Opening Segment

We hope you enjoy our upcoming segment at the 2021 DevOps Enterprise Summit with our talk, From Grassroots to Brush Fire.

Eric, Eric, you're on mute.

Eric Kramlinger and Jill Mead

Eric Kramlinger: Welcome to the Product Community of Practice. My name is DJ E-Money, also known as Eric Kramlinger. I'm here with my trusty co-host, Jill Mead, J-Pilz. And first off, we want to kick--

So we don't want to... Oh, I got to grab the bread.

Welcome to the Product Community of Practice. My name is E-Money, also known as Eric Kramlinger, and I'm here with my co-host, J-Pilz, Jill Mead. Jill, how you doing today?

Jill Mead: I'm doing awesome, E-Money, and I couldn't be more excited to be here at the 2021 DevOps Enterprise Summit. And you know what, guys and gals? This is the first time that E-Money and I have been in the same room ever.

Eric Kramlinger: But it's not the first time we've met. We've been working together for years. In fact, about two years ago, we started a product community of practice, and today we're here to tell you our story about how we treated a product community of practice in a large, enterprise, highly regulated institution like a product, and tell our story about we had downs and ups, and ultimately, how we got results.

All right. I know what you guys are thinking: talking about a community of practice, AKA CoP, at a large conference such as the DevOps Enterprise Summit? I know. I was there, too, until this very experience, and we want to be able to share our insights, our successes, our trials and tribulations with you.

Before we get too far into this, what is a community of practice? How do we define it? Let's Google it. A community of practice is a group of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly. We're going to share our experience with you today.

Like any good product, it has to start out with a problem, pain point, a gap, something that's affecting people. And for us, as we mentioned before, we're in a large enterprise Fortune 200 organization that's on a long-term change journey: DevOps, Agile, product, as many of us can probably relate to.

First off, problem number one, we're so large, we recently went through a global pandemic. We've already worked in silos, but now we're in our individual vacuums. We didn't have a common area to connect, to be humans together, to understand each other's personalities.

Number two, we can all read books. We can all understand how, man, I think ideally product, Agile, DevOps, it works. There's no doubt that it works, but it doesn't work in our organization because we've got real constraints. That's something that we both constantly heard, and there was a real lack of examples coming from within the organization.

And the third, it's really difficult to say, "I don't know," in an organization where the culture is you're expected to know. We wanted to create a space where you could come in, and when you said, "I don't know," it wasn't looked at as, "Hey, you're lacking knowledge." It's looked at, "You are curious, and we're going to dig into that and work together and figure it out." That's why we started it, and we decided, hey, let's have an experiment and start a group. We didn't even really consider it a CoP at first. It was a group of people getting together.

When we started the CoP, we had a problem and we had a very simple set of non-negotiables. We wanted to stick to those, give it a try, experiment, and see what happened. What were those non-negotiables again?

Jill Mead: One, we really did not want to have leadership mandates or mass invite pushes. So we wanted people to be part of the conversation, the community, because they wanted to be there.

Eric Kramlinger: And number two, we're always working with these people, whether it's developers, product managers, executives, to try to get them to think differently. Again, we're in a rigid hierarchical organization talking about product. What is product? Well, what better way to talk about it and instill it than live it? So we decided to treat the CoP like a product. We're going to get into that in more detail, but that's really at the heart of, I think, what made this a great experience for us. And how about the third?

Jill Mead: Number three was role modeling the behavior, the mindset that we wanted to create across the organization. So it's so important to be able to eat your own dog food, to practice what you preach. And for some people, they weren't getting that type of environment of psychological safety in their current team, and so they could come on a weekly basis to this environment and feel safe and kind of get that taste of what the culture is that we're trying to create here at our organization.

Eric Kramlinger: I liken it to something like this, the DevOps 2021 Summit. I go here to get energy. I go here to get pumped up and bring it back to my team. We wanted to create a little slice of that in our organization, and although you can't pivot the entire org on a dime, hey, maybe we can slowly and surely develop something really unique one hour each week.

So like any product, we had to find that product-market fit, and in order to find that product-market fit, we had to really understand what's our problem, and why are we doing a community of practice in the first place? I think the community of practice happened to be a solution that eventually caught some traction, but the problem that we were experiencing was a lack of fertile cultural ground to be able to experiment with the learner's mindset. That said, it's a really hard thing to influence an entire hierarchical organization in one swoop. So again, we had our one hour, and some of the things that we really wanted to focus on were let's create the environment that we want to be able to be successful.

