Santa, Scrum & A Christmas to Remember

31st December 2019:

A dark blue sky full of stars stretched away into the distance as Santa sat on the porch of his Lapland workshop to watch the New Year roll in. “2019 was a fairly mixed year,” Santa thought to himself, as Rudolph walked over the snowy lawn and sat down beside him. “What do you think about 2020, Rudolph?” Santa quizzically asked his old friend, “I think it’s going to be an excellent year, I mean, after all we’ve faced in the last year, what could possibly go wrong…?”

Sometime considerably later — September 2020

Santa was in a dilemma. First, he had recently awoken to find that he had, despite his best intentions, put on a little mince pie and brandy weight after last year’s stressful round of Christmas deliveries. A further issue, he realised, was that his 2019 New Year’s resolution of weekly ‘Hot Sauna Yoga’ wasn’t helping him with his long-term back issues. At the ripe old age of somewhere between 1,740 & 1,750 years old (sources are a little fuzzy here) Santa was finding the endless chimney descents were taking their physical toll.

Moreover, Dasher, who oversaw accounts and finances, had indicated that tailoring & beauty costs were skyrocketing. The price of talcum powder (essential to keep Santa’s beard pearly white after each chimney descent) had shot up, putting even more pressure on the year’s upcoming operation.

With a comforting cup of Lapland Souchong tea in his hand, Santa muttered to himself, “Ho ho, I jolly well need to find a solution to some of these problems, otherwise the entire world’s Christmas is at risk. I need to find a way that will keep me and my lovely beard clean, will protect my dodgy back, let me pick up mince pies and the carrots for the reindeer and ultimately help me deliver everyone’s presents on time.”

Meanwhile, back in the workshop an atmosphere of high discontent was mounting. A meeting had been called by Santa’s chief elf helper, a tiny elf called Noel, to discuss the elf and reindeer teams’ current feelings in the workplace. With everyone in the room, Noel banged on the workshop table with a particularly large bauble and called the meeting to order. After an hour or so of discussion the elves had found a couple of key pain points.

1) As a team, they felt exhausted with the time it took to travel around the world checking if children had behaved or misbehaved.

2) Additionally, with rapid population growth, manufacturing all the presents was stretching their resources to the limit.

The reindeer team had also put their antlers together and had discovered that they were frustrated by a number of points:

1) The weight of sleigh — every year it was becoming heavier and heavier and, due to budget cuts, no more reindeer were being recruited to help carry the load.

2) Covid-19 travel restrictions throughout the year had also caused the reindeer to become terribly unfit as they had been unable to train all year round. Going on a night time training run to Argentina had simply been out of the question. Consequently, the chances of them rapidly pulling a heavy sleigh were not good.

The reindeer felt acutely that the elf team should do more to lighten the overall weight of the sleigh to help them run more efficiently. “Carrying nearly a thousand spare Santa suits, boots and caps, plus nearly five thousand bottles of beard whitening talcum powder on top of presents, while we are in this unfit state is simply outrageous,” said Comet, stamping his hooves together. After the meeting was adjourned Noel shared these insights with his trusty lieutenant, an elf called Tinsel. Together, Noel, Tinsel and two more reindeer told Santa they needed things to change. A solution had to be found and quickly!

Fortunately, Mrs Claus had always had a knack for project management, having learnt various work management methodologies during a brief stint working at a consultancy called BP&Co. (Bears, Penguins & Co.). Upon hearing of the various dilemmas and problems, she proposed Santa look at learning a few Agile tools that might help streamline operations. After a rapid overview of Microsoft Teams and Trello, swiftly followed by an introduction to Jira, Santa felt much more confident. Yet, he also believed that it was people and interactions that made his Christmas deliveries work so well and ultimately, he felt these aspects should come before tools and processes.

