Case Study: The Key to the Success of the Taiwan Agile Tribe was to Form a Self-Organized Community

A high-performance team with the following characteristics plays an important role in the success of agile practice:

• Cross-functional
• Generalists
• Small/limited in size
• Self-organized

If the work environment is created with a high-performance team as the core, supplemented by an agile coach to motivate the team and track performance in a timely manner, and if the team can establish their own rules, then the work can be done with less waste and more value. The Taiwan Agile Tribe (TAT) is an excellent example of a high-performance team. 

What is the Taiwan Agile Tribe?

As the biggest Agile Tribe in Taiwan, TAT has more than 5,000 members. The TAT consists of a big community, a primary community, an advanced community, and 20 small communities. Led by community heads and assisted by scrum masters, the members of each small community interact with each other to discuss agile-relevant topics. This unique structure of sub-groups is how the TAT gradually grew more powerful and self-organized, and has come to exert an influence in promoting the development of agile in Taiwan. But it took work to get to this point.

Challenge #1: Members Were Slow to Join

In its initial stage, TAT possessed few members, and the growth of the members was rather slow. To attract more people and add value to their membership, I, as a scrum master, invited those with experience in this field to join the advanced community and the others to join the Scrum primary community. Members became eager to express their viewpoints as they joined the communities matching their levels. As time passed, they invited their relatives and friends who were interested in Agile Tribe to join them. In this way, TAT was developed through word-of-mouth marketing. 

Challenge #2: One-Way Communication Stifled Conversation

After selecting a virtual communication platform, the TAT invited agile experts to deliver monthly speeches. After a few online speeches, I realized that one-way communication didn’t always spur interaction among members. I started a discussion in the community to find a method for encouraging members to communicate more. Inspired by the members' opinions, I decided to select themes that interested members and established two dozen small communities focusing on those different themes, such as:

• Scrum
• Kanban
• Product ownership
• Scrum masters
• Coaching
• Agile clinics

These small communities are led by either volunteers or experts in relevant fields. Members can choose their preferred community according to their own interests. 

The head of each community takes charge of everything, demonstrating the spirit of empowered teams. For example, these small communities also ask experts to deliver speeches monthly and it is often the head of the community who invites the expert. The heads need to develop a way to make the communities thrive. Over time, each small community finds its own running pattern and grows into a highly self-organized team. This flexible operation mode connects each community vertically and horizontally, fostering the growth of members and infusing multiple resources into TAT.

Outcome: Membership Increased

When the number of members reached 3,000, TAT became the most influential agile community in Taiwan. It had chances to invite more internationally recognized agile thought leaders, such as Roman Pichler, Mike Cohn, and Lyssa Adkins, to deliver speeches to its members, thus broadening members’ horizons and promoting people-to-people exchanges between TAT and Agile Tribes in the rest of the world.

Outcome: Scrum Masters Inspire Members’ Potential to Shape Exclusive Agile Culture

Introducing scrum masters has been elemental to TAT. Just like product owners, the heads of small communities are responsible for developing and running their teams. Scrum masters, acting as servant-like leaders, need to know the characteristics of the heads of small communities, listen to their opinions, and guide teams to solve their problems. Subtly influenced by scrum values, small community heads can inspire their members and accomplish the best outcomes via a culture system exclusive to the Agile Tribe.

For instance, many heads of small communities lack confidence when they take office. They worry about the shortage of members and being snowed under on activities. As the scrum master, I assist them in recruiting members. As the number of members reaches 100, the heads may find it less difficult and stressful to recruit cadres. Then I help them in presenting the first expert speech. With this success and a win, they gain confidence and can organize activities in the future by themselves.

Some heads ask me for tips on running small communities. Instead of answering them outright, I ask them two questions: “What effect do you want to achieve through your activity?” and “What activity do you plan to hold if you want to achieve your desired effect?” Considering the two questions provides the answers and helps the community head formulate their operating plans. They may make mistakes or fail when running the communities. I neither criticize nor blame them but constantly guide them to find a way for improvement and higher efficiency.

Inspiration and celebration are also important. To inspire teams, I put posters used to publicize activities online. This practice motivates event organizers and acknowledges them for contributing to their communities, while also showing other teams how fun it is to organize an event. Thanks to this effective method, TAT has been thriving, accomplishing brilliant achievements last year, including 12 speeches delivered within the big community, 127 activities held within small communities, and 139 high-quality activities that were free for members.

Tracking performance is also important for the team to develop their processes. I make a Pareto chart to record the number of activities held by each community annually. The heads who hold more activities feel honored, while those who hold fewer events may ask me to give them one-on-one training or look for other resources. As the heads of sub-communities share the same running philosophy with me, all the communities have become self-organized, with the agile system exclusive to TAT coming into being.

Taking TAT into the Future

Through experts’ knowledge and experience-sharing, TAT has disseminated profound agile concepts to help members improve themselves and improve work for their teams. Because of its reach, TAT has been able to have positive influences on society by connecting agile professionals across Taiwan as a platform linking them and their worldwide counterparts. 

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