The inaugural Intrapreneur Academy started their quarter on Agile on Wednesday, April 25th with introductory workshops led by NewBoCo’s Agile Coach, Nate Adams, an immersive tour of Geonetric, and a Q&A session with Geonetric CEO, Linda Barnes.
Intro to Agile — Nate Adams
Agile work practices are taking organizations dealing with and within the modern world by storm. While many Agile principles are simple to understand from a theoretical perspective, getting traction and adoption can be challenging. This introductory workshop focused on the “why” behind Agile practices to help teams in Intrapreneur Academy understand how they could apply their learning to their own organization.
Learning objectives:
- Minimize risk by working in small iterations
- Maximize value by delivering often
- Make work visible for the entire team
- Prioritize work effectively
The group learned about the Agile Manifesto and the principles behind it and played a ping-pong game to learn about the value of time-boxing, planning, iterating, and holding retrospectives.
While the biggest overall take-away was that Agile is a “mindset” not a “methodology,” each of the 6 organizations immediately saw ways they could use Agile principles to make a difference in their organization. They made commitments to start implementing retrospectives in their teams, make work more visible, and challenge processes that don’t make sense.
Immersive Tour and Q&A — Geonetric CEO Linda Barnes
The group then heard a brief presentation from Linda Barnes on Geonetric’s Agile transformation. In 2013, Geonetric overhauled their entire organization by adopting Agile practices company-wide. Since then, they’ve experienced major success and growth and are considered at the front of their industry.
After touring Geonetric’s office and seeing Agile in action, the cohort asked numerous questions about how Geonetric hires for a good culture fit, how teams self-organize, and how to start on their own journey.
As the quarter goes on, the teams in Intrapreneur Academy will continue to dive deeper into Agile principles with more workshops and immersive tours. Teams (and others!) looking to explore Agile even more deeply can join NewBoCo for an upcoming Agile Bootcamp in June or schedule a private workshop to directly target their organization’s needs by emailing agile@newbo.co.
