How We Turned Agile Into a Creative Delivery Loop (And Why Ice Cream Helped)

"How a creator-centric company transformed its delivery system to boost speed, spark innovation, and serve up agility—with a scoop of ice cream."

What happens when your company’s mission is to nurture creativity—but your systems are designed for control?

That’s the paradox we faced at a fast-growing, creator-centric company. Our teams were filled with designers, engineers, data scientists, and marketers—brilliant people who thrived when they could build rather than just execute.

Agile wasn’t new to us. But it didn’t feel like us. So we didn’t just adopt a framework. We built a way of working rooted in our values, shaped by our culture, and designed to move creative ideas from spark to impact—with joy, not burnout.

We called it our Creative Delivery Loop.

Start With the Why

Before we touched a single backlog, we anchored in purpose. Our company’s mission is to empower creators, and we wanted our systems to do the same for our employees.

Our values became the foundation:

• Creator First – We design for creators, including the ones inside the building.

• Build Together – Cross-functional collaboration isn’t optional—it’s essential.

• Always Improving – Our systems should evolve as fast as our ideas.

• Own It – Everyone takes accountability for moving the work forward.

• Be You – Diversity of thought is a feature, not a bug.

These weren’t just posters—they were product principles, planning guardrails, and performance anchors.

A Planning Rhythm Built for Creative Work

We needed a planning system that could hold both strategy and spontaneity. Here's how we broke it down:

• Annual Focus Areas set 2–3 bold priorities for the year.

• Quarterly Themes aligned departments to evolving needs.

• Epics were shaped collaboratively—big bets with measurable outcomes.

• Releases and Stories allowed for fast delivery and feedback.

• Subtasks grounded the work in craftsmanship and clarity.

This rhythm helped teams stay connected to the big picture while giving them the autonomy to shape the path.

And we didn’t just hand teams a roadmap—we co-created it.

The Epic Workshop: Strategy as a Shared Act

Each quarter, we held a 3-day Epic Workshop:

• Day 1: Leaders from product, engineering, finance, and design explored trends, signals, and priorities.

• Day 2: Cross-functional teams collaboratively defined epics and value hypotheses.

• Day 3: Teams refined stories, mapped dependencies, and visualized the delivery plan.

By the end, the strategy wasn’t a secret document. It was a shared commitment—with momentum built in.

The Journey of an Epic (a.k.a. A Story Worth Telling)

In our system, an Epic wasn’t just a giant Jira ticket. It was a creative hypothesis. A bet.

1. Spark – A customer insight, a persistent pain, a hunch worth testing.

2. Exploration – Who benefits? What’s the smallest value slice?

3. Refinement – Shape outcomes, clarify scope, define success.

4. Planning – Draft stories, surface risks, and sequence releases.

5. Execution – Deliver in increments, adapt based on feedback.

6. Measurement – Did we make a difference?

7. Closure – Reflect, document, and celebrate.

We built meaning into every phase. This loop let us move fast without losing sight of why we were building.

From Order-Takers to Creative Owners

Here’s the truth: many teams were stuck in “wait for instructions” mode. Not because they lacked talent—but because past systems hadn’t given them ownership.

We coached teams out of fear of failure and into action. Our mantra?

Progress Over Perfection

One of the most powerful shifts happened at an all-hands meeting where I introduced a simple game:

🍦 The Ice Cream Focus Game 🍦

The Setup:

• One Developer

• Many Customers

• Each Customer gives their favorite ice cream flavor

• The Developer writes them down—one letter at a time, rotating between Customers

Round 1: Developer juggles all requests at once.

Round 2: Developer focuses on one Customer at a time.

The difference was obvious and hilarious. Customers got their cards faster when the Developer focused. Less stress. Better results.

The game landed so well that our CEO sent everyone DoorDash gift codes to order ice cream. For weeks afterward, any time someone took on too much, you’d hear:

“Are you trying to eat too much ice cream?”

Sometimes the most powerful organizational metaphors are the tastiest.

Big Room Planning, Minus the Theater

We adapted quarterly planning sessions to reflect our culture. Instead of ceremonies, we hosted energized alignment sessions grounded in a creator story, a real customer use case that reminded us why the work mattered.

Teams mapped out dependencies, aligned capacity, and left with a visual plan they actually believed in. Leaders attended not to micromanage, but to unblock and support.

Continuous Feedback Loops

Planning wasn’t a quarterly event—it was a living loop. We embedded:

• Weekly cross-team reviews to spot drift

• Bi-weekly executive office hours to resolve blockers fast

• Rituals like kickoff, mid-sprint sync, and sprint close for rhythm and reflection

We didn’t chase agility for its own sake—we used it to stay curious and connected.

📈 What Changed?

By shifting from rigid frameworks to values-led agility, we saw real outcomes:

• Throughput: More than 2x in nine months

• Cycle time: Dropped by over 90%

• Lead time: Reduced 42%

• Epic Completion Rate: Rose from ~50% to 85%+

• Idea-to-Delivery Time: Cut 40%, enabling faster learning and faster product-market fit

More importantly, team surveys showed:

• Higher engagement

• More collaboration

• Greater clarity and confidence in delivery

Final Thought: Agility That Feeds the Soul

We didn’t just build a new delivery system. We created a culture of ownership, creativity, and shared purpose.

This wasn’t agile theater. It was a system with a heartbeat.

Because when you put creators at the center, you don’t just move faster. You move smarter, braver, and more joyfully.