On the 18th of July 2013, little blue elephants have invaded Codespring HQ! We could stop here with the story, as all our colleagues who attended the SCRUM training know precisely what it stands for. Yet, we would like to go further and explain the story of the Blue Elephant: Codespring’s official mascot.
There is an ancient fable from the Indian subcontinent about six blind men and the elephant. One day six blind men are asked to describe what they touch and feel. As they each only touch one part of the elephant they come up with vastly different descriptions – a tree (the leg), a wall (the side), a spear (the tusk), a fan (the ear), a rope (the tail) and a snake (the trunk). For each of the blind men what they touch and feel is the correct description. However, they cannot agree on any one’s description. In different variants of the fable the king, or a superior being or a simple passerby (who can see) elucidates the disagreement of the six blind men, by telling them that they actually touch an elephant (!).
The morale of the fable is that what we observe is subject to our method of questioning (paraphrasing Werner Heisenberg’s conclusion). Identifying the truth and overpassing fallacies is hard work. Often, due to our subjectivism or lack of information we miss the Big Picture.
The invasion of the little blue elephants is a reminder for each of us that in order to deliver quality work we always must take care to get as much information as possible in order to get closer to the desired result. It is also an emphasis on the importance to communicate within the team and with the customer or project beneficiaries.
As for the original work and prototype of the Codespring Blue Elephant, it dates back in 2012, when on the occasion of our 2012 CeBIT presence we decided to show the mascot to the world! Since then, the Blue Elephant travelled a lot and we hope it will visit more and more ITC tradeshows.
The mascot is inspired from the colors of Codespring and has a sort of tribal design on the face as we consider our team as a genuine software passionate team, ready to take over challenging projects and help our customers achieve their goals.
Long live Codespring Blue Elephant !