And for us, the problem was, as you've referenced before, and we can't hit on this point enough, the most powerful thing that we could say was, "I don't know," because it turned into curiosity and an opportunity to really dig into real gaps that our customers, people that we worked with on a daily basis, had. So make sure that you understand what the problem is and intentionally experiment with it. May not know the solution, but that's the whole point.

Jill Mead: And that leads us into probably our most important point, number two. Treat your CoP like a product. So in our case, we had the product community of practice, and it was critical that we were eating our own dog food, following the product values and tactics as part of this community of practice experience.

So, a couple things that we did was we needed to ensure that there was relevancy of topics. So you've got a community, which I would consider your customers, and they have unique needs, desires, and challenges that they would like to discuss. So one of the things we did was we used a tool called MURAL, which is essentially a virtual whiteboard. And we polled our community on a regular basis, and we continue to do this, to understand what type of topics, issues, concerns, that they want to talk about and dive into. And as part of that, they can also dot-vote in this MURAL tool, this virtual whiteboard, which is pretty darn cool, to ensure that we're addressing essentially the most critical topics as part of the CoP.

Eric Kramlinger: I like, too, with that tool, we can all work on it at the same time. And even within a CoP, sometimes we'd go in with an intention, a topic, and we set it up in a way where there's micro-feedback, a way for people to communicate what they were thinking and questions that came up during the CoP, and the ability to pivot quickly and really listen to how short can we make these feedback loops to ensure our assumptions aren't dominating the topics. We're listening to the customer and addressing those.

Jill Mead: Another thing that we did was we experimented with our frequency.

Eric Kramlinger: Mm.

Jill Mead: So I think initially, we had a need to meet on a weekly basis. It was important for us to create some momentum and to keep the conversation going. Over time, with breaks in between, we realized that maybe we don't need to meet on a weekly basis. Maybe we can meet on a biweekly or a monthly. But at the end of the day, you're not tied to a certain frequency. Just experiment with it. If weekly is too much, you guys will know. If monthly is too little, you'll know, and you'll be able to schedule accordingly.

Eric Kramlinger: Within such a large organization like ours, there's a lot of opportunity to experience other communities of practice. And in this sense, we had a lot of opportunity to see what's out there, what's working, what isn't working. And beyond the organization itself, we were able to get outside, go to a meetup, see where the magic is, and try to recreate that. It doesn't have to be all original. Pull from what's working and what's out there in the industry, and take that, incorporate it into yours, make it your own.

Jill Mead: And you know what? You just reminded me, that kind of sounds like product discovery, a critical element of product management.

Eric Kramlinger: So this community of practice in itself, community is the key word. And it always felt a bit strange to be radio DJs, and we'll get into why are we radio DJs in the first place. Because at points, it felt like, are we making this about ourselves? I think the point that we figured out is, like any good product, there needs to be a product manager behind it. Someone who's consistently focused on taking in feedback, listening to the customer, driving it forward, really creating an arena and a space for people to assemble. And I think what we realized, it's not about us, it's about us hosting. It's about us having the consistent spot for people to get together and create a culture. So always have a point person, a product manager, whatever you want to call it, to keep driving forward.

Jill Mead: Another point related to treating your CoP like a product is that having that forum is magic as far as being able to record a session for your customers to be able to self-service at a later date.

Eric Kramlinger: I think about the times when unexpected gold came out, and I was always thinking, "Man, I wish this was recorded," because we could cut the segment out and it would really hit home with people. And I realized we did record it.

So how do we know that we're successful? When you think about good product management, you've got to live in the data. So for us, we had to figure out what is the data that's important, and Jill did a really good job of continuing to push on that and figure out ways that we can explore what's working and what isn't working. Can you tell us about those?

Jill Mead: Sure. So just like a product, it's important to have those measurements as part of, how do you know that your product is providing an exceptional experience to your clients' customers? How do you know that your product is effective? And for us, the obvious Net Promoter Score, which really looks at customer satisfaction and whether that particular team member or customer would actually recommend it to a friend or another colleague. So that was definitely a no-brainer for us.

But then we had some other things that we looked at, such as, like we said before, we recorded the sessions. We looked at how many of those community members, or even community members that by word of mouth told their colleagues, "Hey, listen to this content," to see how many people are actually taking the time after the session to review the content, the meeting, the experience. And so that was really insightful for us because a lot of times you think, "Hey, you're recording this thing. No one's probably going to listen to it." It was unbelievable how many actually took that extra time to do so.

