The Aneo Agile Circle: promoting a culture of agility and excellence

Written by Thomas Dedieu, on 13 September 2023

The goal of the Agile Circle is to promote a culture of agility and excellence within Aneo.

We aim to enable our consulting and expertise teams to provide high-quality solutions and services to our clients collaboratively, adaptably, and customer-centrically. By adopting agile principles and practices, we seek to enhance our ability to meet our clients' needs, foster innovation, and continuously improve our skills.

Our Agile Circle serves as a platform for sharing knowledge, best practices, and experiences in the field of Agility. We provide coaching, training, and support to individuals and teams within Aneo, encouraging them to effectively embrace agile methodologies and mindsets.

Our missions

  • Experience Sharing: Members share their discoveries, ideas, or reflections within the Agile Circle; each participant leaves with learnings, ideas, and renewed energy.
  • Problem Solving: Members gather around a member's issue, providing advice from different perspectives; all participants will have integrated these pieces of advice or ideas.
  • Coaching: The Agile Circle serves as a network; based on affinities or expertise, a member can contact another for assistance on a particular subject or simply seek the external perspective of a peer.
  • Monitoring: As a community of enthusiasts, many articles, books, or videos are consumed each month; the community will share these findings and experiment with some of them together.
  • Recommendations: The Agile Circle produces training materials, memos, kits, guides, etc., for its own use or for our colleagues in Aneo.
  • Influence and Reputation: The Agile Circle actively participates in Agile events within its ecosystem (Agile en Seine, Voice of the Customer, etc.).

Roles

  • The Core Team: Comprising 2 Active Members designated by themselves for the entire duration of a 3-month iteration, it is responsible for defining and continuously updating the vision, goals, communication, and strategy of the Agile Circle, in collaboration with stakeholders. It coordinates and facilitates meetings, workshops, and events of the Agile Circle. It is responsible for welcoming and integrating new members (active or observers).
  • Active Members: Agile coaches, Scrum Masters, Product Owners, or those working in Agile teams; they can be Aneo employees or among our partners. They are volunteers but commit to actively participating for a 3-month iteration. They contribute to defining and updating the vision, goals, and strategy of the Agile Circle. They promote the adoption and success of agile principles and practices within Aneo. They actively participate in the meetings, workshops, and events of the Agile Circle. They ensure the practice of monitoring and share their knowledge within the Agile Circle. They are responsible for creating and updating the documentary deliverables of the Agile Circle: training materials, knowledge base, best practices, etc.
  • Observers: Agile coaches, Scrum Masters, Product Owners, or those simply interested in agile principles and practices. They freely participate in Agile Circle activities; no commitment is required from Observers except to observe the rules defined by the Agile Circle within the framework and duration of the Agile Circle activities. They can leave the Observer status at any time or, if they wish, become an Active Member (but this commitment will last until the end of the iteration).

Events

  • The Monthly Agile Circle Meeting: An open sharing moment for all members of the Agile Circle, both Active Members and Observers, involving workshops, co-construction, knowledge sharing, experience sharing, and open discussion. It is also a synchronization space among Active Members: backlog refinement, prioritization, task assignment, and progress tracking. The monthly meeting is facilitated by the Core Team.
  • The Agile Circle Retrospective: Held at the end of each iteration, it particularly aims to improve the operating rules of the Agile Circle for application in the next iteration: tracking previous actions, identifying successes and failures, seeking improvement opportunities, and creating an action plan. The Retrospective is open to Active Members and facilitated by the Core Team.