Our 2013 Agile Year-In-Review

Another calendar year has passed and we are that much further along in our Agile journey here at Valpak.  Let’s take a quick look back at 2013 …

• At the beginning of 2013, we convinced our Infrastructure teams to go Agile with a Kanban approach.  To the satisfaction of many stakeholders, Kanban has brought great visibility and accountability to the work of those teams.
• We surveyed our Agile team members about mid-way through the year and received a 100% response rate and very high marks.  This was a proud moment for us in 2013!
• In February, a book containing our Agile transformation case study was published: “Managed Agile Development: Making Agile Work for Your Business”.
• In October, we celebrated a special anniversary of 2 full years of Agile; not just any Agile but full-bore, highly-committed Agile.  With experience comes maturity …  we are now seeing ourselves being Agile and not just doing Agile.
• The first ever Cox Agile Open was held in November with over 70 people from across Cox companies gathering to connect, learn, and share on the topic of Agile.  I’m looking forward to this year and hoping that Valpak will play an even greater role in the event.
• Throughout the year we have been continuously improving our implementation of the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) including improvements to the Portfolio Kanban and Architecture Kanban, plus refinements to the Quarterly Portfolio Prioritization process.
• Valpak (along with AgileThought) took over the organizing responsibilities for the Tampa Bay Agile Meetup group and grew membership by well over 300% this year!  We have close to 400 members now and have managed to have one good quality speaker after another each month.  In addition, meetup attendance is steadily growing.  We now have about 50 people come out for each meetup.  For 2014, we are already booked out to the 2nd quarter and looking forward to more sponsored events with companies like Rally Software.
• Looking back, I published 19 posts to the (this) iamagile.com blog in 2013.  I must say … not too bad!
• Ryan Dorrell of AgileThought provided Scrum and Kanban training on-demand and as-needed throughout 2013. Training is not a one time thing.  As people come and go, it’s important to make sure they are trained on Agile.  In fact, our HR department is making plans for 2014 to help us spread the good word towards our Agile enterprise vision.
• This year, 3 of our 4 Agile Project Leaders and 1 of our 5 IT Business Analysts earned their PMI Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI-ACP) credential.  That makes 5 PMI-ACPs, including myself!
• Last but not least, we can’t forget about the many Agile tours we gave in 2013 to (among others):
  • Cox Media Group VIPs
  • AutoTrader
  • New York Life
  • Catalina Marketing
  • Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina

What a year for us!  Here’s to being Agile in 2014 and continuing our journey.