December 4, 2024 • 35 mins
What does it truly take to build a thriving Agile community?
Scrum Master Alina Thapliayl from Arbergen, Germany, joins us to share her unique perspective. In our engaging conversation, Alina outlines the persistence and adaptability required to sustain an Agile community while keeping the focus on the collective needs rather than individual ambitions. She enriches the dialogue with her firsthand experiences of creating a vibrant and safe space for collaboration and learning, and offers a refreshing metaphor by comparing the exhilarating challenges of Agile to the breathtaking view from an aerial glider.
Launching a community of practice within an organization is no small feat, and this episode unpacks the essential steps to get started. We talk about the critical need for a clear vision, securing the necessary buy-in, and effectively publicizing these initiatives without making unrealistic promises. Our discussion delves into the importance of inclusivity, the right tools for remote and in-person gatherings, and even the power of sharing a meal to forge deeper connections. We also stress the importance of a code of conduct to foster an environment ripe for motivation and knowledge exchange, ensuring meetings remain positive and productive.
Feedback is a lifeline for any community, and Alina emphasizes its role in adapting meetings to better serve members. In the long run, strategies like creating accessible internal resources and sharing success stories can significantly enhance community engagement and learning. As the episode concludes, there's a heartfelt acknowledgment of the teamwork and camaraderie that made this discussion possible.
Connect with Alina on LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/alina-thapliyal/
Check out the airfield club in Aarbergen:
https://www.fcaarbergen.de/verein
https://www.fcaarbergen.de/fliegen/mitfliegen
Follow us on LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-agile-within
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
Welcome to the Agile Within.
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My mission for this podcast isto provide Agile insights into
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(00:29):
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(01:35):
That's impactagilityco.
Well, hey there.
Welcome back to another episodeof the Agile Within.
This is your host, mark Metz.
Today I have a guest who isalso a friend.
We've stayed in touch forseveral years now.
She is a scrum master fromArbergen, germany, and her name
(01:56):
is Alina Taplea.
Alina, welcome to the AgileWithin.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
Hi, mark, thank you.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
Oh, it's a pleasure to have you just enjoy getting
to know you over the last yearor so, probably more than that,
probably been three years atthis point.
So, alina, our typicalicebreaker question if I were
coming to arbergen, germany, fora day and I've never been there
before what's one thing thatyou would say that I couldn't
(02:25):
miss doing?
Speaker 2 (02:26):
Oh, so you need to imagine that Arbegin it's like a
village in hill area with a lotof forests, so you don't want
to miss taking a walk into theforest.
There's like special path.
We can wander off if you wantto.
If you really really are lucky,there are a couple of days a
(02:48):
year there is an airfield here.
You can take a trip in one ofthese old airplanes with the two
propellers.
They will fly around the areaand you can ask to fly over your
house so you can see everythingfrom top.
To fly over your house so youcan see everything from top.
And if you are really reallycourageous, you can go into a
(03:10):
fly, into a glider, so there'llbe a plane taking you up and
then the plane detaches from theglider and then you just glide
around the village.
So that'll be something thatit's done a couple of times a
year.
I wouldn't miss that.
I love flying.
Speaker 1 (03:27):
So have you done both of those?
Speaker 2 (03:29):
I have done just the flying with the airplane because
my husband picked the glider,so next time probably we'll
switch.
Speaker 1 (03:37):
Wow, I bet you have some amazing pictures from that.
Speaker 2 (03:41):
I do, I do, and it's amazing how you can see
everything from a differentperspective, which is always
something that we try to do alsoin our work.
To see things from differentperspectives from top to the big
picture yeah, Wow, you'realways thinking agility.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
Yeah, I love it, alina, I love it.
Well, the title for our episodetoday is Building Agile
Communities of Practice thatLast.
I'm very interested to hearabout this, and I want to hear a
little bit more from you, alina, about what does it take to
make an agile community thatlasts versus one that doesn't?
Speaker 2 (04:22):
Oh, it takes a lot of will, willingness to continue
when things get a little bitdifficult.
When the turnover, we had atime when there were just five
people join in.
Usually they are like 20, 30people.
So you need to have the will tocontinue to go beyond these
(04:43):
things to see how you improve,to see what you can do different
, to get feedback from community, to see what else you can do to
help them, because thecommunity you build this for
them, not for you.
So I would say that this willwhich started everything.
Speaker 1 (05:02):
And how would you define an agile community of
practice?
Speaker 2 (05:07):
I would say how we defined it, because I didn't
build this alone One of theluckiest person and I'm really
really happy that I was able tobuild this with a few of my
colleagues.
For us, it is a place, so wereally wanted to have a place
where people can come in, canlearn about everything.
(05:29):
Hl can practice things, becauseyou don't want people to come
and just take notes, you know,like in school, and then go back
to their work.
You want them to practice.
You want them to come there topractice methods firsthand.
You want a place where they canshare their success.
(05:49):
Maybe somebody started or did aretrospective after working 20
years in Waterfall.
That's a success.
It's a really small steptowards in the right direction.
We wanted to have the placewhere people who are interested
to learn, to exchange idea, toshare experience they can come
(06:10):
there.
It's a safe space.
It's fun.
We also wanted to make it funfor people to come.
So this is what I would sayit's a community of practice.
Speaker 1 (06:20):
Well, I understand you have 11 different steps for
building an agile community thatlasts, so I'm interested to
jump into this.
So why don't you tell us alittle bit more about the first
step?
Speaker 2 (06:33):
Like I just mentioned earlier, we wanted to have this
place for people to cometogether to learn, to learn from
each other, to share experience.
But the way it started in ourcase is just me and a couple of
(06:53):
colleagues.
We met and we said hey, I heardthat some other departments are
using Scrum or Kanban.
How do we find these people?
How do we learn from them, howthey can learn from us?
And then it came the idea let'sbuild the community of practice
.
So I think, the moment youstart in really to have a strong
vision, a goal, why?
(07:15):
Why do you want to start?
It's because it's going to bedifficult.
There will be times when peoplewill be sick, there will be
holidays, there will be lessturnover, and you need to have
this motivation to keep yougoing to go through all these
challenges.
(07:36):
So I can already hear SimonSinek in my ears saying start
with why, exactly, exactly, havea why.
Speaker 1 (07:44):
All right, so step two.
Speaker 2 (07:48):
Step two would be my advice is not to do it alone.
Now it depends how big yourorganization is.
Maybe it's just one, two teamsand you can handle that, but
maybe it's a really bigorganization.
So you need to check in yourorganization, see how big it is,
and it's always good to havesomeone with you, and the reason
(08:09):
I'm saying this is because itbrings balance to have someone
with you.
And the reason I'm saying isbecause it brings balance.
It brings balance in the sensethat I am a person who would
learn a method, would see in apodcast, listen to something and
want to tell everybody about it, or let's teach them, or let's
show them.
