This is a post about The Agile Methodology: a set of values and principles. Once you set & check them as your North Star, they will guide you and help you move faster in the jungle of work tasks or in the warm comfort of your kitchen.

Just finished writing this and phone buzzes – my friend Julie:

– Elena?! Good that you answered! I just saw your Insta post #becometheagilecook on #agilemethodology !?

– Hi Julie, nice you’re following my page! How do you find it?

– I don’t get it! What is this #agilecook thing?

– What do you mean? I remember you were doing #agileprojectmanagement at the bank? TheAgileCook is #agileprinciples applied to cooking.

– No, we only had an #agiletraining. But how to mix something so serious as business with the ordinary task of cooking?!

– Julie, you remember from your training that #agile is a mindset, a tool that gives you a way of staying relevant today, in our quite complex lives. In a company, agile allows teams to respond quickly to the surrounding mess, to pivot, to shift and move fast through a constant changing reality. It frees you to work faster and to do much work in less time.

– I applied agile to my cooking and guess what: it works for making food also! I now spend half the time in the kitchen and have food every day! It is a huge BENEFIT for our family! Agile gave me the tools to innovate even in a mundane thing like cooking!

– That sounds cool, but are you sure that is agile?! I know agile, I’ve had a training last month. Even my boss said that agile is not for our company! We don’t even have as many departments as that trainer put in his chart! Plus, we have enough reports to fill in already, we don’t need more!

– Pfff, Julie, what training did you attend? Agile is not about filling in a specific chart, it’s about a set of values and principles that will add speed to what you do! It’s teaching you how to focus on the essential!

– Come on! What are values and principles?! How can they help me? Can you tell? Nobody can, they’re just buzz words! Tell me, do you really, really think some values and principles can help you?

– I surely do! Julie, values are like your secret power, your North Start, the thing that helps you navigate in this ocean of consumerism, your mantra that reminds you what’s important! For my cooking, for example, it’s important that my family likes the food I make. So I don’t get depressed they don’t eat avocado on toast every Wednesday as everybody on Insta thinks it’s a superfood!

– Really? But avocado really is a superfood, you must eat it!! My boy doesn’t like it either, but I tricked him that’s the only way he can get long hair, like his hero, Thor! Admit this is a good one, it worked!

– Ok Julie, that is your choice, and one way of doing things! I’m really not ready now to tell you what I think about avocados and magical superfoods…

– I value superfoods! Nevermind! So values are like the mantras my yoga instructor taught me when I was single? Remember? The „Kleem” mantra that I was saying daily to call for love? And it really worked! It brought me my husband Jake!!!!

– Hmmmm, same, same, but a bit different, but you’re getting there! Let’s say values define who we are! And it’s important to remember who we are and what we want!

– I’m also a good mother and I care about my boys! I want them to like my food also! But it’s so complicated to choose in this jungle of recipes and super foods that I forgot to think about what was important for us!!! True, a mantra would help me chose what’s best for us! So values are like mantras, that get me what I want! What about principles?

– Principles are ideas. Let’s take another food example: for me, eating healthy means eating what’s in season. This means I guide my cooking on what I find available at the market or what I get in my weekly veggie box. That’s a principle, my idea on how a thing should be.

– So Agile is not a chart, a process you need to fill in, are you sure? Like they’ve shown us in our training?

– You’re right, Agile is a statement, a manifesto of values that changed perspectives! In business it brings a new understanding of the role of a leader, a switch from playing Caesar, deciding which projects live or die, to playing the scientist, being always open to search and discovery.

– Like me forcing my poor boys to eat avocado, I was playing Caesar!

– Kind of, yes…Coming back to your dilemma, why did I mix business and food? Because it’s awesome! The agile mindset helped me cook more in half the time. I use my food values as a template to win time. I involve my family in the decisions, so they eat everything I make!

• Elena, I have to try this also! Tell me how!?

– I have to run now, but I’ll make a special post to help you understand the principles and how to adapt them to your family’s taste and needs. Any questions you have, please comment or message me!

Few days later:

• Elena, thanks for the post, it was funny! I think you were right, I’ve talked to my boss, explained her about values and principles, she understood! Your parallel to cooking filled in for us those empty buzzwords. I start to get how cool this agile thing is! We even think the #agilemindset could help us in our work.
• This is great news, Julie! Happy you find it helpful!
• Wait! I have a problem! I wanna send my boss your post, but I can’t send a conversation like this! People like us, who are professionals, like nice presentations, with beautiful photos, easy to understand! I can send it like it is, but believe me, I know my boss, your website will not convince her! Plus, it’s too much reading, and people nowadays don’t read websites, they’re obsolete!
• Oook, Julie, so what does your boss read then?
• Glossy magazines, brochures, Instagram and PowerPoint presentations! Please put all these in a recognisable format, I really want to deliver her this information! I’m chasing a promotion, you know I deserve to have my team to manage, and your agile shit could bring it closer!
• Ok Julie, I’ll think of it.

The conversation was longer, and turned out into 5 or 7 meetings and phone calls and went also into branding, but that’s another story. To cut in short, here’s the presentation that I’ve sent to Julie. If you feel like sharing TheAgileCook’s ideas with some busy corporate friends that don’t like long text, here’s a „professional”.pdf you can download. All you have to do is to send me your email address with the subject „What is Agile pdf” and I send you the file!

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Cover image created with Dall.E