3.1. The agile approach: Iterating in sprints
Agile is an iterative approach. Within a predefined frequency, the team sets goals, revisits tasks, and organizes its work. These activities provide the team with an overview of what the whole team is doing and the requirements, thus creating a higher level of transparency and, ideally, understanding. Most often, this transparency is achieved with Kanban boards (Chapter 5), which represent the workflow and tasks of a project, a person, or a whole team. It is important to note that all this is aimed at helping everybody involved to make sure the right things are being prioritised and achieving a more balanced workload in the team. The transparency should not be abused to micromanage. The team as a whole is responsible for making sure the work gets organised properly.
One Agile iteration is commonly called a Sprint. It has a defined length, which can be as short as one or two weeks or as long as four weeks, and follows a clear recurring structure of Agile meetings (Chapter 6 Meetings). In practice, it might be helpful to use your existing meeting structure. That means organising a Sprint between recurring meetings like jour fixes could be an easy way to get started. Think about the rhythm of work you usually have. What are key meetings, alignments, and milestones? Write down regular meetings as well as typical triggers of activities that have a significant impact on your work schedule. Do the latter incur typical patterns? For example, if you have a weekly jour-fixe, a Sprint duration of a week can work very well.
The goals are set in a way that usable output is available at the end of the iteration, while it is perfectly fi ne to split the expected output into small deliverables, provided these are usable and useful. This output is usually presented to the client to align on whether their requirements are met and then, if needed, the requirements for the next Sprint are adapted.
Story
Learning from the case
As a senior associate, Fiona has sufficient experience to work independently on certain clients, yet she’s near enough to her legal studies that she still remembers how she first got in touch with different specializations. What drew her to litigation specifically was that she was able to really push the limits for a client, work internationally, and be sure to have plenty of unexpected turns regarding evidence and other aspects of each case. Neither she nor her colleagues are new to changing circumstances. At the same time, she is very keen to have better tools and a framework that makes it easier for her legal creativity to flourish.
What Fiona read about Agile work sounded promising in that regard, as it expressly addresses working with uncertainty in projects and learning in iterations. One question is really puzzling her: because Agile is supposed to work in time-boxed iterations, how do these Sprints match the requirements of deadlines set by courts and clients?
Since the Agile methodology originates in software development, she thinks about asking her IT colleague Igor whether he knows more about the theory. He does not, but after asking around it turns out that Gabriel has a friend who works in IT consulting, with whom he is meeting the following evening. Fiona asks him to take her questions with him, in case his friend knows the answers. Gabriel’s friend Sara does indeed have considerable experience in the field. She studied management and holds a bachelor’s degree in IT. Now she works for one of the top-tier IT consultancy firms. They are often called in to stalled projects to fix the project management. She specifically focuses on the methodologies being used, including Agile. Bringing up Fiona’s question, Gabriel learns that it is a common misconception that deliverables are only shared at the end of a Sprint. Rather, it is up to the Product Owner to decide on when a work product is finished and delivered to the client.
The next day, Gabriel shares what he has learnt with Fiona. On that basis, they think that in the short run it is a perfectly good approach to plan with the usual deadlines, adapt if needed, and to have delivery or submission deadlines that are not at the end of the Sprint. They would first start with their current planning rhythm, which is aligned to their weekly team meetings. They can still learn and adapt on their Agile journey. Based on Gabriel’s experience discussing with Sara, Alice invites her team to think about who could consult them on a small volume basis.
Example
Internal meetings:
Team Jour fixe
Alice, Fiona, Gabriel
Weekly, Tuesday 5 PM
Online
Law firm partner meeting
Alice and the other partners
Monthly
Office
Project meeting
Alice, Fiona, Gabriel, (Igor), (Sara)
As needed
Online
External meetings:
Client update meeting
Alice, Bob, Fiona, Gabriel
Weekly
Online
Negotiations
Alice, Bob, Eric
As needed
In Person
Prep meetings before negotiations, court dates, etc
Alice, Bob, (Fiona), (Gabriel), (Caleb)
As needed
Online
Template
Internal meetings:
External meetings:
Last updated