Everybody needs to know thisbecause it's so cool.
But then my colleagues say holdon.
(08:30):
They say let's check ourreality right, let's see where
we are right now.
Can we do this right now, doingthis with someone?
First of all, if you're alone,you're like a single point of
failure.
Right, when you are sick, thenthat's it.
You need to cancel the meetings.
But if you have someone withyou, it's support, it's
encouragement, you can sharethings, you can learn from each
(08:54):
other, and it brings thisbalance and you have these
different perspectives of howyou can do it, how you can make
it better, how you can make adifference.
Find someone to do this with.
Speaker 1 (09:04):
When you say, don't do this alone, of maybe bringing
someone alone that ended updidn't having the same vision or
the same values that you hadone alone that ended up didn't
having the same vision or thesame values that you had so far.
Speaker 2 (09:21):
No, but we had someone who didn't have the time
because he started doing someother type of work, and you need
to consider this.
This would be something thatyou do extra along with your
main tasks, that you do everyday.
You need to decide how muchtime can I involve?
And, again, it's good to havesomeone maybe where they can
pick up when you don't have thetime to do it.
We share this together and wehad some colleagues who are more
(09:45):
involved at some times or lessinvolved at some other times.
Speaker 1 (09:49):
I think that's really important, because it's easy to
get very excited about thingslike this.
So you have people that are, Icould say, would be, very eager
to sign up, but then, when itcomes time to actually making
the commitment, other things getin the way.
That can be kind of sticky, butsounds like you have a good
handle on it.
You have multiple peopleworking with you that you can
(10:10):
depend upon.
All right, well, I want to keepthe pace moving here, so move
us on to step three.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
The steps.
Three is it's not a mandatory,let's say, step, but it can
happen.
So it's something that you needto check in your organization.
You need to see do you need anapproval to build a community of
practice?
If you are new to the company,try to talk to the senior
colleagues, try to talk to yourmanagers, try to see is there
(10:35):
something that needs to bereally official, where you need
to get approval up to themanaging director, or is this
something like you just send anemail?
Hey, let's meet up and talkabout agile, checking the
organization, how things are,and if you really need one, just
do whatever it takes to take it.
Speaker 1 (10:53):
I'll add my two cents on that as well and that maybe
sometimes you don't need to waitand ask for approval and you
just do it and let cards fallwhere they may.
Speaker 2 (11:04):
Yeah, and if the snowball gets bigger, bigger
than can be stopped anymore?
Speaker 1 (11:09):
Yep, that's right.
That's right, but I understandyou do have to be sensitive
about those type of things.
Yeah, all right.
So just a real quick recap.
We talked about having a vision.
We talked about getting support, not doing it alone, checking
to see if you have to haveapproval, what's next?
Speaker 2 (11:26):
Oh.
Next is you need to start itright.
So let's say, you have all theapprovals, you have the vision,
you have someone to do this whois next to you, so you need to
start it.
So how do you start it?
The way we did it, we did akickoff meeting, but before that
, you need to let people knowthat this is happening.
(11:47):
It can be in small organizationthat you go from door to door
and say, hey, we're going tobuild this, or maybe I don't
know a water cooler or whenhaving a coffee in the morning.
But with big organization, youneed to be more strategic.
You need to have a strategy howyou do that.
It's either you write anarticle on your intranet or
(12:09):
whatever websites your companyis using, or maybe official
meetings where all the employersare there.
You want to get a part therewhere you can talk about the
community practices.
Most important is that you donot need to over-promise.
You know, like whoa, as oftomorrow, you're all a bit agile
, right, it's stay humble, youknow.
(12:31):
Use all the communicationsmeans that you have in your
company and make it simple.
Make it simple for people toreach you.
You don't want them to fill informs or send you I don't know
how many emails or whatever.
Make it really simple for themto come and join a kickoff.
Speaker 1 (12:50):
All right.
Step number five has to do withtools.
Tell us about the tools.
Speaker 2 (12:55):
Oh yes, without tools .
What do we do without them?
So you need first of all tothink will this be online
meetings, remote, because theyneed different tools or will
they be in person?
If they are in person, then youneed to think you need to have
a room which you can book.
You need to check in yourorganization when they are
(13:16):
available, how often they areavailable.
You need to consider to havetoolbox with I don't know sticky
notes or whatever you need forthat.
For remote, you need differentthings.
You need like a software.
You need a good software whereyou can have these meetings.
You need a good software whereyou can have these meetings and,
most important, you need torealize that people coming to
this community of practicemeetings there will be
(13:37):
introverts, extroverts, allpeople you know, and you need to
have a way to give them thepossibility to share their
opinions.
So you might want a tool whichgives you the possibility to
have breakout rooms, becausethere are some people who speak
easily when they are in smallergroups.
So you need to take that intoconsideration.
(13:59):
Also, you want to have like acollaboration tool like Miro
Miro there are so many out there.
So see in your organization ifyou have these tools if you get
licensed for these tools,whatever tools the organization
have which you can use.
But take into considerationthis fact that there are all
types of people coming there andthey all need to be heard, so
(14:22):
you need to have tools that canhelp you do that.
Speaker 1 (14:27):
I'll give you a tool that you didn't mention, that
you may not have thought about,and if you have an in-person
meetup, food is a good tool.
Speaker 2 (14:37):
Absolutely yeah.
Food coffee yes, that can bringthe spirit up and make it more
fun and more engaging.
Or more turnover right.
Free cookies yeah.
Speaker 1 (14:51):
Okay.
So we've talked about vision,we've talked about not doing it
alone, getting approval, we'vetalked about publicizing it and
we've talked about tools.
What's next?
Speaker 2 (15:04):
Well, there is something which is really dear
to me.
It's a code of conduct.
I would not recommend startingthis meeting without having a
code of conduct, and I'm surethat almost every company has
its own code of conduct, somaybe you can familiarize
yourself with that.
If you haven't read that, or ifyou don't know that before, you
(15:25):
need to make it simple.
By this code of conduct, what Imean is you want to avoid that
these meetings will become aplace where people just come and
complain, right, you knoweverything is bad, everything is
not working the way we want tothis person, that person, this
tool, that tool, this framework,that framework.
(15:47):
You also don't want this placeto be like a framework war.
You don't want to start that.
Right.
It's not about who is right orwrong, it's about sharing
experience.
So, maybe someone did use Scrumdifferently, but if it worked
and if it got them the resultsthat they wanted, they share
(16:08):
that experience.
Right.
And you want this place to be aplace where you can share
knowledge, where you can createvalue.
When people, they livemotivated, they say, hey, this
is not so difficult, I can takethat and use it in my team.
It's easy.
I did it here once, right?
