Agile & French Baguette: what is in common?

At first sight it looks like that it is enough for the team to have goals and KPIs to ensure results and deliveries. It is true. But on the other hand, there is much more than that: extra miles, new ideas, satisfaction at work and other details that matter requires more thoughtful way of working. Agile seemed to be the right one for our Talent Acquisition Support team.

Which principles and routines have worked best, what is the outcome for the team and finally, what is in common between Agile and French Baguette?

1.Principles and Routines

Agile experts agree that no one should work Agile only to say that they do; Agile way of working needs to benefit your team and support the goals you are trying to achieve. Due to this, it is important to choose principles and routines that creates value to your daily work. It is OK to use some Scrum techniques as well as to add Kanban as long as it helps the team. After evaluating our needs, here is the list of what we started to use:

• Working in Sprints (Planning & Retrospectives). For the team to get used to it, we started from 1 month Sprints. This timeline have worked really well for Talent Acquisition Coordinators as they are implementing long term projects, while for Talent Acquisition Sourcers it seemed to make more sense shortening to 2 weeks Sprints as priorities on recruitments changing quiet fast. Team dictates its' own pace.
• Having Daily Stand-ups. Catching up on plans and actions helps to keep the focus. Still, frequency depends on the team needs: Sourcers benefit from daily conversations, while Coordinators do efficient stand-ups once a week.
• Kanban board. For this, we have chosen JIRA as a tool to be able not only to see a visualization of the progress that makes team to be more up to date but also to have qualitative reporting. Board does it work but rules on eg. what appears in backlog and how you prioritize tasks from it is also very important to agree and communicate.

2.Outcome (still in progress)

Every part of Agile has its' own benefits but summarizing it we can see the outcome for individuals, team and stakeholders.

• Individuals. During the planning session every team member has a chance to set his/her own goals and priorities for upcoming Sprint and also gives a confidence vote for being able to perform what is planned. Voting is a chance to evaluate and if needed to shorten list of priorities for the Sprint that helps to focus on the fewer but more important tasks at once and motivates team members as they feel able to achieve their goals.
• Team. Planning session is both for individual and team goals. Even if the team has a lot of personal tasks, there are common things: projects, learning, team-building, etc. that can be planned all together. Without time to discuss what is important for you as a team it is easy to forget and play individually. Both planning and reflecting in Retrospective builds the team as one entity and creates a feeling of belonging.
• Stakeholders. Nothing is worse than false promises. Planning for a shorter time than a year or a quarter it is easier to share more accurate plans and ensure deliveries. Also, working agile helps to be more up to date and react to changes faster.

3.French Baguette

Talent Acquisition Support team was always very supportive to each other and enjoyed spending time together. However, team gatherings were hard to plan and too rare. Implementing Agile and having Planning sessions turned things upside down: while planning team and personal goals, we have started planning from Fun Goals - everything that team wants to do together (from picnics, photoshoots to workation). Also, adding more fun to team life, every Sprint appears to have theme: July one was France and here the picnic and French Baguette comes. :)

You start from Agile to make work more efficient and have better and faster deliveries but you get bonuses: Happy faces. French Baguettes. Or Pizza. Or Tacos. Or... Not sure what Harry Potter will bring us this month but I am more than sure that we will see some magic!