Emily Webber
Agile Coach & Consultant, author of “Building Successful Communities of Practice”
Emily has been working with Agile teams for many years, she has a breath of experience of delivery and agile transformation in both the private and public sectors.
Most recently, she was the Head of Agile Delivery at Government Digital Service (GDS), where she built, developed and led an amazing team of ~40 Agile delivery professionals, she created the model for what professional learning communities look like through her work with the Agile Delivery community, was the Agile champion across GDS and across wider government. At GDS, she was also been the Programme Delivery manager for Cabinet Office Technology transformation during the initiation, ensuring that the project was user needs focused and Agile.
She is always seeking opportunities to give back to the Agile community and co-founded Agile on the Bench; a meet-up in London and a one day Agile conference and is often found speaking at Agile and Lean conferences and meet-ups.
She has a passion for vintage scooters and taking photos of London Shop Fronts.
Books
Building Successful Communities of Practice
Recent Articles
Emily Webber – My blog about Agile, lean and other things
Communities of Practice: The Missing Piece of Your Agile Organisation
Recent Interviews
Agile Profile: Emily Webber – Agile Government Leadership
Communities of Practice – Cucumber Podcast
Projects
The Diversity Charter: Diversity makes events better
YOW! 2016 Sydney
Communities of Practice: The Missing Piece of your Agile Organisation
TALK – VIEW SLIDES
Connecting with other people, finding a sense of belonging and the need for support are natural human desires. Employees who don’t feel supported at work don’t stay around for long — or if they do, they quickly become unmotivated and unhappy. At a time when organizational structures are flattening and workforces are increasingly fluid, supporting and connecting people is more important than ever. This is where organizational communities of practice come in.
Modern organizations with cross functional teams, have the ability to silo organizations into teams, programmes and functions. They can take people further away from other people that they can learn with. We need a way to bring people with the same concerns back together and this is what communities of practice do.
Communities of practice have many valuable benefits for both individuals and organizations. They include accelerating professional development; breaking down organizational silos; enabling knowledge sharing and management; building better practice; helping to hire and retain staff; and making people happier.
In this session, Emily will pull from experiences of building and growing communities of practice at the Government Digital Service, other government departments and organizations as well as case studies from her ongoing research into this area. You will gain an understanding of why community of practice are so important in modern organizations and practical advice to those who are thinking about setting one up or looking to reinvigorate one that already exists.
KEYWORDS
Continuous Delivery, DevOps, Software Engineering, Quality