Eric Kramlinger: Absolutely. And I think it's about inviting people in, right? This is a really special, exceptional experience that we get to have weekly. Throughout the week, you see exceptional, special things, or even frustration. And I think having the opportunity for us to say, "Hey, Keegan," or, "Hey, Joe," or who any of our colleagues are, "Would you be willing to share that with a group of folks in the community of practice?" It was a way for us to acknowledge, hey, there's something here, and I want to help amplify that for you and bring it to a group of people that I really care about. I think having that opportunity was a really cool card to play as coaches especially, too.

Jill Mead: Absolutely. Another thing that we did look at, now that I think back, is every session that we had or we continue to have, we have a captive, engaged audience, which can be hard to measure exactly, but at the end of the day, our community wouldn't come back week after week if they didn't see value in it.

Eric Kramlinger: So when I think about the part that is probably closest to my heart and has been the most fun, it's creating the culture that we wanted to exist in the entire organization. It's hard to influence that overnight, but we had one hour each week on Fridays where we could do our best to create that.

And you're probably wondering, why is this guy calling himself DJ E-Money and MC Pilz? Why is he wearing a Big Time Cash necklace, etc.? Well, it was a total experiment. I was invited into the CoP by Pilz, and my dog happened to take a bite out of this necklace, and it was right by my desk chair. So I said, "Welcome to the show. My name is DJ E-Money." And I think what it boiled down to was creating an experience that was different from our status quo, from our day-to-day meetings. Putting ourselves out there and taking the risk to say, "Hey, I'm trying to do something different. I'm trying to have fun here." And I think it gave, looking back at it, other people maybe some more freedom and assurance that I can explore and I can be different in this one hour. That was something that honestly we hadn't planned for, but it came up, and we rolled with it.

Jill Mead: So another thing I wanted to call out, E-Money, is that one really big thing we did as part of this forum is we created traditions around this product CoP. So traditions are ways of connecting people to a common purpose, to the culture. And some of those things that we did was, yes, we had a radio show. We had the silly necklace. But we also had things like Gratitude Friday. So we met on a weekly basis on Fridays, and we would kick it off with what people are grateful for. So we'd have one, two, three people share some of those things that they're grateful for, and it was just really an uplifting, positive experience for people, especially with sometimes things aren't always as positive and uplifting in the workplace. And especially with the times right now with just the pandemic and COVID, we really wanted to provide some light in people's days.

The other thing that we did that I thought was really fun is we had lead-in songs and lead-out songs, which we have a staple lead-out song that we continue to play that really inspired, excited people to just have fun with their work. And it was a really fun experience and continues to be a fun experience for the participants.

And then lastly, what we did was we had a frontman, which was E-Money, where we would do really creative posters featuring E-Money along with photos of the community on a weekly basis. So we would send out the agenda. We'd get people excited about the upcoming topic. It was a really cool thing that we did together and we continue to do. And lastly, I look at having mascots. We have what we call our mascots Baby Agile. It's just a way to add some fun into a forum like this.

Eric Kramlinger: And the last point that I want to hit on is I don't think any of these things would have existed if we didn't just go with the flow. None of them were planned, and many of these traditions that we had were crowdsourced, things people did that really we came to expect each week and gave people purpose. For example, one guy had an instrument, and every time somebody did something well, we'd say, "Hey, Dan, play it." And sure enough, he'd play it. And I think whatever the traditions are, whatever you do to put yourself out there to take some risks, it doesn't matter what the things are. It just shows that there's a willingness to explore and to try and to create an open forum for everyone to participate. So put yourself out there and just give it a shot. That's really what it boils down to.

So some things went well, but I don't think we would've ever discovered the things that went well if we didn't have things fall flat on us and recognize that as a growth opportunity. So one that I can think of is starting out, it was easy to fall into a mindset of a rigid, prescriptive meeting like many of our others, where the goal is to go through content, ensure that we get through all the content, and more than that, ensure that we use up the whole hour and finish because that means we did our work, and I think we discovered that doesn't equal value.

So for us, treating it like every other meeting just didn't work, and especially in this case where a big sign of value was people returning. And we went through some ups and downs, and I think something that occurred early was we talked about empathy before as one of the values that we really connected to. And as people started to get more comfortable in this forum, sometimes we'd take a 90-degree shift and totally talk about a different topic because it was important to the people there. And I think it was those organic topics where we'd pause and listen and realize, hey, we don't have to stay on topic. We have to go to the spot where the energy is, where the pain point is. We've got a group of people here who can rally together and talk about it. So I think that flexibility in understanding that, hey, maybe we have nothing to talk about on this Friday, and we just want to play the song, do our outro, dance a little bit, make people feel better. There were some times that that happened as well, and that was a success, and that's okay. So understand that it's not a meeting, it's an experience.

