Patriot Pathfinders

The Scrum Team that Leads the Way

Program Overview

The Agile for Patriots Graduate Internship Program (AFP GI) allows former AFP graduates to take their Scrum skills to a higher level by gaining additional experience delivering viable products in a professional setting. The program result is an experienced talent pool with the skills and Agile mindset that companies are seeking. The Patriot Pathfinders are the first Scrum team to participate in this program.

The AFP GI Program will help participants:

  1. Find a more fulfilling opportunity in Agile Value Delivery
  2. Succeed in their new role
  3. Be continuously sought after by employers
  4. Receive support, resources and playbooks, Agile coaching, feedback and networking.

Mission Statement

Preparing Patriots for Agile careers through practical experience using Scrum Framework in a relevant workplace environment

Vision

All AFP GI Program Patriots are employed with fullfiling roles in Agile Value Delivery.

Meet the AFP Graduate Interns

The AFP GI team members represent veterans and spouses of the military bringing a wide range of experience and diversity to the AFP GI Program. 

Barbara DeVries

Barbara DeVries

Lee D. Clemons

Lee D. Clemons

Jaime Quiroga

Jaime Quiroga

Ash Gawande

Ash Gawande

Charles Baldwin

Charles Baldwin

Scrum Play Highlights

The Pathfinder Scrum team followed Playbooks provided by our Agile Coach in order to implement proven practices and overcome common challenges faced by Scrum teams. The following tabs describe our Patriot Pathfinders team experience with the major Scrum Plays:

As part of the Product Owner Playbook, targeted personas or roles that the product is intended to serve were developed in order to create empathy in the mind of the developers who are collaborating in product delivery.

  • Writing the Personas enabled us to focus on writing user stories and keep the correct perspective. Identifying the Personas helped us to write meaningful user stories. Identifying what the Personas cared about enabled us to give weight and realism to the stories.
  • Personalizing the Personas, e.g. Harry the Hiring Manager enabled us to visualize them as real people.
  • This exercise allowed our team to map the Scrum values to each of the persona types.

The Scrum Team Launch Playbook notes that a common challenge that Scrum Teams face with tools is making sure that new team members know which tools are being used and how to access them, so we implemented the following practices:

  • Leverage Prior Learning and Material from AFP Practicum
  • Use Atlassian (Development tool provider) training 
  • Search for WordPress Tips and YouTube Videos to get job done
  • Write Job Aids (in Google Docs) for what you have learned to
    1. Jump Start your fellow cohorts, not only with technical hints, develop cross-functional teams
    2. Provide material which can be improved in each sprint, by any cohort by any GI scrum team for the betterment of the GI program
    3. Improve technical writing skills, leveraging prior knowledge of corporate templates and versioning 
  • Communication Channels allowed effective collaboration amongst cross functional teams.

This page was developed using WordPress and DIVI, with supporting tools Jira, Confluence, Slack, and Google Docs