Realising he needed to polish up his skills and understanding of Agile work from a people-centred perspective, Santa embarked on an Agile Awareness course before quickly moving on to complete a Scrum Master course and a training in Agile Leadership. Now equipped with an array of practical knowledge tucked under his generously sized belt, Santa believed he was ready to help his team overcome their difficulties and coach them all to become much more ‘elf-organising.’

Kick-off & The Product Backlog

Rising from bed one morning, Santa leaned across to check his bedside calendar and yelped in astonishment: it was the middle of November! “Crickey,” thought Santa, “I’d best get a move on setting up our new slick and agile operation”.

After a healthy breakfast of ‘MyMuesli’ (The Mince Pie Edition), Santa gathered the elf and reindeer teams together in the workshop. He announced to them his intention of working in agile teams, his role being that of the Scrum Master.

As the meeting began, some key reindeer stakeholders informed the group that they had appointed a Product Owner called ‘Rudolph’ to help maximise the value of their solutions. Rudolph would not only serve as a member of the sleigh pulling team, but with a solid ‘nose’ for a good product, Rudolph would also connect with other stakeholders as well as helping define overall strategy.

Product Backlog

The first task Santa had as the Scrum Master was to arrange a meeting with Rudolph and the reindeer so that a Product Backlog could be created. Three user stories were placed in it:

· A means to reduce the weight of the sleigh that the reindeer needed to pull

· A method for the delivery of presents and collection of mince pies and carrots without Santa having to repeatedly descend and ascend the chimney

· A method for the elves to easily monitor children’s behaviour around the year and calculate levels of niceness or naughtiness.

Sprint Planning Meeting

Once the Product Backlog had been created, Santa arranged a Sprint Planning meeting with his group of elves. Santa explained the user stories and by so doing, he ensured that all team members would be singing from the same carol sheet. “It is vital that we all understand the importance of transparency, regular inspection of work and adaptation,” explained Santa. “Without these three pillars, we run the risk of not know who is doing what work, how it might be improved or what obstacles are blocking progress. The world is depending on us this Christmas, so we must not fail,” concluded Santa.

Within the two-hour time slot that had been put aside for this initial meeting, the team had discussed the user stories and possible actions as well as how each of them planned to achieve those resolutions on time and within budget. They created a Sprint Backlog using Jira so that everyone was now accountable for their own specific task.

To work

Although the elves were all part of the same team, each had a different role to play. The elves divided themselves into 3 groups within the larger team. Every elf member attended the Daily Scrum where, for just 15 minutes, the team could share their findings, discuss any issues that may have arisen and outline what tasks they had planned for that day.

Group 1 would work on developing software for satellite equipment that would allow children’s naughty-to-nice levels to be monitored from elf headquarters. Elf group 2 was to develop the present-delivery solution that would simultaneously reduce the weight on the sleigh and save on Santa’s costs by negating the need for him to climb down any chimneys himself. This would also mitigate the need and cost of beard whitening powders for Santa. Elf group 3 concentrated on developing a method for collecting the mince pies and carrots in a way that meant Santa would not have to descend into the sooty depths and would also restrict him from eating too much!

Elf group 1 found that configuring software for their satellite equipment was a simple task. However, the task of stealthy and remote present delivery was a much harder challenge. Many elf heads were scratched until a feasible idea was put forward. Using the latest advancements in micro-robotics, AI, and I-materials (materials that can be coded to form different shapes), a plan was presented. First, the elves would build a child’s present as normal using I-material. Then they would coat the present with an invisible coating that would react to a certain pitch and melody (Jingle Bells to be precise). This meant, a bicycle could be shrunk to the size of a peanut, be transported to any destination and then when Santa turned on his sleigh speakers and played Jingle Bells the present would react and spring out to its full original size. To deliver the micro-presents, the elves had created a veritable army of mini-robots disguised as cookies that could carry any I-present down a chimney. A magic polar metal was also used to create these robots so they only weighed 0.1mg. The robots were codenamed Ci-Nah-Mon and once Santa arrived near a city he could connect with the online present database, sprinkle Ci-Nah-Mon over the rooftops, click ‘deliver’ on his tablet and the robots would then begin delivering the right presents.

