Agile Transformation Series - Agile Coaching and Coaches - Part 1

Agile Coaching and Coaches

In these series of articles, let's take a deeper dive at essentials of agile coaching and how should an agile coach be, to be successful as a coach and make teams successful as well in their agile journey

1. Relationship and Trust Building

This is one of the foundation thing, a coach should do with the team(s). Without doing this, a lot of success in their transformation cannot be expected. So, how should a coach go about doing this? There are few ways. 

- Conducting educational sessions on Agile topics. It could be on Agile values and principles, could be a walk through of Scrum Guide (many teams that I work with, hardly have taken a look at it !), Kanban basics, Various roles and responsibilities in both Scrum and Kanban, and many more (including scaled agile frameworks like SAFe and LeSS) based on the interests of the teams as well. What this would do is, it would start the conversation between the coach and the team(s). Conversations are very essential in the transformation journey, it brings out clarity, understanding, gap(s), helps set the vision for the team(s), it helps them realise where they are in their journey (from knowledge level to understanding of what transformation means), individually and as a team.

- Conducting training specifically focusing on improving effectiveness of various roles - Scrum Master, Product Owner, Dev Team. If the team(s) are going through scaled agile transformation, there might be more roles to clarify, more elements depending on the framework (SAFe or LeSS)

- Being part of their ceremonies/events. This is a great place, to make a huge difference. Just by observing what they are doing and how they doing, in these ceremonies, brings out lots of insights. Areas that they are doing really well, some areas that could potentially be improved as a practice.

- While many coaches are good at conducting sessions or workshops to bring clarity about certain topics (certainly these sessions or workshops add value), but what's even more important is to, hand-hold the teams in converting the understanding of concepts to some real life scenarios. For e.g. it is nice to conduct a workshop on how to write an user story, but would be great to help them, write the user story for their specific scenario/situation/business case and make them see the value in why we are doing it certain way and how to do it.

2. SME & Knowledge

Often times, a coach is expected to be SME. Of course, that's true and a good expectation. Very important element of being able to coach the team(s) well is to have depth in knowledge and bringing a lot of practical/on the ground experience. 

- A coach is not expected to be there providing solutions to all the problems that the team(s) are coming across. I would even say, it must be a balanced approach where, suggestions on solution(s) should be based on team(s) maturity. If the team(s) are too early in their agile journey, leading them to few suggestive solutions or approaches will definitely help, but if the team(s) are mature, it would help to probe them asking more questions, to arrive at solutions for their issues/challenges. Coach's key job is to uncover issues that the team(s) are having when they cannot see the issues by themselves. As much as every other role matures in their journey, a coach also matures by doing that role and at times, many miss this essential that, coach is there to help and he/she also needs help at times in that mutural working relationship. 

- Coaches can continue to develop their knowledge and approaches in their coaching, by doing several things. The thing to remember is, all practitioners are lifelong learners !!

- Listening to Podcast(s) on various subject areas. CastBox is a good example, which is a podcast mobile application, has great number of channels for various roles including agile coaches, Scrum Master, Product Owner and many more.

- By attending conferences, where profound SMEs are sharing their learning which can be leveraged. In my experience, at times, we get at least, good lead(s) on some ideas to pursue. Sometimes I attend two full day conferences, but effectively, only two to three hour session(s) would have really helped based on topics coverage and presenter's ability in conveying the messages.

- By going to Agile related meet-up(s) and building network with SMEs

- By constantly reading (plenty of books and internet materials are available out there)

- Sometimes, by going through certification courses also, help improve one's knowledge level

- By talking to individuals who are experienced coaches, to get great perspectives.

Have more sub-topics to cover on this huge topic. Please watch out for more sharing in this space and kindly share your thoughts and additional ways of doing agile coaching roles more effective, so we can serve organization(s)/team(s)/businesses/customers better.