What Is Agile Coaching?
When organisations begin an agile transformation, they tend to focus on the “how” first. Investigate some processes, select one, try it out. Oftentimes that process is Scrum although many would say Scrum isn’t a process. When those transformations run into problems – as they inevitably do – the organisation faces a crossroads. Do we continue with our process but get help? Or do we go back to what we’ve been doing? If they pick the former and get help, they’ll often bring in an agile coach. But what does – or should – that agile coaching entail?
What Makes a Good Coach
The best coaches are going to have a blend of experience and skill. I know some amazing team coaches who don’t know the first thing about how to coach enterprises. And enterprise coaches who can’t figure out metrics. When an organisation is looking at getting help from an agile coach, the question they have to ask is – what do we want or expect from agile coaching?An agile coach is someone versed in the agile manifesto, agile methodologies, and coaching. There are different kinds of coaches. Some agile coaches focus on process and methodology. These coaches can help with your metrics, your issue tracking/story databases, and your workflow. Other coaches focus on teams. They can work with a team to identify core issues, provide guidance to the team about how they might tackle those issues, and then hold the team accountable for making changes. And there are coaches that work at the management or executive level. They can help your managers understand how agile changes the entire organisation, not just the handle on the crank of the machinery. Good enterprise coaches are few and far between because of the work focus and because it’s difficult. It’s actually all difficult work – agile coaching is not easy. And not everyone can be – or should be – an agile coach.
What to Expect From Agile Coaching
But a new Scrum Master really can’t provide coaching that can be effective (unless they have a good background in traditional coaching). It will take that “newly certified Scrum Master” quite some time and training to get to the point where they can provide some worthwhile agile coaching. If you decide that your new Scrum Masters needs some help with their teams, you should bring in a coach. But what should you expect from that person?
Starting Agile Coaching
A good agile team coach has experience and knowledge of how agile teams work. They should have experience in more than a single methodology. While having a Scrum expert can be handy, the old proverb of “just having a hammer” applies in that case. Your coach needs broad experience. The first thing they’ll do is an agile assessment. It could be a formal or informal assessment, but the coach will observe the team and not just at ceremonies.
A team that says all the right things at a meeting may be fine. If they then go back to their desks, put on their headphones, and check out, they’re not a team. They’re just a bunch of people working on the same thing. A coach needs to understand where a team is on their agile journey. Did they just start? Are they pretty advanced? Knowing where we are is key to knowing where we need to go and how to get there.
How Agile Coaching Works
From a process perspective, it’s important to understand that coaches are focused on observing the team and then communicating back to the team what’s working and not working. The important piece is that they leave it to the team to figure out how to solve the team’s problems. They can help the team identify what possible solutions exist but leave it to the team to try to solve them on their own. This can be uncomfortable for people who think they have the “right answer” for a team’s problems, but it’s important that the team be allowed to experiment and fail. What worked for one team may not work for another. So we can’t really push a “right answer” onto a team.