(16:29):
So you want people to livemotivated to practice new
methods, and you also need tosay upfront that you will not
tolerate negative behavior rightthat.
No racism of any form.
You need to specify that.
And I think what is mostimportant, you can even start
(16:51):
with the scrum values here,right, and you know respect and
openness.
But it's important that inevery meeting, what we did is in
the first kickoff, we said thisis our code of conduct.
We wrote it also in ourintranet page, but in every
meeting we have it there.
(17:11):
We don't read it because peopleknow it by heart and they'll
say hey, we know that you don'tneed to read it anymore, right,
but we have it there In casesomeone forgets it's there and
they can relate to it.
So have a code of conduct, setup some rules.
This is who we want to be, thisis what these are our values.
Speaker 1 (17:34):
And it's want to be.
Speaker 2 (17:35):
This is what these are all values, and it's kind of
like a working agreement alittle bit deeper than a working
agreement a little bit deeper,you know.
But yeah, how do we gonna workhere?
How do we talk to each other?
What is not acceptable, what iswhat is acceptable?
Speaker 1 (17:49):
Yeah, All right, just giving a brief pause here, I'll
edit this out.
All right, so we've got ourcode of conduct down.
What's the next step then?
Alina?
Speaker 2 (18:08):
no-transcript.
I would recommend they need tohave a regular meeting, maybe
per week, or depends how youbuild your community, where you
need to stay focused on yourgoal right.
Remember the why from thebeginning, what we created is
Agile Community Backlog withtopics we want to talk about,
(18:31):
which we either suggested or itcame out as a feedback from
community.
Somebody came and said, hey,let's talk about a retrospective
next time.
Say, well, great, let's do it.
And so you have this backlogthat you work on, and what I
would recommend over everysingle meetup is to have a small
(18:51):
retrospective.
It doesn't need to be very big.
But hey, what did you observe?
Because we are four organizersand many times when we go in a
breakout rooms, one of us isthere like a facilitator and we
pick up from every room like,how was the atmosphere?
Could everyone talk?
(19:11):
Did everyone have time to saytheir mind or their thoughts?
Was everyone engaged enough?
And so these retrospectivesthey help enormously of how you
can build the next meeting.
How can you make it better?
Speaker 1 (19:29):
All right, so stay organized.
Having a backlog, that's verynice Absolutely.
Speaker 2 (19:33):
What's very nice Absolutely.
Speaker 1 (19:35):
What's next.
Speaker 2 (19:37):
Next is so you have the community right.
You have a kickoff, people camein, you learn who they are, you
found out what they want to doin the community.
So now it's to keep it goingright, because kickoff alone is
not enough.
You need to keep it going.
So our question is how do weinvolve?
(19:58):
How do we involve the membersof the community here?
Because, as I mentioned earlier, we didn't want something that
one of us, the organizer, willtalk one hour about a topic,
everybody will take notes andthen they'll go home, right.
So how do we involve them?
So there are many ways toinvolve.
(20:19):
Either you can ask for help,like maybe someone knows how to
update the intranet site orSharePoint or Confluence.
Maybe they will have half anhour a week to do that for the
community, you know.
Or maybe they want tofacilitate one of the meetings
(20:40):
with you.
Or maybe they are just curiousto see how do you prepare the
meetings.
I want to be there and I wantto see.
Or maybe someone has a reallygreat method that they want to
share with the community so theycan do that.
You want to have theseconversations with the community
every time you meet to see howopen they are for these things,
(21:03):
who has time, who wants to getinvolved and always give options
.
You know, don't just keep it toyourself, because it's not
about you to show how good youare.
It's to give this, to createthis space, to bring people in
the community to show how greatthey are, how successful they
(21:24):
are.
I would say you need to payattention to introverts,
extroverts, to give them space,tools for everyone to say their
opinions.
Keep in mind of the code ofconduct, right, it's not a
battle of frameworks, and youcan involve people by using
(21:45):
visuals, by using check-in.
In every hour meeting we use acheck-in and it's not always
because we want to make themeetings fun, but also because
we want people to experiencethese check-ins here, this
exercise.
They can pick them and use theminto their teams, with their
(22:05):
teams.
So it's always involvement andthis is the constant questions
that we ask ourselves how we caninvolve them.
Speaker 1 (22:15):
So one interesting thing that I've observed on this
topic is that individuals aredifferent, but groups can kind
of form their own identities.
You may have some groups thatare very outgoing and just they
have a great mind of speaking up, getting involved, giving ideas
(22:38):
, and then you have others wherepeople are much more reserved.
Yeah, and even when you havethose groups where people are
sharing, you have lots of ideasthat are being formed and shared
amongst each other.
You still have thoseindividuals that are just more
on the quiet side, and so what Ihave found, alina, is that
(23:00):
sometimes you have to reachthose type people one-on-one.
Speaker 2 (23:04):
Yep.
Speaker 1 (23:05):
And when you reach out to them one-on-one and you
start talking and building arelationship, then the ideas
from them start going.
It's like, wow, why did you notbring that up in the group?
And you know, some people justaren't comfortable doing that
and maybe you have to be theperson to say, hey, would you
mind letting me be the proxy?
(23:26):
Can I be the person on yourbehalf, if you're not
comfortable sharing to bringthat to the group, because I
think that is an absolutewonderful idea.
So that would be something Iwould say to leave put in your
bag of tricks is to, in thatinvolvement, still have that
one-on-one relationship with theindividuals in your community,
because that's where you canreally get some great ideas.
(23:49):
So we talked about involvement.
The ninth step is aboutfeedback.
Yeah, so you step is aboutfeedback.
Speaker 2 (23:54):
Yeah, so you want feedback from community, you
want to crave feedback fromcommunity.
So you need, in every meetingand this is what you can ask the
committee how often do you wantus to meet?
Do you want us to meet everyweek, every month, once a year?
I don't know, hopefully not,but you need to ask them because
(24:16):
everybody has their daily tasks, schedules are busy, calendars
are full of meetings, so youwant to give them the
possibility to say, hey, once amonth for now is okay.
Or maybe, hey, everybody islearning now and we really want
this every week because here wewant to practice, practice,
(24:37):
practice.
So you need to get thisfeedback from the community.
How often do you want to meet?
Which tools do you want to use?
Do you want tool A or tool B?
Which one is more easy for you?
You also want feedback on thetopics that you bring up, and
what we did is in every meetup,we in our boards because all our
(25:00):
meetups happens so far onlineis we have a section for
feedback and every time we askdifferent questions, but mostly
it's what have I learned today?
Or feedback for the organizingteam what can they do different?
Or feedback for the nextmeetings?
What topics do we want to reach?
It was really interesting.
(25:20):
Sometimes someone came to us andsaid hey, I noticed something
and I don't think you havenoticed that.
We say, oh, wow, that's amazing.
