Agile training · Team building · One kitchen

Anyone can explain Scrum.
Experiencing it sticks.

When the pressure is on, teams rarely fail for lack of expertise — they fail at coordination. In a Scrum Cooking workshop your team cooks Asian fusion cuisine in sprints: no recipes, only user stories. Plan, prioritise and take ownership right at the hob — and eat the result.

Schedule a call with OpheliaHow it works ↓
— yes, you'll actually eat your increment
Ophelia in her chef's jacket laughing with a workshop participant at the kitchen counter, wooden spoon and steaming pot at hand
sprint planning, minutes before the first cooking sprint
Plate of fresh maki rolls with star-shaped cucumber and carrot slices and a smiling rice-ball bear
increment #3 ✓
Two workshop participants in aprons laughing while sketching notes together at the kitchen table
retro mood
01 · The workshop

A sprint you can eat

One kitchen, real Scrum, around 120 minutes of cooking time. We cook Asian fusion cuisine — no lecturing, no death by PowerPoint, just a format that sticks. Here is how a session runs:

1

Kick-off: expectations & method

A short intro to a decision-making structure for heterogeneous teams. The first shared decision: the menu — because it affects everyone.

2

No recipes — user stories

You get tickets for your tasty epic, not instructions. “As a guest, I want a starter so I'm not waiting hungry.” The how is up to the team.

3

Sprint planning & shopping

The team plans at the whiteboard and does its own shopping — a collaborative stress test before the stove is even on.

4

Stand-ups between courses

What's done, what's next, what's blocking — answered with rice on your hands.

5

Review = tasting

Stakeholders eat the increment. Feedback is immediate and honest — if the timing slips, there is no dinner.

6

Retrospective over the meal

What worked, what will be different next time? The team leaves with concrete commitments for its next real sprint.

Open hand in a chef's jacket sleeve presenting a freshly formed ball of sushi rice
work in progress
Two hand-rolled maki pieces with cucumber and tuna on a floral cutting mat
deployment 🔥
Plate of fresh maki rolls with star-shaped cucumber and carrot slices and a smiling rice-ball bear
shipped & eaten
Long table set for the team with bowls, dumplings and shared plates of the finished dishes
the retro board
02 · Agile ↔ the kitchen

Same principles, sharper knives

Straight from our retro board — every sticky note is a lesson your team will live through in the kitchen.

mise en place = refinement

Everything prepped and within reach before the sprint starts. Chefs invented ready-ready.

recipe = user story

It says what to achieve — not every cut of the knife.

kitchen timer = timebox

If the timing slips, there is no dinner.

tasting = sprint review

Some serve on time, some serve cold. Brutally honest — and that's why it works.

burnt gyoza = failed experiment

One overcooked dish explains retrospectives better than any slide.

head chef = product owner

Owns the menu, not the knives.

everyone rolls = cross-functional

There are no job titles in the kitchen.

改善 kaizen = continuous improvement

It's literally Japanese.

03 · Two formats

Your team in-house —
or join an open date

🎉

Your team, your workshop

A closed workshop for one team or a cross-department mix. We tailor the concept to your situation — change processes, onboarding, or simply better collaboration.

in-house · 6–10 people · zero prerequisites
🎓

Open workshop dates

Open sessions in Vienna & surroundings — come with a colleague or two, meet other teams, and experience the format before you book it in-house.

Vienna & surroundings · dates on request
04 · Packages

Pick your course

Maki
Team workshop

Closed in-house workshop for 6–10 people. Cooking sprints, tasting, one retro — and a very good dinner story.

price on request
Most booked
Omakase
Open date

A seat at an open Scrum Cooking session in Vienna & surroundings — perfect for tasting the format before you book your team in.

price on request
Kaiseki
Transformation

The workshop is course one. Then: agile assessment, coaching and embedded scrum masters for your organisation.

let's talk
“
It's not about the cooking. It's about what happens when people from different departments want to reach a goal together, under pressure.
Participant · team workshop
“
For the first time I understood why we need a sprint planning.
Participant · after the workshop retro
The secret ingredient

The workshop is how we meet. Agile is what we do.

Scrum Cooking is the friendly front door of an agile consultancy. When the plates are cleared, we are ready for the real work:

Agile transformation

From assessment to rollout: we guide your organisation through a pragmatic agile transformation — processes, roles and culture, without the buzzword bingo.

Scrum masters on loan

Experienced scrum masters join your teams and facilitate your projects — for a sprint or a year. You keep the velocity, we bring the facilitation.

Schedule a call with Ophelia
Ophelia Mariko Mahana smiling in a chef's jacket, holding a steel bowl of sushi rice in the kitchen
Ophelia — chef de transformation
your scrum master 🍣
The founder

Meet Ophelia

Ophelia Mariko Mahana is a Japanese-Austrian Japanologist, multi-passionate bridge-builder — and mother of four. At 20 she moved to Japan for two years to live the second culture inside her, an experience that shapes her thinking and teaching to this day. She brings over ten years of teaching experience, from kindergarten classes to university Japanology, and combines her Japanese-influenced feel for quality and clear processes with agile methods. That combination became Scrum Cooking — because people understand collaboration fastest when they experience it. Every workshop is designed and hosted by her personally.

Founder & head facilitator, Scrum Cooking
Ophelia on LinkedIn →
Our partners
creative agency · name coming soon
IT services · name coming soon
05 · FAQ

Before you ask

What does cooking actually do for our team?

Honestly? Nothing. It's not about the cooking. It's about your team experiencing — under real time, budget and resource pressure — how it actually works. Live, not in a retro or a theory quiz. And with a consequence everyone understands: if the timing slips, there is no dinner.

Do we need any cooking skills?

None. If you can hold chopsticks you're overqualified. Ophelia guides every step — the point is the teamwork, not the knife technique.

Do we need to know agile or Scrum?

No. Beginners learn the vocabulary by living it; experienced teams discover what their process feels like from the outside. Mixed groups work great.

Where does it take place?

In a rented event kitchen in Vienna & surroundings, or in your office if the kitchen is up to it. We bring ingredients, equipment and the whiteboard.

Vegetarian, vegan, allergies?

All covered. The menu adapts to your team — that's kind of the whole philosophy here.

Is this just a sales pitch for consulting?

The workshop stands on its own — book it, enjoy it, done. But if you like how we work, we also do agile transformation and embedded scrum masters. No pressure, plenty of soy sauce.

Hungry for better sprints?

Tell us about your team — Ophelia answers personally, usually within a day.