Imagine your business stakeholder has an idea. In a classic approach, you help create a business case, with lots of information that is based on, honestly, assumptions. Because even with the best of intentions and a detailed up front analysis, we cannot exactly predict the future.

In an agile approach, we accept there’s a lot we don’t know up front. So how do we (help) estimate the project? What’s the agile alternative for following up on scope, time and cost? How can we stay in control without sacrificing flexibility and responsiveness to changes? And what is the BA’s role in all this?

Together with Damien, we will discover that agile is not in contradiction with scope management, budgeting and control. Rather, it can lead to more transparency and visibility, and help us get to better business decisions more easily.

Imagine your business stakeholder has an idea. In a classic approach, you help create a business case, with lots of information that is based on, honestly, assumptions. Because even with the best of intentions and a detailed up front analysis, we cannot exactly predict the future.

In an agile approach, we accept there’s a lot we don’t know up front. So how do we (help) estimate the project? What’s the agile alternative for following up on scope, time and cost? How can we stay in control without sacrificing flexibility and responsiveness to changes? And what is the BA’s role in all this?

Together with Damien, we will discover that agile is not in contradiction with scope management, budgeting and control. Rather, it can lead to more transparency and visibility, and help us get to better business decisions more easily.

Agile, teal, self-organising, autonomous teams, flat organisations, new way of working… We all dream to work in such an environment. The question is; how do you create such an open, transparent structure where you don’t lose focus, nor efficiency.
This is how we started at Sweet Mustard.

Sweet Mustard?

• Sweet Mustard is enabling agile teams to work in state-of-the-art technologies for its customers
• Sweet Mustard is exactly 1 year old
• The pillars of Sweet Mustard are
  • Cultivating talent
  • Inspiring community
  • Innovating business
• There’s no management team or hierarchy

The goal

Last year, while working with 2 or 5 or even 10 colleagues, everything seemed manageable. Of course, when a company grows as fast as Sweet Mustard in 1 year’s time, some obvious growing pains emerge. While being happy about boosting business and rising demands, questions like “how can we keep the right focus and priorities, how do we safeguard our values and core beliefs, how do we continue to work on our pillars and our story” arise.

What we were looking for

Agile, teal, self-organising, autonomous teams, flat organisations, new way of working…
Exactly that. We wanted to keep the feeling of “not coming to work” when we were coming to work. Still having fun with innovating ideas, hackathons, no fixed place or time for work, no managers, planners to tell us what or how to do things.

This is the story of how we set up our flat organization structure

Agile, teal, self-organising, autonomous teams, flat organisations, new way of working… We all dream to work in such an environment. The question is; how do you create such an open, transparent structure where you don’t lose focus, nor efficiency.
This is how we started at Sweet Mustard.

Sweet Mustard?

• Sweet Mustard is enabling agile teams to work in state-of-the-art technologies for its customers
• Sweet Mustard is exactly 1 year old
• The pillars of Sweet Mustard are
  • Cultivating talent
  • Inspiring community
  • Innovating business
• There’s no management team or hierarchy

The goal

Last year, while working with 2 or 5 or even 10 colleagues, everything seemed manageable. Of course, when a company grows as fast as Sweet Mustard in 1 year’s time, some obvious growing pains emerge. While being happy about boosting business and rising demands, questions like “how can we keep the right focus and priorities, how do we safeguard our values and core beliefs, how do we continue to work on our pillars and our story” arise.

What we were looking for

Agile, teal, self-organising, autonomous teams, flat organisations, new way of working…
Exactly that. We wanted to keep the feeling of “not coming to work” when we were coming to work. Still having fun with innovating ideas, hackathons, no fixed place or time for work, no managers, planners to tell us what or how to do things.

This is the story of how we set up our flat organization structure

Agile, teal, self-organising, autonomous teams, flat organisations, new way of working… We all dream to work in such an environment. The question is; how do you create such an open, transparent structure where you don’t lose focus, nor efficiency.
This is how we started at Sweet Mustard.

Sweet Mustard?

• Sweet Mustard is enabling agile teams to work in state-of-the-art technologies for its customers
• Sweet Mustard is exactly 1 year old
• The pillars of Sweet Mustard are
  • Cultivating talent
  • Inspiring community
  • Innovating business
• There’s no management team or hierarchy

The goal

Last year, while working with 2 or 5 or even 10 colleagues, everything seemed manageable. Of course, when a company grows as fast as Sweet Mustard in 1 year’s time, some obvious growing pains emerge. While being happy about boosting business and rising demands, questions like “how can we keep the right focus and priorities, how do we safeguard our values and core beliefs, how do we continue to work on our pillars and our story” arise.

What we were looking for

Agile, teal, self-organising, autonomous teams, flat organisations, new way of working…
Exactly that. We wanted to keep the feeling of “not coming to work” when we were coming to work. Still having fun with innovating ideas, hackathons, no fixed place or time for work, no managers, planners to tell us what or how to do things.

This is the story of how we set up our flat organization structure

- And we could all note down, visualize and tackle day-to-day frustrations, ideas and challenges -

The advantages of using agile techniques inside and outside IT are clear and well-known, provided the agile processes have been defined for the right reasons.

Apart from using those techniques in business projects, we have implemented a way of tackling the non-work related issues based on techniques and ideas such as scrum, kanban, kaizen and sociocracy.
“People aren't happy because they're successful. They're successful because they're happy” – Jeff Sutherland
Following the above quote, we defined a framework, where all frustrations, questions, ideas and anything that was team-related but not work-related could be tackled.
Examples: working from home, flex desks, non core tasks that are too time consuming, dog-sitting, meeting rules, air-co usage... Everything that is keeping you from a happy workday should be as important as the work itself.
In this session, I want to explain how we do this, and how we keep the balance between what has to be done and the time needed to tackle those non-work related issues that are so critical for the happiness of the team members.