Because Ci-Nah-Mon and I-material were so lightweight, only a small amount was needed for each present, consequently reducing the overall weight in the sleight. Consequently, the reindeer would be able to cover more chimneys in a shorter time. This solution also meant only one spare Santa suit was now needed and one small bottle of beard whitening solution. Furthermore, a very technically gifted elf called Oww-Dee also saw the sleigh was retrofitted with aerodynamic wings and a lunar e-engine battery, just in case the reindeer became a little too tired.

The third group of elves worked in very close collaboration with elf group 2 to allow both mince pies and carrots to be retrieved and ensure Santa didn’t eat too much. Elf group 3, as it happened, were big fans of Star Trek and using Northern Light technology they developed a scanning and teleportation system for mince-pies and carrots. The system would be installed as an app on Santa’s mobile. All he needed to do was click ‘scan’ on the app and the app would show every location where mince pies and carrots were stationed. Once confirmed, Santa just needed to click ‘transport’ and the sleighs MCRI (mince pie carrot resonance imaging) system would teleport all delicacies into a safe compartment in the sleigh. A final app feature that was developed was a healthy eating plan which notified the user to stop and eat a carrot after more than 3 mince pies were devoured.

Daily Scrum

Every morning the team would hold their daily 15 minute Scrum. Each elf would offer their report with a focus on what they planned to do that day and where they hoped to be by the next day’s meeting. No issues were raised until one little elf brought up the fact that not all houses now had chimneys. How were they going to be able to deliver the presents? The team discussed the matter and soon came up with a resolution to the problem. They could use the elf group 1’s naughty-niceness satellite program to also scan every house and red flag any house without a chimney. The Ci-Nah-Mon robots would then be directed to enter stealthily through the letterbox. Santa would merely need to sit in the sleigh with this tablet and use the satellite software.

The Sprints & Review

At the end of the first fortnightly Sprint, the prototype of the satellite system was ready for testing and so too was the present-delivery solution. The team collectively agreed that these two User Stories could be presented in the Review meeting. Rudolph aligned with the other reindeer stakeholders and Santa invited them all to join the meeting to witness the demoing of the current solutions. After a successful demonstration of the satellite solution and present-delivery solution, both stories were moved to the ‘testing’ column of the Scrum Board. Rudolph and several other stakeholders felt, however, that the MCRI system still needed to be adapted and developed so that it would not take up too much space on the sleigh. The team was confident that with some minor tweaks it would be ready for testing by the end of the second Sprint and ideas for improvement were offered. By the end of the second Sprint everyone was delighted with the progress and the last story was moved to the testing column of the Scrum Board.

Sprint Retrospective with a Cup of Tea

As the kettle whistled, Santa lifted it off the cooker and poured out many, many mugs of Lapland Souchong tea. Overall, the team were amazed at just how far they had come in such a short space of time. The levels of transparency and regular work inspection had meant they had even lowered their overall working costs by a third. Additionally, the elves and reindeer were particularly impressed by Santas leadership for he had really helped guide the movement of work through to a very valuable outcome, despite a challenging timeline. Together, the group discussed what they had achieved and whether they could have done things any differently, making several commitments for possible future improvements as they talked (committing to fewer snowball fights in the workshop was a particularly popular point). Every task on the Scrum Board had now been moved to the final testing column but it wouldn’t be until Christmas Day that they would know for certain how well their solutions worked. Only then could the true value of the project be known and all stories could be moved to the ‘done’ column in the backlog.

So, after a rocky start to the year filled with a pandemic of problems (… and an actual pandemic!), Santa felt a surge of pride for his team and he knew that no matter what happened on Christmas eve, he would be back home, on the porch of his workshop just in time to watch Christmas day dawn.

The End

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