Communities of practice are not new, but they are gathering importance as the world moves from Waterfall delivery methods to a more agile mindset. In that world, colleagues need a water hole, a way of learning, sharing, and up skilling, introducing my take, my experiences of CoPs. Its a journey that relays the failures, the learnings, and where we are now

1. Communities
of Practice
By Leigh Rathbone
@villabone
https://www.linkedin.com/in/leigh-rathbone-630690b/

2. “CoPs are groups of people that share a
concern, a set of problems, or a passion
about a topic, and who deepen their
knowledge and expertise in this area by
interacting on an ongoing basis"
What is a Community of
Practice (CoP)?
..... now that's pretty cool

3. • You may have heard of Communities of Practice (CoP). It
may have been at a conference, a meetup, through your
own self development.
CoPs are a new thing, right?
• This article will take you on my journey, my thoughts as
to what they are, the 'Why' they are important, some
failings I've experienced, and some tips and hints.
• My caveat is that CoPs are not new. They've been around
some time, so I'm not trying to be seen as a thought leader
on this.
• What I hope from writing this is it gives me some focus on
achieving something (See James Whittaker's' Seven stages
of creativity - the most inspirational video I've seen lately), it
allows me to share my learnings, and from that, I hope it
helps others.

4. My Experiences and Exposures to CoPs
• My first experience of a CoP was at the BBC in 2015
when Jitesh Gosai invited me to talk at the BBC test
craftsmanship session.
• I think its fair to say, this was BBC's take on running a
CoP, part of their take on it was every now and again
inviting external speakers in. It planted the seed.
• The second seed came from an amazing agile coach I
worked with called Cuan Mulligan, a legend, who well
and truly planted what a CoP was, and the benefits.

5. • A key message to land this early on, is that CoPs are about managing change, as well as the other reasons
listed below, never lose sight of that.
CoPs - Its about managing change
• When you manage change, always remember, different people go through different emotions during the
landing of that change

6. • So lets tackle the 'Why' for CoPs. So
to answer that, I'll give you an insight
into our journey here at Shop Direct.
Lets tackle the ‘Why?’, why do you need a CoP?
• We are, and have been, and will be for
some time, on our agile journey.
• We've had some stop start moments,
but we are well and truly looking at the
agile mindset, the ways of agile, and
what it means to people.
• The recent journey has seen us move
from a waterfall business, where crafts
like testing sat in their designated areas,
and now to a move to agile teams.

7. • We've had testers (and other roles) who were
protected by management, and had safety in
numbers, masking their weaknesses with other
testers strengths.
The emotional change
going Waterfall to Agile
• Now in agile, they are told they have autonomy,
responsibilities they never had before.
• Expectations might be that they, as the single
tester in the squad, know everything about
testing.
• To bring this to life, have a mooch at the talk I
gave at York Test conference last year - its in
Prezi, mostly pictures, but you can get the
message that builds the 'why' for having CoPs.

8. Why use CoPs?
Well, people move from one silo to a different silo
• Moving waterfall to agile can be
perceived as breaking down silos
from big departments, into self
organised teams of 6 – 10 people
• In reality, it can lead to simply
working in one big silo in
waterfall, to just a smaller, cross
functional silo team
• CoP can help people through this,
and cross pollinate ideas, share
learnings, upskill people, and give
them the fuel to go back to their
squad re-invigorated

9. • In essence, in my language, CoPs are a
watering hole for people to come back to, to
support each other, to learn from each other,
and breed a continuous learning mindset
needed for the world we live in now, and a
world where they can add value.
CoPs are a watering hole
• You may recognise the picture earlier, its
from the film "Martian" where the main
character is alone on mars for years.
• This is how a people might feel going from
waterfall to agile. CoPs helps, but its not a
silver bullet, its part of the ingredients to
bake that cake called 'managing change’
…So, give them that watering hole

10. • Who should attend a CoP? OK, all card on the
table here.
• We tried our CoPs at Shop Direct back in
December 2016.
• The essence was that anyone from any craft
could attend any CoP.
• They ran for around 6 months, and we had
some great sessions, and some not so great
• We pressed the pause button, but why did we
press that button?
We started, and then we stopped

11. • Management tried to get them started,
and ended up running some of them
We started our CoPs in the true sense,
and stopped soon after, but why?
• It was the same usual suspects running
or joining in the sessions
• Some CoPs, like engineering, could
have 100+ people in them, that's hard
to manage, and the larger the group,
the less likely for some people to speak
up
• As they were open to anyone from any craft to attend, some ended up being diluted and toothless
• Not enough ownership was put on the community to own the CoPs, chose the topics, and having
people owning the next ones
• Sometimes the surroundings weren't right for collaborative discussions

12. • We pivoted, we changed our mindset and
approach
So we pivoted and changed the ‘who’
• We looked at the reasons they died out in the first
place
• We looked at the failures, and learnt from them
• We changed our approach, we had a reboot, and
its quite controversial.
• Re-started the CoPs with just the testers in the
agile teams.
• Now I know what you are thinking, it excluded
everyone else, but there are reasons, and plans
to change this.