So it helps to have this, helpto create this community of
practice, because they also comewith their own observations.
But if you don't ask thecommunity for feedback, you
(25:41):
might miss out on many otherthings which you can't possibly
see, because you are eitherfocused on oh my God, next
stopping in this meeting or thenext step, and so on and so
forth.
So it's really important tomake this open.
Give us feedback, we are okay.
Give us any type of feedback,we are happy with everything.
(26:03):
Let's learn from each other.
Speaker 1 (26:06):
So, alina, what do you do when you're asking for
this feedback?
But you're getting feedbackthat differs, and people may be
very passionate about theopinions that they're giving you
and they don't agree.
Speaker 2 (26:20):
I believe you can.
Most of the time.
It depends on the feedback onthe topic is you can either go
with the majority, for example,or if you see that maybe someone
said I really want this everyweek.
I know here we have decided itthat once a month is enough, but
for me it is not.
Then what we do as ScrumMasters, HR coaches, we say,
(26:42):
okay, let's meet separate, let'smeet some other time.
How can we help you?
There was some colleagues whoneeded help with retrospective
and I said, let's organize ameeting, just one-on-one or one
and the colleagues who neededthat, and let's talk about
retrospective.
And how else can we guide you?
And some colleagues came andsaid, hey, I'm not so sure if I
(27:06):
can run a retrospective, butwould you come in our team and
do this with us, Because wenever done this before?
So we are not there just toorganize this meeting, but to
support the community.
When they need our know-how,our experience, when they need
our time, we are there to helpthem.
Speaker 1 (27:26):
What I'm hearing is I think that's a great way to get
involvement.
Also is, if you have somepeople who may not agree to say,
oh, that is a great point thatyou brought up.
We don't really have anybodythat's used to facilitating a
retrospective in a community ofpractice, would you be willing
to do that, because that's whatyou want, right?
(27:46):
You want the people that havethe passion to do something to
bring that in, not have them, soyou're playing to their
strengths.
Speaker 2 (27:53):
Yeah, you want people to bring their best right, and
you want people to come here andbring their best.
I mean to make them stressedabout it, right, but what I mean
is that if they feel that theycan do it, we give them the
chance, the space to do it.
Speaker 1 (28:14):
So, yeah, Okay, what's after feedback?
Speaker 2 (28:23):
Well, after feedback is like, you really need to
think on a long term.
So you have this backlog ofitems, you have feedback from
community, you have a lot ofthings you want to talk about in
the community of practices, alot of methods that you can
learn from each other, but youreally need to think of a long
term.
Initially we said, ok, afterevery meeting, we send up a wrap
up email, but you know that theemail would end up in another
pile of thousands of emailswhich we get every single month.
(28:47):
So, thinking long term, what wedid is we created our own
internal site, website with acompany where we put every
single meeting there, with thelink to the mirror boards or to
the concert boards, with thelink with the documents we use
and because it's much easier toeducate them.
(29:09):
Here is the site where you canfind everything about our
community.
You don't need to search emails.
You don't need to search emails, you don't need to search other
stuff.
Here you find everything aplace.
We have our vision, our code ofconduct, our mission.
We have book recommendations,podcast recommendations, who
wants to read.
We have methods that we haveused so far.
(29:31):
We have detailed them there onemore time.
We have methods that we haveused so far.
We have detailed them there onemore time.
So, thinking long-term, I wouldsay it's okay to send a wrap-up
email after that, but these getlost very fast, so have one
place to put everything.
So they know it's there.
Speaker 1 (29:48):
Okay, step 11.
We're at the end.
Speaker 2 (29:52):
Step 11.
Oh, close to the end, I wouldsay you need to allow this place
to be a place where people canshare their success stories.
It's about learning, it's aboutexchanging ideas from each
other.
It's about practicing, but it'salso about success stories.
Practicing, but it's also aboutsuccess stories and here I
(30:15):
don't mean that somebodytransformed and got agile
overnight right Every tiny stepin the right direction.
You know this innovate forward.
This is a success story.
And what we do is when webecause what happened?
That people came to us.
(30:36):
Hey, we did our first Kanbanboard and now we are doing this
and we are doing that, and it'sso easy to visualize work and
then we put WIP limits and wewere, wow.
It's amazing, because you needto think that most of people
have worked probably inwaterfall methods or classical
or different.
(30:56):
They were different.
Right Now, they startedsomething else and this is a
success, because this givesothers the courage to do that,
to realize that it's not sodifficult, it can be done, it
just any from us can be thischange and can create this
change.
We as community, as anorganizer, we are here to help
(31:20):
them move this change forward.
Speaker 1 (31:23):
All right.
Well, that's the 11 steps, butI understand you actually have a
bonus step for free, for free.
Speaker 2 (31:30):
Absolutely.
The bonus step is that it's notabout me as organizer, right?
I am not doing this to show howgreat I am.
I'm not doing this to show howmany tools I know, how many
(31:53):
methods, I know, how greatfacilitator I am.
It's not about me, it's aboutthe community.
We are doing this for thecommunity.
We are doing this for people,to let them shine, to let them
show their successes and also,sometimes, their failures.
We can learn from our failuresas well, right?
So let them answer each other'squestions.
Like, if somebody pops up aquestion in one of these
(32:14):
meetings, you don't want to bethe first one to answer.
You just wait because someonein the community has the answer.
You need to start thisconversation and continue this
conversation.
So, no matter how, sometimesand I can give you a quick rule,
like 20 seconds rule keep yourmouth closed for 20 seconds and
(32:35):
someone in the community willdefinitely come with an answer
something better idea than yours, better.
You know, this is the bonus.
It's not about me, it's about acommunity, it's for them.
Speaker 1 (32:49):
I want to recap the steps that you've listed here
for our listeners on building anagile community of practice
that lasts.
Have a vision.
Don't do it alone.
Make sure you get approvals.
Once you have approval and avision and the why, make it
public.
Check your tools.
(33:10):
Have a code of conduct.
Make sure you have anorganizing team or a leadership
team.
Get involvement, get feedback.
Have a single place of recordwhere you record everything
about the meetings, share yoursuccess stories and the bonus.
It's not about me, it's aboutthe community.
Speaker 2 (33:32):
Wonderful wrap up.
Yes, All right.
Awesome Well about thecommunity Wonderful wrap up.
Speaker 1 (33:34):
Yes, all right, awesome.
Well, alina, this has beenfantastic.
I know our listeners out therewill want to get in touch with
you.
If they do, what's the best wayfor them to do that?
Speaker 2 (33:44):
I'm quite active on LinkedIn, so they can find me
there.
Okay, great.
Speaker 1 (33:50):
We'll put the link to your profile in the show notes
and if there's anything else aswell, we can talk about that.
Speaker 2 (34:07):
If there's any other links that you want to add, we
can add those as well.
