly, get ready for the next challenge.
Welcome to Lewis and the Benefit of the Outdoors
Lewis’s outdoor adventure offsites and benefit trips are a perfect complement to the intensity of a software development sprint.
Think about it.
Heading into a sprint, every member of the team feels the weight of expectation and anticipates the pressure to come. They know the process works, but they also know the toll it takes. After all, they’re sprinting, not taking a leisurely jog. It’s intense and exhausting. But after it’s done, it helps to hit the pause button, to recognize and reward in a new way you may never have considered: Get them outdoors, bring them together in a refreshing new experience, reinvigorate their sense of team and community, and let the natural world work its magic on everyone.
That’s what Lewis was designed to do… and we’d love to explore how we can do it for your shop.
Lewis leads dev shop teams on unique celebratory outdoor adventures, the perfect way to cap off the accomplishment of a big push. We know the best places to go within a two-hour drive of NYC to get your people out there and into a new experience — from the breathtaking vistas of a Catskill hike to the soothing rush of water paddling on a lake or river. And we take care of everything, with professional guides and every detail of the day thought through and curated for a memorable experience.
But it’s not what we do that counts as much as what it enables your people to do: refresh, reset, bond, see and feel something new, and connect to the natural world. It’s the unoffice. The great 19th century naturalist and environmental philosopher John Muir put it this way: “Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul.”
And we know it works.
The change of scenery can not only work wonders for the soul, it can also focus the mind. We regularly hear feedback that these trips — and the opportunity they provide to step back from the daily grind — have inspired fresh ideas and new perspectives about upcoming work challenges.
So as you plan your next sprint, why not post a final step on the Kanban board: Get out there with Lewis. Give your people the chance not only to celebrate an accomplishment, but to look up, look around, and breathe in the benefit of the outdoors.
