What is community good for anyway? Turns out memory

At the beginning of the new year I made a resolution to write a blog post a week. I wanted to get into the habit of writing to think more deeply about some of the ideas and topics most relevant to my work and life. And I thought holding myself accountable to producing a post would give me a few things: time to reflect, a reason to be creative and the exercise and practice of writing.

But a death in the family and an international trip checked that plan a bit. It wasn’t the jet-lagged that prevented me from writing, it was the feeling that the words and ideas didn’t fit the moment. That what ever I was mulling on didn’t really hold up against the significance of loss. I had been thinking about exploring and writing on an activity that encourages you to imagine the future but the present has required my full attention and energy.

And in this presence this is what I was reminded of…community and its vitalness to our well-being and how it can if we’re lucky be a witness that we were here. That was especially driven home by the gathering of my father-in-law’s community to say good-bye.

Community also provides an opportunity to reinforce a learning or experience. This article from CNN delves into how meeting with friends give us a chance to relive moments and create memories.

After that Saturday movie, let's say you met a friend for lunch on Sunday. That Sunday social event would give you the opportunity to discuss your thoughts and reactions to the movie, as well as any context from your week leading up to it. That repetition of the information is important in helping your brain solidify those events, Javadi said.

And I think this is why community: book clubs, cycling clubs, voice of the customer community, are so important to our well-being and influence what we learn and remember. And it is especially true how starved we are for that in-person camaraderie. Folks want to gather because they want to connect with folks with similar interests and challenges but also to share what they’re experiencing, and learning. It provides an opportunity to test out our thinking, how we talk about our experiences—a chance to give air to our thoughts and convictions and get feedback. And feedback is not just hearing how others respond, it also means that you have been acknowledged, your input is worthy of reflection and response.

And finally that is why I thought writing about the importance of community, and how it is a reflection of our aspirations, interests and love.

PI Planning--A hero's journey

It’s been a tumultuous couple of weeks. It seems like everyone is coping with both professional and personal upheavals or changes and my last weeks have been no different. One constant though in our agile world is the PI Planning experience. PI is an acronym for Program Increment and it has been said that you aren’t really doing agile if you aren’t doing PI Planning.

For those unfamiliar with PI Planning, it is a two (or 4 day, if you’re virtual) in-person planning event for the entire Agile Release Train, where a plan is forged by fire for the next 3 months. We just finished ours. This weekend I sat reflecting on the experience it occurred to me that PI Planning mirrored the hero’s journey in many ways, at least for me.

Hero’s Journey

The heroes are called to adventure

Regardless of whether I’ve been successful, struggled mightily or simply staggered across the PI Increment threshold, PI Planning happens. The call for adventure and I have no choice but to answer it. That doesn’t mean I'm not a little reluctant to begin the process of creating a new or adapting a plan. After all, circumstances change, we’ve learned a little more about our customers, our products and the broader market. Consider how quickly COVID19 appeared and disrupted well-laid plans. The chance to pivot, adapt or persevere every 3 months enables organizations to respond quickly to market opportunities or calamities. That doesn’t mean it’s easy.

But I don’t do it on my own. I have to reach out to different parts of the organization: my allies, folks perhaps I don’t always agree with, my leadership team to help craft a plan to take into the next quarter.

And those initial draft plans are always vague, heavily reliant on assumptions and light on the metrics. This creative thrashing is challenging both intellectually and emotionally. Pulling together a measurable plan that the entire ART can support requires an enormous amount of creativity, communications and empathy. Because as you are relying on your mentor to help inform a plan, others are looking for your guidance on their plan. Often times after that first day of planning, folks are spent— but we’re entering the death/rebirth part of the journey.

The heroes are reborn

And this is where it becomes fascinating. Those plans suddenly begin to transform from begin nebulous and ill-formed to well-honed, intentional and measurable. To that plan has been added new insights, key learning from other parts of the organization and, if you’re lucky, the strengthening of a team culture.

I have always been amazed on the 2nd day of a PI Planning event to watch draft plans morph into these amazing goal-oriented objectives. And how proud the teams appear, how much progress they have made in their understanding of the work and their own confidence in their ability to deliver. It’s the Transformation part of the hero’s journey.

Perhaps, the only stage where the analogy maybe is a little weaker is around atonement. I have heard of discussions becoming lively and spirited during PI Planning so perhaps there is some degree of team self-care that needs to happen. Although, as I write this I think our teams do some version of that during our post-PI-Planing debriefs. We come together (at a distance) to eat, drink and share our experiences and hopes for the next PI. Often times there are positive stories that are shared of work celebrated or teams recognized for their consistent and high-quality work or optimism for the new plan.

And that plan is our path back. It is the manifestation of everything we’ve learned, what we’ve had to change and where we think we’re going.

It is a cycle that we will repeat in another 3 months or so. Another hero’s journey. Another chance to confront what might be working or not working working and find the helpers that can inspire us to keep going or reimagine how we’ll achieve our objectives. And at the end of it, it is the learning and some wisdom that we may all have gained and can take into the next PI Planning.