It isn’t a tale of two cities, but rather a tale of two Agile organizations using scaled frameworks…
Have you ever wondered what it would look like when two organizations, each using a different scaling framework for their Agile organization, come together for a shared purpose? It can be an amazing opportunity to create more impact together than either of you would have alone. It certainly, as with any well-intentioned collaborative effort, could also be a frustrating experience.
How do you know which situation you are in?
If you have you ever said to your team something like, “Wow! This is getting easier/better/faster every time we do this?” like I just did this past week, you’re in the good kind.
Our team puts on more than just the Agile in Nonprofits Online Summit which you have heard about, if not even participated in one of the past two years…we also collaborate with a partner on the grant writing side of the business to deliver the #LearnGrants Online Summit.
We just delivered the fourth annual #LearnGrants event (to 3,000+ grant professionals!), and as we were doing our final tech check as a team a few days prior, the collaborative team (Foundant Technologies – a large corporation using SAFE and DH Leonard Consulting – a small business team using Scrum@Scale) all agreed on how each year continued to get stronger and better.
As I reflected on the event, I marveled at how two Agile companies could communicate across Agile scaling frameworks, regardless of different tools and operational methodologies, to produce something that, not just to the public, but behind the scenes, runs so smoothly.
Usually, the questions we get during Office Hours or during our Scrum Master and Product Owner classes are about how to improve inner organization communication across Agile teams, but can you imagine how things would start to look in collaborative partner working situations if we started to talk more about how to improve our collaborative organization working situations?
I think it would be epic.
The big question, then, is how we can know that we are entering into the “good” kind of collaboration across Agile organizations instead of potentially a stressful situation. We’ll never know for certain, BUT starting with a discussion about Agile values that are strongest in your organization (you can use our Agile Values Facilitation Guide to help), and then moving into a Team Working Agreement (you can use our Team Working Agreement Guide to help) are going to set the foundation with a strong and Agile collaboration.
Do you have an example that came to mind as I shared my story? Drop me a note in the comments below or share the story with us in our Facebook group. I’d love to hear about it! In fact…I’d love to have you consider submitting your success story for consideration for the Agile in Nonprofits Online Summit. The call for speakers can always be found here.