Agile Cooking is a way to prepare food collaboratively and in a self-organizing way. In addition to having food to eat, it also helps participants to practice and better understand concepts of agile and self-organization.
Recommended Setup
Agile cooking is fun, fosters team collaboration and creativity! So it's a great addition for your next team event.
From our experience, it works extremely well with small teams (4-8 people). It will likely work with larger teams if you add Scaled Agile methods and have enough kitchens available.
At least one person should know agile methods and take on the role as Agile Coach.
How Does It Work?
The "rules" for agile cooking are rather simple:
Gathering resources: Every participant brings 3-5 random ingredients that are supposed to not go well together (like garlic and chocolate). Their combined volume should be around what one person eats (or 500-700 kcal). This can also be done together. Everyone buys their ingredients and tries to not look or show what they got to other gatherers. Make sure that any allergies and intolerances within the team are clear to everyone.
Example of what the 4 of us gathered
Planning 1: You meet at a kitchen and put everything on display. What meals can be made with this? Making several (3-5) courses is recommended. Every provided ingredient has to be used at least in one course to at least a small amount.
One of our dishes will be a Ginger-Jam-Curry
Planning 2: After the team decided on what meals (i.e. "Epics") will be cooked, break down what tasks have to be completed. For instance "boil pasta" can be such a task. Like always, don't make tasks too big or too small. Organize them on an Agile board (e.g. Kanban).
Thomas is inspecting our plan. Anything missing?
Cooking: With transparency of the team's goals and tasks, it is now able to cook. There is no need for any management role. But of course, team members can agree on how they take over responsibilities. Interesting fact: Since the team will eat their own (dog) food, there is a very high motivation to get the best result as a team. The effect of this is a supportive environment and no blaming.
Also on the menu: Our salad 'Asterix' and spaghetti with almond pesto
Eating: Enjoy a culinary adventure! Even with the craziest inventions, we never encountered anything inedible and oftentimes we even uncovered combinations that we included in your regular cooking repertoire. You'll be surprised!
We are ready to dig in!
Our favorite dish of the evening: Ginger-Jam-Curry!
Tips For the Agile Coach
As the Agile Coach of an Agile Cooking session, you only have three tasks:
1. Making sure everything is organized: You'll need a (large) enough kitchen and an Agile board. This usually means a flipchart, post-it's and suitable pens/markers. Keep in mind that you don't have to do everything by yourself, you just have to make sure everything is there at the event.
2. Explaining the rules: Providing clarity of the process and helping the team follow the process efficiently and effectively is your objective as the Agile coach. Put some extra attention on the "non-functional requirements" like allergies.
3. Fostering self-organization: Make sure you don't mix up the process responsibility with the responsibility of the outcome. It is the team's responsibility to ensure the meals will taste as good as possible. Empower the team to get there on their own.
Parallels and Differences to Agile Software Development
When thinking of Agile software development, there are many parallels - but also quilte a few differences. Here is a list of things we recognized when comparing Agile Cooking with Scrum.
Stakeholders? Since the participants will be eating their food and they will be the only ones, this means they are the most important stakeholders for their own deliverables. This is something that does not happen in software development. It might help them create a better understanding of user centricity. What we noticed is that there was frequent involvement of other stakeholders. Maybe it was caused by the uncertainty in combination with the easy access. But this (developers asking for user direkt feedback while working on stuff) is something that should be done in software development much more often.
Scrum and sprints? Of course, you can do sprints. From our experience, this interrupts the flow though and it makes more sense to just finish tasks until everything is done. So Kanban seems to work better.
Review? Bon appétit!
Retrospective? Sure, do a quick feedback round during or after dessert. But since you won't repeat Agile Cooking sessions with the goal to become better cooks, focus on the learnings and insights about Agility. Did anybody have new self-knowledge?
Product Owner? While there is a clear need for a product owner in Agile software development, there seems to be no need for one in Agile Cooking. If you have a junior PO in the team and want to give them the chance to practice this role, this is a good chance for them. It is also possible to have a person taking over the responsibility for a dish, so the PO responsibility can also explicitly be shared within the team.
Want to Learn More?
To learn more about MindPort, our team and culture, check out our team page.
