Agile isn’t just for IT Project Management
Over the last few years I have been working in a number of Agile roles and I’ve come to realise that the principles of Agile can be used for so much more than delivering IT projects.
I started as a Business Analyst/User Researcher at DWP in 2015. This was my first taste of agile and I have to say it really did open my eyes to the benefits of agile delivery. I remember thinking to myself, ‘Why haven’t we always done this?’. It’s clear that speaking to actual users of the product is so important to good delivery so the idea of lengthy requirements documents sounded bonkers to me!
I moved to a non agile role in 2016 and was working as a private secretary for an IT director at HMRC. While I wasn’t working as part of an agile team I brought the principles with me. I started managing my time by sorting my tasks into cards and sorting them on Trello. I think that a lot more places could gain from using just some simple techniques and principles from agile.
For example just by managing a teams work on a Trello board you make it more visible to the rest of the team. By having work more visible team members can identify where they can support each other more easily or add input. A lot of the time we don’t even realise other people can support us because nobody else knows what we’re working on.
I am currently working as a Senior Product Owner at TeachPitch and we’re based in an EdTech collaboration space called EdSpace.
As part of a ‘Lunch and Learn’ session I recently delivered a presentation on ‘Agile Principles’ to some of the other companies at EdSpace. I spoke about how we were using Agile methods at TeachPitch to organise our work.
How can I support you?
Click here if you fancy taking a look at the current iteration of my presentation. I don’t have any notes on there but if you fancy having a conversation with me then feel free to get in touch. I’m able to support you implement any process, whether large or small.
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This was originally posted on my personal website in 2017, https://aaronbooth.co.uk
