I just completed a trip to our Medellin office where I met our Solutions Managers, our on-site agile coach, and several of the agile teams that make this a great place to work. Here’s just a taste of what I learned last week.

The Location

The teams in Medellin are all located in our new facility. It’s a great building in a changing part of the city. What used to be residences are being converted into businesses. It’s quiet for now which allows the team a nice transition between “work” and “not work”. Each floor of the building has several small meetings rooms – I’d call them “breakout rooms” – named after local native tribes. They’re equipped with a TV and, in some cases, a webcam. All of our teams use these for ceremonies and client meetings. There’s also a large training room downstairs that we used for one team exercise (see below).

The Agile Teams

The layout of the office is similar to a lab, with rows of desks. Usually, this kind of layout can inhibit close collaboration, but the teams are very good about moving around the room to talk and work together. There was quite a lot of partnering going – more than I expected if I’m honest – and the teams were good about bridging the distance. I may yet recommend allowing the teams a little more flexibility in structuring their team space, but that could be challenging with the space we have.

The on-site coach, Adrian, and I ran an exercise with one of the teams (the Modified Penny Game – shown above). FYI – Next week’s post will be the instructions so you can run the exercise with your teams. It was fun and there was a lot of laughing and definitely a lot of learning. I think they got what I wanted them to get out of it. So I’m relying on Adrian to make sure the lessons stick.

Our Solutions Managers

Our Solutions Managers are the glue that connects our teams to our clients. The two women in our office with this role are amazing and very talented. It was great to meet them and know that I’m going to be working with them for a long time. They exhibit such an obvious commitment to the team and the client and a strong desire to make sure we’re doing the right thing for both. Both are committed to their own agile learning and working to get their teams the understanding they need. Our teams are doing well in this respect – thanks, in no small part, to our Solutions Managers.

Wrapping Up

I loved visiting this beautiful city. The city itself was fabulous, although I only got to see a very small part of it. When I return, I will definitely be spending more time there in the off-hours exploring. And, it has a rich history and amazing, friendly people.

Muchas gracias, Medellin! Y feliz entrenamiento, mis amigos! (Many thanks, Medellin, and happy coaching, my friends!)

Bill.