Agile with a spin

Even though Agile is mostly used in an IT environment regarding software development, it is certainly not the only place where it is/can be used.

Out of personal experience (by example) it is used by a competitive pool player as well (and in many other ways).

This may sound a little bit weird, but I will try to explain this through this article.

Sprints and Shippable product

Think about the fact that depending on the level of a pool player he/she has a big tournament every week (for a very active player) to once every 4 weeks (for a not so active player)

The goal of the sprint is to compete on the highest level possible with his/her best game and the sprint is the period he used to train before this tournament.

To be able to do this, the pool player needs to work continuously on his/her game by continuous improvement.

Planning

At the beginning of the sprint (the preparation for a big tournament) he will think about the action plan he set up from the previous sprint (retrospective) and tasks are created for the things he must work on during the current sprint (sprint backlog). These can be drills, position play exercises, shot making, stress exercises and so on

Development and testing

During the sprint he works on these tasks to improve his game, talks to other pool players on how certain things can be achieved (standup) and has different training matches with other players (testing) to make sure that the goal of the sprint (training period) can be met.

Review

At the day of his training (sprint), he will show other players/sponsors what he has been working/training on by playing his best in a match and trying to win the tournament.

Retrospective

After the game a pool player looks at what went right in his game and what did not go so well and tries to create an action plan for the next sprint (preparation to his next game). This is the end of the current sprint, and the player is ready to start the next one.

Conclusion

As you can see, Agile and scrum appear way more in life than you initially would think. I’m pretty sure, even if you don’t know much about Agile or Scrum that most of you will have used it in some form without even knowing it.