Number two, with some tribulations that we experienced, was pretending like we had all the answers and not leveraging the group. I remember there were a couple of times when we had people come in, we called it an artifact blitz. And it was people coming in and showing off maybe a product charter or their objectives and key results, things of that nature. It sort of started off as like, all right, present it, and the coaches are going to tell you how you can improve it, the gaps, etc. And I think we realized quickly, A, we don't have enough context to really accurately be able to do that. But B, in the larger point, the power of it was the hive mind, the group. It doesn't matter what your position is, doesn't matter what your title is. There's so many people that have had similar experiences. Bringing people in and understanding this is a conversation and we're walking side by side, that created a better organic experience, I think.

I think another one, too, is because it was a psychologically, or is, rather, a psychologically safe forum, and of course, it takes a while to develop that, and we consistently have to understand there's new people coming in. We're adapting, we're changing, we're going through cultural differences. We have to continue to try to create that from week to week and just not have the assumption that, hey, this is a psychologically safe environment, was giving people the opportunity to express frustrations and sometimes vent and sometimes show some doubt. But within that, how we frame this, it could have easily turned into negativity and an opportunity to talk about how we wish the rest of the organization was doing something different, or there's a constraint that just absolutely can't be moved. Instead, try to frame it as, hey, this is a real-life example, and it is a big constraint, or you are feeling that way. Who else is feeling that way, and what are you doing about it? It's a form of growth.

One of the really cool things we did is that we have a tradition, hint, hint, hint, that involves stories of impact. And this was great because a lot of the people that come to share their story has had just that. They had helplessness, doubt, not really believing the product values, Agile, DevOps, and they really shared their story of how they've overcame it and actually have become an advocate for it. So this is a great example of being able to speak to those people in the community that might have some doubt around what we're trying to do from an organizational standpoint.

So when we look at these tribulations, we walked through it and talked about how do we navigate these blows at times. But if it wasn't for those, we wouldn't have had the learnings, and I think it comes down to anything. It's resiliency and understanding that because we had the opportunity to have some real flat meetings that felt like every other, anxiety about feeling like we needed to have the answers, there were some pretty frustrating and venting sessions. It gave us the opportunity to think about, we don't want this to sink our ship. How do we keep floating on?

Jill Mead: All right, E-Money. We've had some really good success. We've had definite learnings from a lot of the tribulations. I just want you guys to know at the DevOps Enterprise Summit and our community that we don't think we're the best thing since sliced bread.

We would like to share some stats with you. So a couple things. Since we've started this product community of practice, we've just hit our 39th session. That's unheard of in community-of-practice land.

Eric Kramlinger: It doesn't feel like we're driving a car where the tires are flat out.

Jill Mead: Yeah.

Eric Kramlinger: It feels like, hey, we've put chains on the tires, and now we have wings. Let's try to fly.

Jill Mead: Absolutely. We started this whole product CoP experience with 20 participants, and over time, it has gained steam. At this point, we have 172 average attendees per session, and we have roughly 900 attendees on the invites.

Eric Kramlinger: And let's get back to the principle. It wasn't blasting those 900 invites out. It was organic growth. Hey, if you like it, invite your friends.

Jill Mead: Absolutely. And that's an important one to call out, E-Money. And lastly, our NPS score, Net Promoter Score, has ranged anywhere from 55 to 70 on a consistent basis, which if you guys know anything about Net Promoter Scores, that's pretty darn good. And we wanted to give you an idea of how are we measuring and what does that look like. So those are some of the stats that we used.

Eric Kramlinger: All right, so we've heard it from our perspective, but let's hear it from the people who really made this community of practice successful and have made it a fun experience from week to week, our colleagues, our customers, and our friends. We were lucky enough to get some snippets about how the community of practice that we've put together has affected them. Let it roll.

Jill Mead: Great.

Participant Montage

Participant: What does the product community of practice mean to me?

Participant: Oh my gosh. When the going gets tough, the tough go to the community of practice.

Tracy: Hey, everybody. My name is Tracy, and two years ago, I changed my career from being a data analyst into a Scrum Master.

Marilyn: Hi, my name is Marilyn, and I'm a learning partner of Eric and Jill's, otherwise known as E-Money and Pilz.

