From Lunch Conversations to Company-Wide Change—The Power of Creating Communities of Practice | Salum Abdul-Rahman

Summary

Podcast Summary

Episode Overview

Podcast: Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast: Agile storytelling from the trenches
Episode Title: From Lunch Conversations to Company-Wide Change—The Power of Creating Communities of Practice | Salum Abdul-Rahman
Host: Vasco Duarte
Guest: Salum Abdul-Rahman
Date: August 27, 2025

In this “Leading Change” episode, Vasco Duarte and guest Salum Abdul-Rahman explore how a simple desire for meaningful conversation about Agile sparked a thriving community of practice within a tech consultancy. The conversation traces Salum’s journey from informal lunch meetups to scaling company-wide change, offering practical tips for Agile coaches and Scrum Masters aiming to cultivate a culture of learning and peer-driven improvement.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Origin—Addressing a Personal Need (02:12-04:30)

• Context: As a software developer with emerging Scrum Master responsibilities, Salum craved peer discussion and support around Agile—something largely missing in his consultancy, where most teams worked semi-autonomously (“Scrumish”).
• Action: Unable to frequently attend local Agile meetups, he issued an open invitation on Slack: join a lunch to talk about Agile leadership.
• Result: Salum: “People showed up and we had a really nice discussion about how we understand Agile and what people were doing in different projects.” (03:30)
• These initial discussions revealed diverse practices (Scrum, Kanban, hybrids) and common questions, sparking momentum for a recurring event.

2. Evolving the Community—From Lunches to a Leadership Guild (04:30-06:29)

• Consistency: Regular monthly invites fostered recognition and routine.
• Growth: As relationships deepened, the format evolved:
  • Prepared topic introductions.
  • Guest speakers from within the company.
  • Bringing in a co-facilitator for planning and expansion.
• Escalation: Eventually, the “Agile Leadership Guild” was hosting company-wide info sessions.
  Salum: “It escalated to the point where we were actually having info sessions that people would prepare...present for the whole company.” (05:44)
• Succession: When Salum stepped back after a few years, others stepped up, ensuring continuity—even if eventually the Guild faded (notably impacted by COVID).
• Key Insight: Accessibility and a clear entry point—the lunches were physically near the office, practical for busy consultants—were crucial.

3. Lessons for Change Agents—What Made it Work? (06:29-08:56)

• Organic Growth: The community grew from authentic shared need, not top-down agenda.
• Making Needs Explicit: Early sessions surfaced what participants wanted from Agile and peer learning.
• Consistency through Lulls: Salum notes he stuck with organizing even when turnout dwindled:
  • Salum: “There were these sessions where there were only like three people—me and two others showed up. And then we discussed about, like, how to make this more inviting or more practical.” (08:00)
• Promotion & “Good” Marketing: Success depended on ongoing communication:
  • Salum: “You really need to sell what you’re doing to people. It’s not about telling people what to do. You need to convince them that this is a good idea and it’s marketing.” (08:30)

4. Reflections—Why Don’t We Do This for Other Changes? (06:29-07:57)

• Vasco: Expresses that more change processes should tap into this model—finding the spark of genuine collective interest, creating accessible spaces, and allowing change to be driven from within.

  • Vasco: “One of our goals is to help the group...to kind of take over the work...This story for me highlights that this is really practical and possible with a specific approach.” (06:48)

• Lunch as Social Glue:

  • Vasco: “Of course, it doesn’t hurt if it’s a lunch, right?...if you’re doing a work lunch, why not get together with some people and talk about the problems you are facing already? Absolutely. It’s a win win, as they say.” (09:20)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On “Scratching Your Own Itch”:
  • Salum: “There was this thing about scratching my own itch and this led...to creating a new vehicle for development of Agile understanding and peer sparring within the company.” (05:18)
• On Consistency through Low Attendance:
  • Salum: “After the initial enthusiasm, participation started dripping, I still kept up with the consistent creating the space.” (08:00)
• On Informal Community vs. Formal Change:
  • Vasco: “What’s a little bit sad...is that we don’t take this approach in other change processes.” (07:34)
• On “Good” Internal Marketing:
  • Salum: “It’s not about telling people what to do. You need to convince them that this is a good idea and it’s marketing.” (08:30)

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Segment Timestamps

• Beginning & context: 01:11–02:12
• Initiating peer-led learning (Lunches): 02:12–04:30
• Transition to Agile Leadership Guild: 04:30–06:29
• Vasco’s reflection on self-sustaining change: 06:29–07:57
• Detailed lessons on consistency, marketing, and attendance: 07:57–09:14
• Wrap-up and gratitude: 09:14–09:44

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Key Takeaways

• Communities of Practice can emerge from small, informal beginnings.
• Sustained change is driven by shared need, authentic peer connection, and consistent opportunity—not by mandates.
• Change agents benefit from persistence, adaptive communication, and making involvement easy and enticing.
• Giving up the “leader’s mantle” allows ownership and longevity within the group.
• Lunch (or any routine social space) is a pragmatic tool for drawing people together around a shared cause.

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This episode offers a practical narrative and actionable insights for Agile advocates seeking to seed change—one lunch and one conversation at a time.

