Lappset wanted to accelerate product development and help its teams focus on the most important tasks. Taskmill helped the company introduce Scrum and agile methods into its product development. The pilot improved prioritisation, gave the team greater focus and helped move development projects forward more efficiently.
Lappset Group Oy is a Finnish family-owned company founded in Lapland in 1970. With more than 50 years of experience, Lappset creates play and exercise experiences for people of all ages. Its inspiring environments encourage people to stay active today and feel better tomorrow.
Taskmill and Lappset started working together in February 2022, when Lappset wanted to introduce agile methods into its product development. The goal was to shorten time to market and help teams focus on the highest-priority tasks. Lappset believed that clearer prioritisation would help its teams achieve product development goals faster and deliver higher-quality results.
Agile product development started with a Scrum pilot
A few years earlier, Lappset’s team in the Netherlands had successfully introduced Scrum in the development of interactive products. Lappset now wanted to expand Scrum to other product development teams and asked Taskmill to support the implementation.
“We started quickly. Lappset had already selected a pilot team, whose Scrum Master was very enthusiastic about the opportunity to use agile methods. Together with Laura, we planned how to get started in practice. We ended up facilitating a short basic training for the pilot team and after that we focused on learning by doing. By combining theory with work in practice, we were able to quickly see how Scrum suits Lappset’s product development in Rovaniemi,” says Taskmill’s Maija Särkijärvi, who acted as an Agile Coach.
Scrum sprints gave the team greater focus
“Already in the retrospective of the first sprint, the team said that the implementation of Scrum had significantly clarified work, helped focus on what is essential and given peace of mind at the workplace”, says Laura Helgers, Lappset’s Scrum Master.
The rest of the organisation also quickly adapted to the new approach. The pilot team worked in two-week sprints, while non-urgent requests were added to the backlog and prioritised alongside other work. From the beginning, the team also reserved capacity for urgent tasks.
Agile product development improved prioritisation and delivery
After a successful pilot lasting a few months, another product development team adopted the agile model.
The Scrum Masters in Finland and the Netherlands also began meeting regularly to share experiences and discuss what their teams could learn from one another.
“It’s great that Taskmill has been helping us implement the Scrum framework and modify our operating model to suit our company. The introduction of agile methods has helped us prioritize things more accurately and complete tasks and projects more efficiently and faster.”, says Erkki Ikäheimo, Lappset’s director of product development.
“It has been wonderful to work with the teams at Lappset. From the beginning, they have been eager to learn and try new things. It is also great to see that Scrum – familiar from the IT world – also works in a completely different world. For me, the most interesting things have been, for example, the demos of the teams at the end of the sprints. The product development that progressed during the sprint has been innovatively presented with the help of e.g. videos and photos. It’s amazing to see the construction of the products from designs to prototypes all the way to a complete package delivered to the customer, for example in the form of a playground mammoth!”, says Maija Särkijärvi.
Customer feedback guides product development
Lappset offers a wide range of traditional and interactive playground and exercise equipment. Alongside safety and responsibility, customer experience plays an important role in its product development.
And who better to provide feedback on playground equipment than its users? At Lappset, children’s feedback is taken seriously and helps provide valuable insight into how its products work in practice.