The month of December isn’t complete without some fun and making merry. This time of the year is also about renewal and recommitment to the excellence that we stand for. What better way to do this than to play a nice little game that reinforce core concepts of Agile Methodology and in the process, have some fun as well!

The emphasis on continuous learning has always been a KPA for us at Argusoft. When we mixed this with team building activities and some balloon blowing, the combustion was instantaneous, and the results were magical. Agile methodology was taken as the subject area for this session and Maya Ramachandran, an MIT Alumna and a very keen Agile Practitioner and Evangelist was the facilitator for this event.

The session began with a presentation on the Agile philosophy, the Manifesto, Artifacts and the Rituals. Several interactions during this session brought out important aspects and points of view of the team members. They were well concluded and aligned with the core of Agile Philosophy – “people before process’ and “creating products of value to clients” by Maya.

The learning session that followed was designed to internalize the lessons through fun exercises. Several User Stories were created, and the teams had three sprints of three minutes each to complete these user stories. Stakeholders and QA were assigned to each team to review and measure the outcomes of these stories. The teams were to go through the entire framework right from backlog grooming, sprint planning, execution, sprint review and retrospective. The team not only enjoyed the session but went back with a lot of insights, more questions and even more importantly, a willingness to learn and grow more.

Learning is a continuous process that is essential to growth and when it is done together and with some fun, the result is manifold and that was there for all to see. We will see many more interesting events and learning activities that will benefit our own Argonauts – because we truly believe that the core strength of any organization is their employees and as the employee becomes more and more capable and stays at the cutting edge, the organization and the clients stand to benefit as well.

As we sign off this wonderful year and step into a brand-new calendar, here is wishing everybody a very happy and successful 2018. Let’s commit to learning more, growing more and help make this world an even better place.