Transcript

[A]

Hey there, Agile adventurer, just a quick question. What if for the price of a fancy coffee or half a pizza, you could unlock over 700 hours of the best agile content on the planet? That's audio, video, E courses, books, presentations, all that you can think of. But you can also join live calls with world class practitioners and hang out in a flame war free and AI slop clean slack with the sharpest minds in the game. Oh, and yes, you get direct access to me, Vasko, your Scrum Master Toolbox podcast. No, this is not a drill. It's this Scrum Master Toolbox membership. And it's your unfair advantage in the agile world. So if you want to know more, go check out scrummastertoolbox.org membership. That's scrummastertoolbox.org Membership. And check out all the goodies we have for you. Do it now. But if you're not doing it now, let's listen to the podcast.

[B]

Hello everybody. Welcome to our Wednesday the Leading Change episode. This week with Saloom Abdul Rahman. Hey Saloom, welcome back.

[C]

Hey, good to be here again.

[B]

Absolutely. It's a pleasure to have you again. And we're diving into the murky waters of change, as they say. So we want to hear a story of a change process that you were involved with and give us a little bit of context so that we know, you know, what is this about, what kind of organization and so on, and then walk us through the steps. How did that change process unfold? And as you go through those steps, highlight for us the tools, the tips, the tricks and the techniques you learned back then that you still apply today.

[C]

I actually wrote a blog post about this back in the day, but see what I can remember without.

[B]

But we can put the link to that also on the show notes. So after we record, give me the link and I'll add it to the show notes.

[C]

Well, anyways, when I was still working as a software developer at Google Fore and I ended up taking up these Scrum Mastery sort of tasks and I did my Scrum Master certification with and I started understanding that this like I had read about Agile development at university but like I, I got the idea of what it actually might be. So we were working as a, I was working at the consultancy and people were working in different projects and we didn't really have a lot of designated Scrum Masters in projects. We sometimes had like a designated project manager, but we were doing Scrum Scrumish things mostly. So I felt that I needed people to discuss this topic with. So there were There was the Agile coaching circle going in Helsinki by Agile Finland and I could rarely participate in those, but sometimes I did. But like I felt that we needed, I needed something more concrete. So I just sent out an invite like on the company Slack that hey, I want to go talk about Agile leadership and I'm going to organize a lunch at this restaurant on this Thursday. Join me. And then people showed up and we just, and I, I, and we had a really nice discussion about like how we understand Agile and what people were doing in different projects. Some people were doing something more kanbanish and some people were doing Scrum and, and then we started, I just started sending this invite out every month and like after a couple of sessions people were like, okay, so now we sort of know each other and we sort of know what we want, like what motivates us. And then I started preparing sort of introductions into topics and then I started sometimes inviting somebody from the company to talk about a topic they, what they had. So I just, there was this thing about scratching my own itch and this led, I think led to after a couple of years I said that like okay, this is like, this is in like after a year I was like, okay, maybe I need to bring somebody in. And then I got a co facilitator to help me organize and talk and plan what we could be talking about. And then I think after a couple of years I said that this is like I'm no longer going to be doing this. And then somebody else took the mantle. So I think this Agile Leadership Guild died during COVID but it escalated to the point where we were actually having info sessions that people would prepare like some topic that will present for the whole company and stuff like that. So I think like the really important part of that was like creating a new vehicle for development of agile understanding and peer sparring within the company and making it very, very easily accessible for people. I think we used to have like the office Thursdays at that point. So the lounge was near the office. So even if people were working at the client, it would sort of easy for them to participate if this was something that they felt they needed.

[B]

This is an uplifting story, right? Like we start with the need, we invite some people, some people show up. Maybe not many at first, it doesn't matter, but things kind of start taking a dynamic of its own and at some point we leave and the thing continues, right? Like it has a life of its own. And this is an important realization as well because it's also something that I'm sure we're going to talk about tomorrow on Thursday, when I talk about success for Scrum Masters, which is that one of our goals is to help the group, mostly the teams, obviously, to kind of take over the work, right? Like, so that nobody's telling them what to do. They know what to do and they work on it regularly. And like, this story for me highlights that this is really practical and possible with a specific approach. Right. Like, in this case, I'm thinking, like, the story as you told it to me sounds like, okay, there was a topic that was interesting, there was energy around that topic. Somebody triggered the getting together that you did. And after that you realized, hey, more people are interested. Hey, let's do this more often. And then that, as you said, escalated to having multiple sessions organized, even at some point for the whole company. And this for me, what is a little bit sad, I guess I could say, is that we don't take this approach in other change processes. Right.

[C]

I think the important things were that there was this shared need on this topic. And then we made it explicit in those first discussions. And I think personally, because I had a very strong need, even though after the initial enthusiasm, participation started dripping, I still kept up with the consistent creating the space. And there were these sessions where there were only like three people like me and two others showed up. And then we discussed about, like, how to make this more. More inviting or more practical. So that comes back to, I think, communication, like promotion. You need, really need to sell what you're doing to people. It's not about telling people what to do. You need to convince them that this is a good idea and it's marketing.

[B]

And marketing in a good sense, right? Like, it's just spreading the word because the right people will flock to that. Right? The people who really care, that are interested, that want to learn, they will flock to that. They will understand what the value is for them and participate.

[C]

So I think, like, the consistency and communication were key for.

[B]

And of course, it doesn't hurt if it's a lunch, right? Like, because people have to have lunch and it's always nice to, you know, if you're doing a work lunch, why not get together with some people and talk about the problems you are facing already? Absolutely. It's a win win, as they say. Thank you for sharing that story, Salim. It was a great story. Thank you.

[A]

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[B]

Slack.

[A]

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[B]

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[A]

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