The Agile Dojo: Shiny Toy or Best Idea Ever?
Remember your first two weeks on a Scrum team? It was fantastic and miserable all at the same time. And when things got difficult, your team teetered on the edge of the waterfall. What if there were a way to help teams gel more quickly and accelerate their agile learning by immersing them in it? What if there were a place where they could practice what they’ve learned in training, without interruption? Enter the Agile Dojo, a real experiment happening in a large, complex organization. Francie Van Wirkus shares her insights and learnings of creating and sustaining an agile dojo. From visiting a real martial arts dojo, to protecting teams from distractions, to battling the facilities folks about (gasp!) paint colors, creating the dojo has not been easy. Discover if this epic team building experiment is a great idea worth trying in your agile organization or a shiny and distractive toy to avoid.
A conqueror of mediocrity, Francie Van Wirkus is a certified professional coach in the insurance and financial services industry, helping people of all levels take strategic, sustainable steps toward their goals. She is part of a large IT transformation in a complex organization, where she is a SAFe 4.0 Program Consultant coach. Francie is an active speaker, blogger, and author of the recently released Reveille, the first book in a business novel series on agile leadership. She hosts CL&I Radio, an internal corporate radio show, and also co-hosts Agile Bettys, a motivational podcast about living an agile lifestyle. Francie enjoys racing in Ironman competitions, and lives in Wisconsin with her husband and three delightful children.