The Scrum Kitchen
Actually, I am in love with cooking and I’m always looking for new recipes and trying to learn new techniques of holding a knife and cutting vegetables. Even I watched this movie like 10 times :).
It is a comedy movie about a mouse who has a dream to be chief, it shows that no matter how you faced you should never give up your dreams.
In that movie I was fascinated with what is going in the backroom when the cookers preparing the food, that is why I decide once to visit a restaurant kitchen it was really fabulous experience, at that time I remembered our Scrum team that I work with, and I want to share this experience with you.
If you want to prepare a recipe you have to follow specific guides, just like agile, there are also guides and directions that you should follow to create your final product.
And what you should pay attention to is in both cooking and agile there are the main guides and always they say that the chef makes his own changes to make something special let’s say of that soup, also in agile every team will have his own flavor and way of applying the rules.
Bu the most important thing here is that chef followed the guides for years after that he found himself ready to make his own change, also agile new teams should follow the rules at least in the beginning to get used to the process. After all, it is so hard to find identical two teams like it is hard to find identical two soup but in the end, you made the two of them because you followed the guide.
The recipes (the food- the product):
The final pie. Both teams work hard to build it as requested, they monitor it in every single step and watch it how it is growing to take its final shape.
They follow the tasks assigned to them, complete it, and test it to make sure it is compatible with what it should be.
They always pay attention to changes in the product and the recipe. And after all, they feel proud of what they produced.
The Customer (Tasters/Stockholders):
As they say “the customer is always right”, that is why we build the product to be like what the customer wants. The final product is adjustable and can be changed anytime as the customer wants. So the salad could be without Onion or with more Tomato, the software could have this design with that color and UX.
The feedback from the customer is always important to improve the service. That is why you find on the restaurant table a pen and paper to ask you a couple of questions about the quality of service, also in Scrum, you always have to get that feedback and make an action plan according to it to solve problems, improve the app, and make the end-user happy. To do that there are review meetings in Scrum to meet with customers and present the last status and get notes and keep going according to it.
The Team (Cookers/Developers, Testers..):
The miracle makers, the force that converts vegetables and meat to dishes, on the other hand, the time and design to app.
In the kitchen, there is a special chief for every type of food (grill, soap, sauce, desert…) and with his group, they follow the recipe carefully to prepare the dishes. They are so organized that every single one knows what to do and what to deliver to the next cooker.
The scrum teams are the same, there are specialized frontend and backend developers, testers, UX designers, and others, after multiple sprint or projects they became a self-organized performing team that knows exactly what to do so that they don’t need any supervisor to direct them.
And while I was monitoring the cookers I noticed that they follow the same agility, as the scrum team create his backlog for all the product needs and then choose what they will implement for the next (2–3 week) sprint, the cookers, on the other hand, build the week menu list and choose what to prepare for every day, even they post every think as stickers on a whiteboard like Scrum team do.
The scrum team starts by the sprint planning to specify the backlog items and discuss how to implement it and what the tasks and who will execute it, same as the cookers they do the same.
Both teams are ready for changes and show high adaptability to the new requests, they build the plan and they know that this plan will change and it is ok, the most important point is to keep going forward.
After the day finish or the sprint finish, they do their retrospective looking backward to see what they do right or wrong, and what should they improve for the next time?
The Interpreter (Head Chief/ Product Owner):
In that kitchen, there was a man that monitor the board, control what cookers have done and the remaining tasks, he set the priorities and the final shape of the recipes taking into consideration the desires of the customer.
On the other hand, it comes the product owner, the one has the answer for teams’ questions, supporting the team, and controlling the backlog of the product, he always has a vision about what to build and the final shape of the product, contact all the stakeholders to understand the needs and interpret it to the team.
The Equalizer (Deputy chief/Scrum Master):
Also in the kitchen, there is the deputy chief, same as in the Scrum team, his role is to make sure the production process is going smoothly, and everyone in the team knows the rules and follow the process, support other members and help them to be more productive. As he has a long experience and knowledge, he facilitates the meetings and encourage the team, and lead the changes that could happen anytime
The Deliverer (The Waiter/ CI&CD):
They always know how to deliver the hot dishes to the tables, where to put spoons, glasses, and make sure everything is fine on the customer side.
They know how to deliver, monitor, and control the deployed working product and build the infrastructure to support that. And make sure it is fast, clean, and working fine.
Their responsibility is to make sure that the end-user is satisfied.
The Operation Room (The Cave/ The Kitchen):
It is the place where the production happened, they call it the cave because the team can isolate himself there to think, discuss, shout, have fun, spend more time together, and communicate. They have all the tools they need a projector, whiteboard, pens, sticky notes, and laptops.
Same as the kitchen that fills with the meat and fish smell and contains all the knives, ovens, bowls, graters, and others.
It is an important place because both teams feel related and connected.
And as chief Guesteau’s in the movie said ‘anyone can cook’ I want to say ‘any team can be agile’. Have nice cooking… I mean have a nice agile