Alina, it's been an absolutepleasure having you, my friend.
I really, really grateful.
I have amazing colleagues thatI could build this with, and a
big thank you to them as well,because this wouldn't have been
possible without them, and thankyou to you for giving me this
opportunity.
Speaker 1 (34:23):
I love your heart, I love your passion.
It really comes through, and Ibelieve it did during this
episode.
All right, everybody thatbrings an end to another episode
of the Agile Within.
We so.
All right, everybody thatbrings an end to another episode
of the agile within.
We'll see you next time.
Thanks for joining us foranother episode of the agile
within.
If you haven't already, pleasejoin our LinkedIn page to stay
(34:47):
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Just search for the agilewithin and please spread the
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Welcome to the Agile Within.
I am your host, mark Metz.
My mission for this podcast isto provide Agile insights into
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My guests and I will sharereal-life stories from our Agile
journeys, triumphs, blundersand everything in between, as
(00:29):
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That's impactagilityco.
Well, hey there.
Welcome back to another episodeof the Agile Within.
This is your host, mark Metz.
Today I have a guest who isalso a friend.
We've stayed in touch forseveral years now.
She is a scrum master fromArbergen, germany, and her name
(01:56):
is Alina Taplea.
Alina, welcome to the AgileWithin.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
Hi, mark, thank you.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
Oh, it's a pleasure to have you just enjoy getting
to know you over the last yearor so, probably more than that,
probably been three years atthis point.
So, alina, our typicalicebreaker question if I were
coming to arbergen, germany, fora day and I've never been there
before what's one thing thatyou would say that I couldn't
(02:25):
miss doing?
Speaker 2 (02:26):
Oh, so you need to imagine that Arbegin it's like a
village in hill area with a lotof forests, so you don't want
to miss taking a walk into theforest.
There's like special path.
We can wander off if you wantto.
If you really really are lucky,there are a couple of days a
(02:48):
year there is an airfield here.
You can take a trip in one ofthese old airplanes with the two
propellers.
They will fly around the areaand you can ask to fly over your
house so you can see everythingfrom top.
To fly over your house so youcan see everything from top.
And if you are really reallycourageous, you can go into a
(03:10):
fly, into a glider, so there'llbe a plane taking you up and
then the plane detaches from theglider and then you just glide
around the village.
So that'll be something thatit's done a couple of times a
year.
I wouldn't miss that.
I love flying.
Speaker 1 (03:27):
So have you done both of those?
Speaker 2 (03:29):
I have done just the flying with the airplane because
my husband picked the glider,so next time probably we'll
switch.
Speaker 1 (03:37):
Wow, I bet you have some amazing pictures from that.
Speaker 2 (03:41):
I do, I do, and it's amazing how you can see
everything from a differentperspective, which is always
something that we try to do alsoin our work.
To see things from differentperspectives from top to the big
picture yeah, Wow, you'realways thinking agility.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
Yeah, I love it, alina, I love it.
Well, the title for our episodetoday is Building Agile
Communities of Practice thatLast.
I'm very interested to hearabout this, and I want to hear a
little bit more from you, alina, about what does it take to
make an agile community thatlasts versus one that doesn't?
Speaker 2 (04:22):
Oh, it takes a lot of will, willingness to continue
when things get a little bitdifficult.
When the turnover, we had atime when there were just five
people join in.
Usually they are like 20, 30people.
So you need to have the will tocontinue to go beyond these
(04:43):
things to see how you improve,to see what you can do different
, to get feedback from community, to see what else you can do to
help them, because thecommunity you build this for
them, not for you.
So I would say that this willwhich started everything.
Speaker 1 (05:02):
And how would you define an agile community of
practice?
Speaker 2 (05:07):
I would say how we defined it, because I didn't
build this alone One of theluckiest person and I'm really
really happy that I was able tobuild this with a few of my
colleagues.
For us, it is a place, so wereally wanted to have a place
where people can come in, canlearn about everything.
(05:29):
Hl can practice things, becauseyou don't want people to come
and just take notes, you know,like in school, and then go back
to their work.
You want them to practice.
You want them to come there topractice methods firsthand.
You want a place where they canshare their success.
(05:49):
Maybe somebody started or did aretrospective after working 20
years in Waterfall.
That's a success.
It's a really small steptowards in the right direction.
We wanted to have the placewhere people who are interested
to learn, to exchange idea, toshare experience they can come
(06:10):
there.
It's a safe space.
It's fun.
We also wanted to make it funfor people to come.
So this is what I would sayit's a community of practice.
Speaker 1 (06:20):
Well, I understand you have 11 different steps for
building an agile community thatlasts, so I'm interested to
jump into this.
So why don't you tell us alittle bit more about the first
step?
Speaker 2 (06:33):
Like I just mentioned earlier, we wanted to have this
place for people to cometogether to learn, to learn from
each other, to share experience.
But the way it started in ourcase is just me and a couple of
(06:53):
colleagues.
We met and we said hey, I heardthat some other departments are
using Scrum or Kanban.
How do we find these people?
How do we learn from them, howthey can learn from us?
And then it came the idea let'sbuild the community of practice
.
So I think, the moment youstart in really to have a strong
vision, a goal, why?
(07:15):
Why do you want to start?
It's because it's going to bedifficult.
There will be times when peoplewill be sick, there will be
holidays, there will be lessturnover, and you need to have
this motivation to keep yougoing to go through all these
challenges.
(07:36):
So I can already hear SimonSinek in my ears saying start
with why, exactly, exactly, havea why.
Speaker 1 (07:44):
All right, so step two.
Speaker 2 (07:48):
Step two would be my advice is not to do it alone.
Now it depends how big yourorganization is.
Maybe it's just one, two teamsand you can handle that, but
maybe it's a really bigorganization.
So you need to check in yourorganization, see how big it is,
and it's always good to havesomeone with you, and the reason
(08:09):
I'm saying this is because itbrings balance to have someone
with you.
And the reason I'm saying isbecause it brings balance.
It brings balance in the sensethat I am a person who would
learn a method, would see in apodcast, listen to something and
want to tell everybody about it, or let's teach them, or let's
show them.
Everybody needs to know thisbecause it's so cool.
But then my colleagues say holdon.
(08:30):
They say let's check ourreality right, let's see where
we are right now.
Can we do this right now, doingthis with someone?
First of all, if you're alone,you're like a single point of
failure.
Right, when you are sick, thenthat's it.
You need to cancel the meetings.
But if you have someone withyou, it's support, it's
encouragement, you can sharethings, you can learn from each
(08:54):
other, and it brings thisbalance and you have these
different perspectives of howyou can do it, how you can make
it better, how you can make adifference.
Find someone to do this with.
Speaker 1 (09:04):
When you say, don't do this alone, of maybe bringing
someone alone that ended updidn't having the same vision or
the same values that you hadone alone that ended up didn't
having the same vision or thesame values that you had so far.
