Communities of Practice

During our Scrum adoption we first started by assigning people to teams. Afterwards it's easy to say that it wasn't maybe the optimal solution, but it was what we did. There was not too much steering from above, so the teams were left to figure things out on their own. There are both good and bad implications from this.

Teams were free to choose how they wanted to do different things. On the other hand, the implementations between different teams could possibly vary a lot. But variance is good. Let all the flowers bloom!

After some time the Scrum Masters saw a definite need for collaboration. We had a Scrum of Scrums, which was first only for the Scrum Masters. After starting as the Chief Scrum Master I wanted to modify this practice slightly. I wanted all the team members to have access to the SoS, but the Scrum Masters could still meet on another forum.

This other forum was named Scrum Master Community of Practice. We meet weekly (and if something urgent comes we have an email group and a Flowdock flow) to discuss impediments that go beyond team boundaries. CoP meeting is also an excellent chance to spread good practices. I think this image by Mountain Goat Software gives a clear idea of what I think a CoP is:

Some approaches that have gained popularity through these meetings are Emergency Guy (one person puts down the fire and others can continue working uninterrupted) and more recently a practice that for each story selected for a Sprint every Development Team member writes at least one test. I'm especially fond of this practice, since it has quality assurance built inside.

Leadership is not telling people what they need to do. It's about helping them realize they want to do those things.