The Agile Construction Company – Interview with Pirita Vainio of NCC Group

I had the pleasure of meeting with Pirita Vainio, Head of Digital and Innovation at NCC Group. In this podcast interview, we discuss how a newcomer to the industry brought agile practices into a construction company. NCC Group is actively exploring agile methods such as Scrum and Kanban.  What is agile? Agile is the term that is most familiar to software developers. Traditionally, projects deliver the result at once near the end. An agile project is more iterative, delivering results incrementally. Agile projects adapt to evolving customer needs and focus on users and business value. Agile projects typically use the principles of a framework called Scrum. The basic unit of Scrum is a sprint. It is a time-limited iteration for the sprint team to achieve a certain goal. The duration is fixed in advance and can vary from one week to one month. There are three core roles in the Scrum framework: a product owner – representing the stakeholders, a self-organizing development team, and a scrum master. Scrum Masters are trained in agile methodology. Their role in a sprint is to be a facilitator and intermediator, not a team leader or project manager. About Pirita Pirita started at NCC in March 2016. She has wide-ranging experience in innovation and digital development in e.g. retail, logistics, and ICT services. In January of 2017 she became Head of Digital and Innovation at NCC Group, headquartered in Stockholm. You can connect with Pirita on LinkedIn and Twitter. Listen to the interview (also in iTunes)