Speaker 2 (09:21):
No, but we had someone who didn't have the time
because he started doing someother type of work, and you need
to consider this.
This would be something thatyou do extra along with your
main tasks, that you do everyday.
You need to decide how muchtime can I involve?
And, again, it's good to havesomeone maybe where they can
pick up when you don't have thetime to do it.
We share this together and wehad some colleagues who are more
(09:45):
involved at some times or lessinvolved at some other times.
Speaker 1 (09:49):
I think that's really important, because it's easy to
get very excited about thingslike this.
So you have people that are, Icould say, would be, very eager
to sign up, but then, when itcomes time to actually making
the commitment, other things getin the way.
That can be kind of sticky, butsounds like you have a good
handle on it.
You have multiple peopleworking with you that you can
(10:10):
depend upon.
All right, well, I want to keepthe pace moving here, so move
us on to step three.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
The steps.
Three is it's not a mandatory,let's say, step, but it can
happen.
So it's something that you needto check in your organization.
You need to see do you need anapproval to build a community of
practice?
If you are new to the company,try to talk to the senior
colleagues, try to talk to yourmanagers, try to see is there
(10:35):
something that needs to bereally official, where you need
to get approval up to themanaging director, or is this
something like you just send anemail?
Hey, let's meet up and talkabout agile, checking the
organization, how things are,and if you really need one, just
do whatever it takes to take it.
Speaker 1 (10:53):
I'll add my two cents on that as well and that maybe
sometimes you don't need to waitand ask for approval and you
just do it and let cards fallwhere they may.
Speaker 2 (11:04):
Yeah, and if the snowball gets bigger, bigger
than can be stopped anymore?
Speaker 1 (11:09):
Yep, that's right.
That's right, but I understandyou do have to be sensitive
about those type of things.
Yeah, all right.
So just a real quick recap.
We talked about having a vision.
We talked about getting support, not doing it alone, checking
to see if you have to haveapproval, what's next?
Speaker 2 (11:26):
Oh.
Next is you need to start itright.
So let's say, you have all theapprovals, you have the vision,
you have someone to do this whois next to you, so you need to
start it.
So how do you start it?
The way we did it, we did akickoff meeting, but before that
, you need to let people knowthat this is happening.
(11:47):
It can be in small organizationthat you go from door to door
and say, hey, we're going tobuild this, or maybe I don't
know a water cooler or whenhaving a coffee in the morning.
But with big organization, youneed to be more strategic.
You need to have a strategy howyou do that.
It's either you write anarticle on your intranet or
(12:09):
whatever websites your companyis using, or maybe official
meetings where all the employersare there.
You want to get a part therewhere you can talk about the
community practices.
Most important is that you donot need to over-promise.
You know, like whoa, as oftomorrow, you're all a bit agile
, right, it's stay humble, youknow.
(12:31):
Use all the communicationsmeans that you have in your
company and make it simple.
Make it simple for people toreach you.
You don't want them to fill informs or send you I don't know
how many emails or whatever.
Make it really simple for themto come and join a kickoff.
Speaker 1 (12:50):
All right.
Step number five has to do withtools.
Tell us about the tools.
Speaker 2 (12:55):
Oh yes, without tools .
What do we do without them?
So you need first of all tothink will this be online
meetings, remote, because theyneed different tools or will
they be in person?
If they are in person, then youneed to think you need to have
a room which you can book.
You need to check in yourorganization when they are
(13:16):
available, how often they areavailable.
You need to consider to havetoolbox with I don't know sticky
notes or whatever you need forthat.
For remote, you need differentthings.
You need like a software.
You need a good software whereyou can have these meetings.
You need a good software whereyou can have these meetings and,
most important, you need torealize that people coming to
this community of practicemeetings there will be
(13:37):
introverts, extroverts, allpeople you know, and you need to
have a way to give them thepossibility to share their
opinions.
So you might want a tool whichgives you the possibility to
have breakout rooms, becausethere are some people who speak
easily when they are in smallergroups.
So you need to take that intoconsideration.
(13:59):
Also, you want to have like acollaboration tool like Miro
Miro there are so many out there.
So see in your organization ifyou have these tools if you get
licensed for these tools,whatever tools the organization
have which you can use.
But take into considerationthis fact that there are all
types of people coming there andthey all need to be heard, so
(14:22):
you need to have tools that canhelp you do that.
Speaker 1 (14:27):
I'll give you a tool that you didn't mention, that
you may not have thought about,and if you have an in-person
meetup, food is a good tool.
Speaker 2 (14:37):
Absolutely yeah.
Food coffee yes, that can bringthe spirit up and make it more
fun and more engaging.
Or more turnover right.
Free cookies yeah.
Speaker 1 (14:51):
Okay.
So we've talked about vision,we've talked about not doing it
alone, getting approval, we'vetalked about publicizing it and
we've talked about tools.
What's next?
Speaker 2 (15:04):
Well, there is something which is really dear
to me.
It's a code of conduct.
I would not recommend startingthis meeting without having a
code of conduct, and I'm surethat almost every company has
its own code of conduct, somaybe you can familiarize
yourself with that.
If you haven't read that, or ifyou don't know that before, you
(15:25):
need to make it simple.
By this code of conduct, what Imean is you want to avoid that
these meetings will become aplace where people just come and
complain, right, you knoweverything is bad, everything is
not working the way we want tothis person, that person, this
tool, that tool, this framework,that framework.
(15:47):
You also don't want this placeto be like a framework war.
You don't want to start that.
Right.
It's not about who is right orwrong, it's about sharing
experience.
So, maybe someone did use Scrumdifferently, but if it worked
and if it got them the resultsthat they wanted, they share
(16:08):
that experience.
Right.
And you want this place to be aplace where you can share
knowledge, where you can createvalue.
When people, they livemotivated, they say, hey, this
is not so difficult, I can takethat and use it in my team.
It's easy.
I did it here once, right?
(16:29):
So you want people to livemotivated to practice new
methods, and you also need tosay upfront that you will not
tolerate negative behavior rightthat.
No racism of any form.
You need to specify that.
And I think what is mostimportant, you can even start
(16:51):
with the scrum values here,right, and you know respect and
openness.
But it's important that inevery meeting, what we did is in
the first kickoff, we said thisis our code of conduct.
We wrote it also in ourintranet page, but in every
meeting we have it there.
(17:11):
We don't read it because peopleknow it by heart and they'll
say hey, we know that you don'tneed to read it anymore, right,
but we have it there In casesomeone forgets it's there and
they can relate to it.
So have a code of conduct, setup some rules.
This is who we want to be, thisis what these are our values.
Speaker 1 (17:34):
And it's want to be.
