Two years ago this month Valpak went full bore, head first into Agile with our software development teams, applying mostly the Scrum methodology with some instances of Kanban. Now, two years later, Valpak continues to embrace and uphold the Agile values and principles.
We’ve made it all the way to Sprint 46, but who’s counting? In the past two years, Valpak has delivered thousands of valuable stories to our stakeholders including franchises, merchants, consumers, and corporate. We continue to scale Agile up and across our enterprise. Our infrastructure teams now apply Kanban to manage their work. We’ve got business departments like Marketing and the Franchise Financial Consultants applying Kanban as well. We’ve got our executive team applying Kanban at the portfolio level to manage epics as part of our Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe). Not to mention the use of personal Kanbans popping up here and there to stay organized. Some other notable accomplishments and contributions over the past two years include:
- An Agile transformation case study contributed to the book “Managed Agile Development: Making Agile Work For Your Business” by Charles G. Cobb.
- An Agile transformation video produced and published to YouTube.
- Tours of the Agile framework, as it is applied at Valpak, provided to the likes of Catalina Marketing, Blue Cross Blue Shield of NC, New York Life, and AutoTrader to further inspire their Agile transformation efforts.
- Open sharing of experiences by blogging on anything and everything Agile right here at iamagile.com .
- Sponsoring and organizing the Tampa Bay Agile Meetups providing top quality topics/speakers, food, and facilities consistently month after month. In fact, this meetup group has grown by 300% in just 18 months under Valpak’s leadership.
Throughout this time we have made an example of ourselves. Valpak is now a benchmark for Agile transformations within the Tampa Bay community and well beyond. As we begin to roll (or shall we say sprint) into year 3 of our Agile journey, we continue to work towards being an Agile enterprise. The cultural change to be an Agile enterprise is constantly a work in progress and the journey never really ends. Each day, we just try to be a little more agile than we were the day before.
i.am.agile 
October 9th, 2013 at 2:50 pm
Congrats, I hope you celebrated with cake and balloons.
October 31st, 2013 at 7:57 pm
Hello Stephanie,
Can you provide me an example of how your marketing or other dept. used Kanban?
I am from manufacturing background originally and do project management, but, curious to see the use in the context of Agile.
Thanks,.
November 4th, 2013 at 1:30 pm
We have a Marketing Kanban board that makes transparent the most important marketing efforts going on at any given time and their workflow state. Marketing efforts include communication, major releases, product plans, product marketing, promotions, and more.