Varsity Spirit Agile
The Challenge
Seeking Agile Transformation
Varsity Spirit, Inc., had just begun a transition to Agile, with only a handful of teams practicing Kanban and Scrum methods. As often happens in the early stages of Agile transformation, team members understood the theory but not the practice. Lokion worked with Varsity to evaluate their process and coach the team toward predictable, sustainable release cycles.
The Solution
Team Reset
Our Agile Services mentor spent time on-site with Varsity’s core team and also visited their remote, third-party vendor to understand the work dynamic, behaviors, and opportunities to maximize the benefits of Agile. Lokion’s Agile Coach worked with Varsity to restructure their teams, responsibilities, and agreements. Our advisor also led formal training in the Scrum framework, roles, and events and provided daily coaching to Varsity’s Scrum Master, Product Owner, and team.
Results
Disciplined Scrum Outcomes
With Lokion’s guidance, the project team moved away from entrenched waterfall practices—like heavy documentation and rigid requirements—to a disciplined Scrum approach, including regular demos and software releases. The team moved into iterative cycles of improvement based on customer feedback, which also began to drive backlog prioritization. The transition to Agile was so successful that Varsity asked us to provide Agile coaching for their sister company, Herff Jones.