Speaker 2 (17:35):
This is what these are all values, and it's kind of
like a working agreement alittle bit deeper than a working
agreement a little bit deeper,you know.
But yeah, how do we gonna workhere?
How do we talk to each other?
What is not acceptable, what iswhat is acceptable?
Speaker 1 (17:49):
Yeah, All right, just giving a brief pause here, I'll
edit this out.
All right, so we've got ourcode of conduct down.
What's the next step then?
Alina?
Speaker 2 (18:08):
no-transcript.
I would recommend they need tohave a regular meeting, maybe
per week, or depends how youbuild your community, where you
need to stay focused on yourgoal right.
Remember the why from thebeginning, what we created is
Agile Community Backlog withtopics we want to talk about,
(18:31):
which we either suggested or itcame out as a feedback from
community.
Somebody came and said, hey,let's talk about a retrospective
next time.
Say, well, great, let's do it.
And so you have this backlogthat you work on, and what I
would recommend over everysingle meetup is to have a small
(18:51):
retrospective.
It doesn't need to be very big.
But hey, what did you observe?
Because we are four organizersand many times when we go in a
breakout rooms, one of us isthere like a facilitator and we
pick up from every room like,how was the atmosphere?
Could everyone talk?
(19:11):
Did everyone have time to saytheir mind or their thoughts?
Was everyone engaged enough?
And so these retrospectivesthey help enormously of how you
can build the next meeting.
How can you make it better?
Speaker 1 (19:29):
All right, so stay organized.
Having a backlog, that's verynice Absolutely.
Speaker 2 (19:33):
What's very nice Absolutely.
Speaker 1 (19:35):
What's next.
Speaker 2 (19:37):
Next is so you have the community right.
You have a kickoff, people camein, you learn who they are, you
found out what they want to doin the community.
So now it's to keep it goingright, because kickoff alone is
not enough.
You need to keep it going.
So our question is how do weinvolve?
(19:58):
How do we involve the membersof the community here?
Because, as I mentioned earlier, we didn't want something that
one of us, the organizer, willtalk one hour about a topic,
everybody will take notes andthen they'll go home, right.
So how do we involve them?
So there are many ways toinvolve.
(20:19):
Either you can ask for help,like maybe someone knows how to
update the intranet site orSharePoint or Confluence.
Maybe they will have half anhour a week to do that for the
community, you know.
Or maybe they want tofacilitate one of the meetings
(20:40):
with you.
Or maybe they are just curiousto see how do you prepare the
meetings.
I want to be there and I wantto see.
Or maybe someone has a reallygreat method that they want to
share with the community so theycan do that.
You want to have theseconversations with the community
every time you meet to see howopen they are for these things,
(21:03):
who has time, who wants to getinvolved and always give options
.
You know, don't just keep it toyourself, because it's not
about you to show how good youare.
It's to give this, to createthis space, to bring people in
the community to show how greatthey are, how successful they
(21:24):
are.
I would say you need to payattention to introverts,
extroverts, to give them space,tools for everyone to say their
opinions.
Keep in mind of the code ofconduct, right, it's not a
battle of frameworks, and youcan involve people by using
(21:45):
visuals, by using check-in.
In every hour meeting we use acheck-in and it's not always
because we want to make themeetings fun, but also because
we want people to experiencethese check-ins here, this
exercise.
They can pick them and use theminto their teams, with their
(22:05):
teams.
So it's always involvement andthis is the constant questions
that we ask ourselves how we caninvolve them.
Speaker 1 (22:15):
So one interesting thing that I've observed on this
topic is that individuals aredifferent, but groups can kind
of form their own identities.
You may have some groups thatare very outgoing and just they
have a great mind of speaking up, getting involved, giving ideas
(22:38):
, and then you have others wherepeople are much more reserved.
Yeah, and even when you havethose groups where people are
sharing, you have lots of ideasthat are being formed and shared
amongst each other.
You still have thoseindividuals that are just more
on the quiet side, and so what Ihave found, alina, is that
(23:00):
sometimes you have to reachthose type people one-on-one.
Speaker 2 (23:04):
Yep.
Speaker 1 (23:05):
And when you reach out to them one-on-one and you
start talking and building arelationship, then the ideas
from them start going.
It's like, wow, why did you notbring that up in the group?
And you know, some people justaren't comfortable doing that
and maybe you have to be theperson to say, hey, would you
mind letting me be the proxy?
(23:26):
Can I be the person on yourbehalf, if you're not
comfortable sharing to bringthat to the group, because I
think that is an absolutewonderful idea.
So that would be something Iwould say to leave put in your
bag of tricks is to, in thatinvolvement, still have that
one-on-one relationship with theindividuals in your community,
because that's where you canreally get some great ideas.
(23:49):
So we talked about involvement.
The ninth step is aboutfeedback.
Yeah, so you step is aboutfeedback.
Speaker 2 (23:54):
Yeah, so you want feedback from community, you
want to crave feedback fromcommunity.
So you need, in every meetingand this is what you can ask the
committee how often do you wantus to meet?
Do you want us to meet everyweek, every month, once a year?
I don't know, hopefully not,but you need to ask them because
(24:16):
everybody has their daily tasks, schedules are busy, calendars
are full of meetings, so youwant to give them the
possibility to say, hey, once amonth for now is okay.
Or maybe, hey, everybody islearning now and we really want
this every week because here wewant to practice, practice,
(24:37):
practice.
So you need to get thisfeedback from the community.
How often do you want to meet?
Which tools do you want to use?
Do you want tool A or tool B?
Which one is more easy for you?
You also want feedback on thetopics that you bring up, and
what we did is in every meetup,we in our boards because all our
(25:00):
meetups happens so far onlineis we have a section for
feedback and every time we askdifferent questions, but mostly
it's what have I learned today?
Or feedback for the organizingteam what can they do different?
Or feedback for the nextmeetings?
What topics do we want to reach?
It was really interesting.
(25:20):
Sometimes someone came to us andsaid hey, I noticed something
and I don't think you havenoticed that.
We say, oh, wow, that's amazing.
So it helps to have this, helpto create this community of
practice, because they also comewith their own observations.
But if you don't ask thecommunity for feedback, you
(25:41):
might miss out on many otherthings which you can't possibly
see, because you are eitherfocused on oh my God, next
stopping in this meeting or thenext step, and so on and so
forth.
So it's really important tomake this open.
Give us feedback, we are okay.
Give us any type of feedback,we are happy with everything.
(26:03):
Let's learn from each other.
Speaker 1 (26:06):
So, alina, what do you do when you're asking for
this feedback?
But you're getting feedbackthat differs, and people may be
very passionate about theopinions that they're giving you
and they don't agree.
Speaker 2 (26:20):
I believe you can.
Most of the time.
It depends on the feedback onthe topic is you can either go
with the majority, for example,or if you see that maybe someone
said I really want this everyweek.