Brynn Badgery: Hey, this is Brynn Badgery. I just want to say a few words about the product CoP and what it has meant to my team and to me personally as a Scrum Master.

Tracy: Now, add in this global pandemic to a new career, and that just is a recipe for stress and loneliness. So how do you fix something like that? Be a part of a community.

Participant: I worked with Jill and Eric over the past year on different learning events, and I didn't quite know what to expect when I attended their first community of practice. They invited me, so I showed up.

Participant: Learning about the product community of practice was a game changer for me.

Participant: I've been at U.S. Bank for 18 years, and I went to one of the community of practice meetings and was blown away.

Participant: My team members, after the first time attending the product CoP, they were just blown. They had no idea that something like this existed at the bank.

Participant: I was a new Scrum Master serving on a newly formed team, and we were all eager to embrace the product mindset.

Participant: The greatest benefit of a community like this is the exposure that you suddenly have to many practices and to the expertise of so many people coming from different areas of the bank.

Participant: I have worked for U.S. Bank for almost 18 years, and for the first time, I have found a community of people that really love to get together and talk about and brag about the awesome work that they're doing with their products.

Tracy: I'm no longer alone. And let me tell you about my community. They are energetic, exciting, and altogether just empowering.

Participant: It was unlike anything I had ever participated in before. It was so engaging. It was so much fun. They were in character and just generated enthusiasm and engagement the entire time.

Participant: We get to have some really meaty conversations facilitated during every single CoP.

Participant: I feel like each week I'm going to a product or Agile conference. That's how much information is just packed into that one hour each week.

Participant: By the positivity, by the people helping people, by the sense of community.

Brynn Badgery: Specifically for my team, I remember that we wanted to learn more about OKRs. So we found a very passionate coach within the community, and we later on brought one of our initial attempts back to the forum so we could get some candid, constructive feedback.

Participant: This community allows me to have a space, a safe space, to learn the things that I need to be successful at my job.

Participant: The community of practice has done everything from workshops to presenters to bring your examples of something that you've done. Praise for each other and an acknowledgement of hard work that's been done, which is always such a good example to teams to hear that we celebrate almost everything, whether it's a failure, overcoming failure, whether it's a big win, whether it's just being a good human.

Participant: And along with that, I get a chance to practice. I get a chance to learn and gain perspective from everybody.

Participant: I attend as much as I can, and if I can't, I try to go back and listen to the recordings.

Participant: I have referred numerous people to talk to Jill specifically about starting up a community of practice and just love to have that energy in any of our learning events. So thank you, Jill and Eric. You guys are doing an amazing job. Keep it up.

Participant: And as we continue trying to build inspiration about what it means to be a great product manager, having this community to step back into has meant that we never get stuck.

Participant: It was a fun, memorable experience. And as an active participant ever since, I came to realize that the more you share, the more you grow.

Participant: To be totally fair, it's the best CoP we have. And if you're a part of ours, we always end with a dance party. Who doesn't love a good dance party?

Participant: The energy and excitement that the coaches bring to this group are just immeasurable. The team has an unwavering sense of excitement and optimism that we can keep moving forward, and that's exactly what you need.

Eric Kramlinger and Jill Mead

Eric Kramlinger: All right, so we heard from our friends, our colleagues. Like we said, we couldn't have done it without them. So we want to take a moment to pause and give some gratitude. So a thank you to everyone in the community of practice who helped us get it to where it is today. Honestly, couldn't and wouldn't have done it without you. Who else do we want to thank?

Jill Mead: You guys, the DevOps Enterprise Summit. We are just so honored to be here this year sharing our story, and we hope that you guys and gals can find tidbits to apply in your own situation at your organization.

Eric Kramlinger: And also, we want to thank our production partners putting this together. Keegan, thanks for making it happen for us. As we talked about, we wanted to make this community of practice different and take a risk, present it differently, get feedback, and that's what we're attempting to do with this talk as well. So we hope you enjoyed it. We put ourselves out there and gave it a shot.

Jill Mead: So I can't believe it's the end of this very special episode of the Product Community of Practice Live, or Semi-Live, at the Enterprise DevOps Summit. Thank you so much for having us. We want to make sure that we hear from you. We'd love feedback. We'd love to talk to you. We'd love to engage. And we've got some plans to continue on as well. So please be in touch. Here's how you can reach us.

Eric Kramlinger: Please reach out. We'd love to chat. All right. We're at the very end, and we've saved our favorite tradition for last. This is how we lead out of every community of practice. MC Pilz, you know what to do. Hit it.

[Lead-out music plays.]