The Agile Methodology is an extraordinary approach that empowers us to be productive, efficient, and easily adapt to change by working iteratively and delivering value continuously. Project after project, Agile has proven to be the right way of building software products. Digital products inherently grow and change; it's part of their nature. Working agilely gives us the flexibility to make the most of this characteristic, making it an advantage instead of a liability. Self-organized teams are aligned, understand the product phases, priorities, and roles; this has an enormous impact on each value delivery.
There's a reason why Scrum started in the software industry and has now spread to countless industries: it truly helps teams become more productive.
The framework follows the agile principles and establishes a set of roles, responsibilities, and events the team should follow to succeed.
Let's explain Scrum briefly. Shooting from the hip, Scrum teams organize their work in Sprints, which are established time periods that go from one week to a month-long. At the beginning of each Sprint, the team plans what increment of the product they'll produce in that period; during the Sprint, they work to build it; and at the end of the Sprint, they review their work and make adaptations for the next Sprint. Scrum teams keep on working on Sprints, iterating on the product.
Of course, everything mentioned before is just a synopsis of what Scrum is. The framework is robust and offers a very detailed structure. If you're interested in knowing more about it, we strongly recommend reading the complete Scrum Guide, a «must» for Scrum teams.
At Light-it, Scrum is a blueprint that guides the whole company. We don't only use it for product development; we employ it in marketing projects, human resources processes, business development, and more operations. Not to mention the fact that our playbook (yes, the document you're reading right now) is progressively built using Scrum.
OKR is a goal management framework created by Google that helps companies align and execute a common strategy. OKR stands for “objectives” and “key results”; companies establish an objective (which marks where to go) and various Key Results (clear and measurable results or symptoms that, if reached, reveal the objective has been achieved).
We started working with OKRs in 2020 and it has been a before and after at the company. It helped our team mature, focus, prioritize, and be more transparent in regards to goals. We establish objectives and key results for each year-quarter, for every sector and each and every person on the team. This has motivated people to achieve their goals, and aligned everyone in the same direction.
Pssst: if you’re one of our teammates, we strongly recommend you to read “Measure What Matters”. You can borrow the book from our Library.