I know here we have decided itthat once a month is enough, but
for me it is not.
Then what we do as ScrumMasters, HR coaches, we say,
(26:42):
okay, let's meet separate, let'smeet some other time.
How can we help you?
There was some colleagues whoneeded help with retrospective
and I said, let's organize ameeting, just one-on-one or one
and the colleagues who neededthat, and let's talk about
retrospective.
And how else can we guide you?
And some colleagues came andsaid, hey, I'm not so sure if I
(27:06):
can run a retrospective, butwould you come in our team and
do this with us, Because wenever done this before?
So we are not there just toorganize this meeting, but to
support the community.
When they need our know-how,our experience, when they need
our time, we are there to helpthem.
Speaker 1 (27:26):
What I'm hearing is I think that's a great way to get
involvement.
Also is, if you have somepeople who may not agree to say,
oh, that is a great point thatyou brought up.
We don't really have anybodythat's used to facilitating a
retrospective in a community ofpractice, would you be willing
to do that, because that's whatyou want, right?
(27:46):
You want the people that havethe passion to do something to
bring that in, not have them, soyou're playing to their
strengths.
Speaker 2 (27:53):
Yeah, you want people to bring their best right, and
you want people to come here andbring their best.
I mean to make them stressedabout it, right, but what I mean
is that if they feel that theycan do it, we give them the
chance, the space to do it.
Speaker 1 (28:14):
So, yeah, Okay, what's after feedback?
Speaker 2 (28:23):
Well, after feedback is like, you really need to
think on a long term.
So you have this backlog ofitems, you have feedback from
community, you have a lot ofthings you want to talk about in
the community of practices, alot of methods that you can
learn from each other, but youreally need to think of a long
term.
Initially we said, ok, afterevery meeting, we send up a wrap
up email, but you know that theemail would end up in another
pile of thousands of emailswhich we get every single month.
(28:47):
So, thinking long term, what wedid is we created our own
internal site, website with acompany where we put every
single meeting there, with thelink to the mirror boards or to
the concert boards, with thelink with the documents we use
and because it's much easier toeducate them.
(29:09):
Here is the site where you canfind everything about our
community.
You don't need to search emails.
You don't need to search emails, you don't need to search other
stuff.
Here you find everything aplace.
We have our vision, our code ofconduct, our mission.
We have book recommendations,podcast recommendations, who
wants to read.
We have methods that we haveused so far.
(29:31):
We have detailed them there onemore time.
We have methods that we haveused so far.
We have detailed them there onemore time.
So, thinking long-term, I wouldsay it's okay to send a wrap-up
email after that, but these getlost very fast, so have one
place to put everything.
So they know it's there.
Speaker 1 (29:48):
Okay, step 11.
We're at the end.
Speaker 2 (29:52):
Step 11.
Oh, close to the end, I wouldsay you need to allow this place
to be a place where people canshare their success stories.
It's about learning, it's aboutexchanging ideas from each
other.
It's about practicing, but it'salso about success stories.
Practicing, but it's also aboutsuccess stories and here I
(30:15):
don't mean that somebodytransformed and got agile
overnight right Every tiny stepin the right direction.
You know this innovate forward.
This is a success story.
And what we do is when webecause what happened?
That people came to us.
(30:36):
Hey, we did our first Kanbanboard and now we are doing this
and we are doing that, and it'sso easy to visualize work and
then we put WIP limits and wewere, wow.
It's amazing, because you needto think that most of people
have worked probably inwaterfall methods or classical
or different.
(30:56):
They were different.
Right Now, they startedsomething else and this is a
success, because this givesothers the courage to do that,
to realize that it's not sodifficult, it can be done, it
just any from us can be thischange and can create this
change.
We as community, as anorganizer, we are here to help
(31:20):
them move this change forward.
Speaker 1 (31:23):
All right.
Well, that's the 11 steps, butI understand you actually have a
bonus step for free, for free.
Speaker 2 (31:30):
Absolutely.
The bonus step is that it's notabout me as organizer, right?
I am not doing this to show howgreat I am.
I'm not doing this to show howmany tools I know, how many
(31:53):
methods, I know, how greatfacilitator I am.
It's not about me, it's aboutthe community.
We are doing this for thecommunity.
We are doing this for people,to let them shine, to let them
show their successes and also,sometimes, their failures.
We can learn from our failuresas well, right?
So let them answer each other'squestions.
Like, if somebody pops up aquestion in one of these
(32:14):
meetings, you don't want to bethe first one to answer.
You just wait because someonein the community has the answer.
You need to start thisconversation and continue this
conversation.
So, no matter how, sometimesand I can give you a quick rule,
like 20 seconds rule keep yourmouth closed for 20 seconds and
(32:35):
someone in the community willdefinitely come with an answer
something better idea than yours, better.
You know, this is the bonus.
It's not about me, it's about acommunity, it's for them.
Speaker 1 (32:49):
I want to recap the steps that you've listed here
for our listeners on building anagile community of practice
that lasts.
Have a vision.
Don't do it alone.
Make sure you get approvals.
Once you have approval and avision and the why, make it
public.
Check your tools.
(33:10):
Have a code of conduct.
Make sure you have anorganizing team or a leadership
team.
Get involvement, get feedback.
Have a single place of recordwhere you record everything
about the meetings, share yoursuccess stories and the bonus.
It's not about me, it's aboutthe community.
Speaker 2 (33:32):
Wonderful wrap up.
Yes, All right.
Awesome Well about thecommunity Wonderful wrap up.
Speaker 1 (33:34):
Yes, all right, awesome.
Well, alina, this has beenfantastic.
I know our listeners out therewill want to get in touch with
you.
If they do, what's the best wayfor them to do that?
Speaker 2 (33:44):
I'm quite active on LinkedIn, so they can find me
there.
Okay, great.
Speaker 1 (33:50):
We'll put the link to your profile in the show notes
and if there's anything else aswell, we can talk about that.
Speaker 2 (34:07):
If there's any other links that you want to add, we
can add those as well.
Alina, it's been an absolutepleasure having you, my friend.
I really, really grateful.
I have amazing colleagues thatI could build this with, and a
big thank you to them as well,because this wouldn't have been
possible without them, and thankyou to you for giving me this
opportunity.
Speaker 1 (34:23):
I love your heart, I love your passion.
It really comes through, and Ibelieve it did during this
episode.
All right, everybody thatbrings an end to another episode
of the Agile Within.
We so.
All right, everybody thatbrings an end to another episode
of the agile within.
We'll see you next time.
Thanks for joining us foranother episode of the agile
within.
If you haven't already, pleasejoin our LinkedIn page to stay
(34:47):
in touch.
Just search for the agilewithin and please spread the
word with your friends andcolleagues Until next time.
This has been your host, markMetz.
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