TL;DR: During a Scrum Master training, participants worked on a food retail case. The team from ING, T-Mobile and MPD came up with the concept 'Delivery & Cooking' - fast delivery plus hot meals. One day later, Albert Heijn announced exactly this. Proof that Agile thinking leads to relevant innovation!
Agile thinking works: By reasoning from customer needs and working in sprints, teams naturally arrive at innovative solutions that align with market developments.
Learning by Doing
Wednesday December 12 and Thursday December 13, our Scrum Master Certified training was well attended again. Nice group of people from various companies. This time something extra special happened...
During our agile trainings we always intersperse the theory with a challenging case assignment. Participants go through this as a team during the two days and thus follow the phases of a Scrum project. Everyone alternately takes on the role of Scrum Master or Product Owner. You learn best by doing.
Product Vision Statement
On the first day, teams create and present the framework of a 'Product Vision Statement'. They think about:
- Customer & segmentation
- (Latent) customer needs
- Competition
- How their new product or service will add value
Based on the product vision, the rest of the project and assignments unfold. Including a sprint, complete with planning, 'days' of work, stand-up, review and retrospective meetings.
Practical Case Assignment
During this week's Scrum Master training, we did a case from Food Retail: a large supermarket chain looking for a party that can help with further market and customer channel development.
The group was divided into two teams, both given the assignment to create and present a project vision based on the introduction.
The smart cookies from the first team (participants from ING, T-Mobile and MPD) thought about current providers including Albert Heijn, Jumbo and Picnic. They then presented their concept 'Delivery & Cooking': improved and faster delivery of supermarket products to homes AND preparing and delivering complete hot meals. Surprising.
Surprising Result
Thursday morning, upon arrival, it turned out that almost everyone had read the reference on NU.nl to the article in the FD about the plans of Wouter Kolk, since November 1 the new boss of Ahold Delhaize: more fresh, faster delivery and... delivering hot meals!
Hey, 'Delivery & Cooking'!
Hilarity all around of course, and how wonderful that Albert Heijn is going to make our agile dream come true!
The Lesson
This example shows that Agile thinking and customer-focused innovation go hand in hand. By systematically reasoning from the customer perspective and working in sprints, teams arrive at solutions that align with real market developments.
Want to Learn to Think This Way?
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Written by
Merijn Visman
Certified Scrum Trainer
For over 15 years, I have been helping professionals and organizations work more effectively with Agile and Scrum. My trainings are practical, interactive, and immediately applicable in your daily work.
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