Why do we need this post and conversation in the first place?

With the traction of Agile many frameworks have spun off as a result. Scrum gained the biggest momentum in the early days and continues to maintain it today.

Scrum was also the framework that introduced a specific role of interest within the Agile team — The Scrum Master.

I won’t be getting into the deep end of what the Scrum Master is. There are many great articles about it. For example, the Scrum Guide is one source you could check.

However, I believe the role of the Scrum Master is one that often is confused with the Agile Coach due to its complementary and partially overlapping nature.

Also, many misconceptions about it spurred from attempted transformation towards Agile and Scrum such as relabelling one company’s Project Managers into Scrum Masters. Such actions have led to further confusion around the Agile Coach role.

If we look simply at the trends of Google search (Fig.1) it’s clear that interest in the role has been increasing. Having only been taken aback by the ongoing pandemic. We can see that the big hike in interest starts in mid-2016.

That said, the role of Agile Coach, despite being around much earlier than this, has only recently entered the mainstream space.

However, unlike for the Scrum Master role with the Scrum Guide, there is no well-established body of knowledge or framework that has presented a clear cut definition of Agile Coach. Naturally, this has led to a very real and inevitable lack of understanding.

Coming back to the point …

What I believe the Agile Coach isn’t and shouldn’t be

Despite sharing similar qualities, knowledge and to some degree goals, the Agile Coach is not a Scrum Master of one or more teams.

The Agile Coach is also not a role that should create long term dependency on itself and has no room for those who feel the need of being needed.

So yes, despite pointing out the obvious they’re also not Project Managers nor Program Managers. So don’t think about rebranding those roles as such.

Agile Coaches shouldn’t spend their time coordinating work for teams, nor be an inner part of the decision-making process.

Despite being skilled and vested in facilitation, their time shouldn’t be consumed solely by filling gaps in skills for managers in the short term. I’ve used facilitation as an example but the same goes for all skills and knowledge the Agile Coach should possess.

Then what is the goal of the Agile Coach?

It might sound controversial but let’s get straight to the point. The goal and mission of the Agile Coach is to become unneeded and move on to wherever they are needed.

Think about it. If the coachee(s) no longer needs their Agile Coach, what does that mean? It means they’ve reached the state in which can be successful on their own. Mission accomplished.

The struggles along the way

I’ve come to realise that there are a few cornerstone struggles to overcome as an effective Agile Coach. One being self-aware at all times. This means constantly having to dissect your thoughts into:

• Observations
• Assumptions
• Hypothesis
• Opinions

Having this self-awareness is extremely vital as at its core you would be striving to navigate and stimulate people to improve in that front in order to support the needed mindset.

Being Agile in your approach

At the same time, as an Agile Coach, I’ve noticed that a common struggle for me and fellow colleagues is to be fluent in the switching of ‘stances.’

You see, we might classify three ‘stances’ that the Agile Coach must be able to quickly switch between.

The first, and at the highest level, is being a Coach in the classical sense of the term. Which means:

• Not providing solutions, nor direct advice
• Challenging the thinking of the coachee(s)
• Asking questions steering towards higher levels of self-awareness or a source for solution
• Motivate to take action

The second and mid-layer stance is that of a Consultant. Here we might see:

• Sharing possible solutions
• Expanding horizon with similar cases and stories
• Sharing observations and hypotheses
• Talking about best practices

The third stance, and with the coachee(s) consent and according to their self-perceived needs, is to be a teacher. This would mean that you will:

• Identify gaps in fundamental knowledge about Agile, framework, Technical Agility practices, Team Agility practices and etc.
• Teach and transfer the knowledge that the coachee needs and lacks

Often I’ve caught myself being stuck in a certain stance and wondering why I’m not getting where I need to with the group or concrete person.

It’s important to note that there isn’t a universal right or wrong stance’ but rather you need to recognise which situation calls for what. And do it fast.

For example, you might really want to take the Coach ‘stance’ with a team or even with leadership figures. However, if they lack the knowledge or experience you might end up not progressing much and more importantly — frustrating them.

Indeed, as Agile Coaches, this is the stance in which we want to end up with all coachee(s). We might even always start from there. However, being aware of the situation and your conscious choice of ‘stance’ is vital for you to do the switch when called for.

Starting from the end

I’ve already unveiled the curtain on the mission for the Agile Coach role but at the same time maybe what came afterwards might have sounded a tad controversial with the Teacher and Consultant stances.

As the Agile Coach, you’ll surely want all of the above for your coachee(s), but it’s their ‘end in mind’ that you have to start with.

This has been a great ‘face palm’ moment of realisation for me. But another struggle that is often missed by myself and fellow colleagues is the Contract.

The spoken and intentional agreement between you and the team or people you are coaching.

For this agreement, you would definitely have to take the Coach stance and help your coachee(s) verbalise what they want and need you for.

It’s also important to spend time uncovering what they want you to avoid and not do or help them with.

And here the journey for you and your coachee(s) begins. You start off with respect and maybe even trust, but most importantly agreement — all things that you need to carefully maintain throughout your relationship.

And yes, in case you’re wondering, you would first respect the Contract and then strive for your mission.