13. • We wanted to think big, but start small, start now
So we thought big! started small, and acted now
• Starting with a smaller group is easier, we wanted
to embed and learn the CoP mindset needed in
that smaller group before then going big. People
in that smaller group got used to speaking up
• We wanted to get a smaller group comfortable
with that mindset, and ways of running and acting
in CoPs, and then bring in others once that group
got comfortable, start scaling it, slowly
• The group consists of around 14 people from the
test community, ranging from test engineers,
automation engineers, test coaches, and test
principal

14. The formats of our CoPs
• Presentations / talks
• Talks from other CoPs
• External speakers
• Lean coffees
• World café
• brainstorming
• Workshops
• Pairing
• Games
• External visits to other companies
• Build a community with local
companies
• Take your CoP to a meetup
• Take your CoP to a conference

15. Understand your colleagues learning styles
The Kolb
Model
• Understand the different learning
styles of your colleagues within the
CoP
• A hands on workshop won’t work for
everyone
• Many models out there, Kolb is one
we’ve just gone through
• That’s why a CoP could simply be
watching a Ted talk, listening to
podcast together then discussing, or
simply having a coffee together
• In order to understand the learning
styles of people, you need to engage
them, get to know them, ask them
what works, seek feedback

16. Some principles, or ‘good habits’ we’ve installed
• Everyone is a peer, and its a peer to peer group / event. There is no hierarchy, we are equal, we all just
do different tasks in order to serve our customers, in other words, leave your ego at the door
• It’s a community event put on by the community, for the community. The topics are driven by the
community and its appetite for learning, developing, and where its skill gaps are
• Two people run each event (taking the pair learning principle), then the next event has two different
people running it. No one leaves the room till the next two people have volunteered
• The CoP events are every 2 weeks, that’s an important heartbeat for us, and last between an hour and
1.5 hours
• If coming together to learn needs to happen, and can happen outside of the CoP, then don't wait for a
CoP session, just do it
• The CoP keeps a backlog of potential topics for the CoP sessions. The community vote on topics that
are important to them to bring into a CoP session

17. Some principles, or ‘good habits’ we’ve installed
• The more people that volunteer to run a COP, the more support there is for the next two volunteers.
If you have ran a COP, you offer your support for future volunteers
• If post-its are used, no overlapping of other post-its, even during grouping or pulling themes out - the
reason is we take pictures to document the event, each post-it represents someone’s voice
• We capture the session on our Wiki which is open to anyone to view, and we comms it out. On that
wiki we capture the essence of the COP, the interactions, the outputs, the actions, the owners of the
actions, how we are going to change
• The room is really important, and being prepared with equipment, post-its, markers, sharpies, phone
to capture, TV to present on, lighting, seats layout, laptop connectors
• There are treats, cakes, biscuits supplied by the organizers
• We seek feedback on the event there and then, asking people to rate the event on a scale of 1 to 5 (5
being high) and leaving feedback on post-its. The feedback is discussed there and then
• Management do not run the COP’s, they are a peer within the COP, but they are part of the peer to peer
event, and have a voice like everyone else

18. The impact I’ve seen from CoPs
The impact of the CoP, in its current
guise, is quite amazing.
I'm seeing people that would never
have ran a CoP session 12 months
ago, now stepping up, AND putting
on an amazing event.
I'm seeing the group of people
within the CoP already becoming
self organising and self governing
regarding who runs them, what
topics they want to discuss, the way
the CoPs are ran, the capturing of
the outputs and actions.
I'm seeing the start of the growth
mindset

19. • I'm seeing more than that though, I'm seeing relationships form,
trust being built, and a real community spirit develop, which
reminds me of the community feel I had growing up on my
council estate.
• Its almost the 'I've got your back' type thing. Not in an
aggressive way, but in a supportive sharing, and caring way. I'm
seeing people really open up, growing, developing, and
challenging themselves. In our last COP, it was a brief
introduction to automation, and what you can do as a tester to
start learning.
• It was tough and uncomfortable for some people who haven't
had to face into that before, but I saw change in the room, you
could smell it, you could feel it.
The impact I’ve seen from CoPs

20. • In the presence of such changing attitudes and beliefs, and
seeing people embrace other peoples thoughts, wanting to learn,
grab new ideas, that challenge their comfort zone, I've been left
speechless, and feeling humble to be part of that group of
people. It needs to be seen to be believed
• We are still on our journey, and learning how to do COPs, but its
an exciting start
Final Thoughts
Thank you for reading