I've always maintained what I thought was an appropriate distance between my consulting work and the APLN Houston chapter. The chapter is about building a local community of agile enthusiasts and practitioners, not about promoting me as a an agile consultant. As a result, other than being available to fill in for a last minute speaker cancellation, I have never planned to present at a APLN Houston chapter meeting.
Recently however, the APLN Houston leadership team has been working on doing a joint meeting with the local WITI chapter. In talking with the WITI folks about what topics would be of interest, the APLNH team decided that one of my presentations would fit the bill and slotted me in as the speaker for the event.
When they approached me about this, I immediately said no; fearing it was too self-promotional. The ensuing discussion with the team was respectful of my wishes, but eventually ended up with them telling me in so many words "to get over it". That is about the time it started to dawn on me that being a part of a self-organizing, self-managing team means trusting the decisions of the team. I have an obligation to influence the decisions I don't agree with, as does every other member of the team. No team member however, has the purview to simply change the decision of the team.
So the end result is that I will happily serve as the speaker for the joint APLN Houston/WITI Houston meeting in August, thankful of the reminder from my colleagues that agile principles don't come easily and don't persist without constant nurturing from all of us attempting to evolve with them.
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