In conclusion

All and all, this is nowhere near an exhaustive list or description of the role, nor can I relate it to a concrete body of knowledge, article or findings of somebody in the field. Which I’m pretty sure that somebody already has done a superb job in describing. If you have found it, please, share it with me. I always enjoy learning.

Before I close out this post I would like to also share that I’ve been searching hard to find in my vicinity a place where I can see all of the above being known and practised. I’m really glad that I managed to find SumUp.

There are far too many companies, at least such with offices in my country, that have simply created this role with little to none understanding of what it should be. Something that you should steer away from as soon as you ‘smell’ it. It will do you so much more bad than good, especially if you end up with the perception that a certain misconception of a role is the right take on it.

Now, even that can be made into a win for you if you truly also exhibit the ‘growth mindset’. As an Agile Coach you should be always striving to influence change and progress. That holds true for your role and yourself as well.

This is it from me and my humble take on the topic.

Stay tuned for this space as I have great colleagues who are eager to share their thoughts, knowledge and experiences on a variety of topics in this domain and space.

The post A personal take on being an Agile Coach in 2021 appeared first on Lachezar Milev | Agilist & Organisational Coach.

My answer to this simple question is an equally simple answer:

An agile coach is someone who coaches agile

My opinion is thus. We (in the “agile community”) often over elevate and complicate the agile coach role.

For me, much like a football coach coaches football, an agile coach coaches agile. A team, or organisation, wants to derive benefit from “agile approaches”, or get better at doing so, and as such want to bring in a coach who knows how to help them in this pursuit. An agile coach. They want, and expect, that the person is able to bring with them a focus on using agile philosophies to achieve improved outcomes in terms of software delivery and teams.

It is good to know what you are hiring, and what the coach is “selling” in terms of the nature of the approach and expertise they’ll bring to the table.

Much of the controversy with this stance is that “agile” is not a goal, but a means to an end. So, the argument continues, we shouldn’t be coaching “agile”, rather we should be understanding what the person/people/organisation wants to achieve, and work with them to achieve it.

I agree wholeheartedly with this, and have even written/spoken a lot about the folly of having “agile” as a goal, whether it’s “being agile”, “doing agile” or “working in an agile way”. It’s always important to identify the actual outcomes we’re aiming for and work towards them — “agile” is way too broad in scope and interpretation for that purpose.

However, I think it’s ok to say an agile coach “coaches agile”. Once a football coach is embedded in a club, they are no longer thought of or referred to as a “football coach”, just a coach. They are not teaching the players how to play football, they are trying to get the best out of the players and the best results for the club.

The same ought to go for an agile coach. They are a coach whose leaning, skills and experience are around agile principles and techniques. This does not make them a one-trick pony. On the contrary, “agile” encompasses almost every aspect of software/product development, from a process, practice and human interaction standpoint.

Another thing to point out here is that I would not expect that each and every agile coach knows every aspect of agile and related philosophies, and has worked for years in “agile environments”. Why do we expect an individual agile coach to embody so much? I would expect each and every agile coach to be different, just as I would expect each and every developer, business analyst, tester, product owner — or any other role you care to mention — to bring their own unique blend of experiences, number of years of experience, theoretical knowledge, practical skills, and other human qualities and attributes to the table.

Football clubs know this. They don’t hire one coach. They have goalkeeping coaches, striking coaches, defensive coaches and more. Teams of coaches. Some young and relatively inexperienced, with no trophies to their name, and some older who have won silverware in different leagues and countries. Each coach specialising in different areas of the game of football. In the software arena, agile coaches might specialise in technical practices, organisational change, team performance, facilitation, and more. Why should we expect every single coach to be able to do all of those things?

When I was younger and living in Dublin, I became the coach for a local ladies 5-a-side football (soccer) team. I had never coached a team of any kind in my life, let alone a ladies football team. This did not stop my role from being “coach”, or the players calling me, or referring to me as, “coach”. I figured out what I needed to do, and what was expected of me, as I went along. I was a million miles from being the finished article, and the reality is there is no such thing. Anyone who thinks they are the finished article, or even believes it’s possible to be that, in almost any discipline, is likely to become increasingly less effective.

I think we often (wrongly) elevate coach roles in software development to be the exclusive domain of folks who’ve been there and done that over at least 10 years in the industry. Instead, in my view, we ought to be looking at what the coach’s role is — what it is there to achieve — rather than put the individual on a pedestal, with unrealistic expectations, as someone who is going to create benevolent disruption and magic. We should all be working and growing together, regardless of our role or speciality, and supporting each other in that.

So, for me, an agile coach coaches agile. That’s it, and that’s OK. We just need to understand why we want someone in that role, and make sure others who will be working with that person also understand the what and why of the role. We need to be able to articulate to ourselves, and the coach, what we’d like them to achieve in the short and long term, and support them in doing so. As we do with every other role in the organisation.

The post What is an Agile Coach? appeared first on Lachezar Milev | Agilist & Organisational Coach.

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Story

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Conclusion

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The post What is the Progressive Web App (PWA) and how it works? appeared first on Lachezar Milev | Agilist & Organisational Coach.

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Story

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Conclusion

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