Professional Agile Coaches and Training Experts

Agile Coaching beyond the Method

Agile is not a standard recipe, but a philosophy. It’s a mindset in which change isn’t the goal, but the starting point to business value. The agile journey is walked to create more efficient processes.

Agile practitioners use methods and frameworks such as Lean, Scrum, DevOps, Continuous Delivery, and the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe). As an Agile Coach, you need to be aware of all these different framework and know-how and when to use them

Focus on Business Value

Critical to being a great Agile coach is the ability to drive, change and progress in areas that can deliver the most value to business agility. Coaching and aligning teams and business and ensuring that impact is noticeable and measurable is the hallmark of a great Agile coach.

The 12 Principles of Agile methodology

  1. Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software.
  2. Welcome changing requirements, even late in development. Agile processes harness change for the customer’s competitive advantage.
  3. Deliver working software frequently, from a couple of weeks to a couple of months, with a preference to the shorter timescale.
  4. Business people and developers must work together daily throughout the project.
  5. Build projects around motivated individuals. Give them the environment and support they need, and trust them to get the job done.
  6. The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is face-to-face conversation.
  7. Working software is the primary measure of progress.
  8. Agile processes promote sustainable development. The sponsors, developers, and users should be able to maintain a constant pace indefinitely.
  9. Continuous attention to technical excellence and good design enhances agility.
  10. Simplicity – the art of maximizing the amount of work not done–is essential.
  11. The best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organizing teams.
  12. At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts its behaviour accordingly.

Agile Coaches as a Trusted Advisor

As a coach you need to be open to new techniques, tools, and insights – versatility is key.

Dealing with different stakeholders from teams to executives and helping this diverse group gain more insight into their performance themselves and take responsibility for it is a special skillset.

This will only work if you are able to gain the trust of teams. To do this, you need a good capacity for sympathy and empathy.

FAQs About Agile Coaching

The fundamental difference between Agile coaches and Scrum masters is their scope of influence in an organisation and over the teams.

Both have different roles which lead to the development of the growth of the team and organisation.

There are six qualities that make for effective agile coaching:
  1. Coaching
    2. Coaching involves empowering team members to unlock their potential, and to maximise their own performance by asking the right questions. It’s based on 5 principles:
    • ·Everything is alright with people. There are no wrong people for agile.
    • Each individual has the initial power to achieve a goal.
    • All actions are carried out with positive intentions.
    • People change all the time and this process is inevitable.
    • People choose the best options from the opportunities available to them.
  2.  Agile Methodology Awareness
    3. Agile is a detailed methodology, not a simple recipe. It is a way of thinking in which change is not the goal, but the beginning. In agile, frameworks such as Lean, Scrum, DevOps, Kanban, the Continuous Delivery, and the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) methods and frameworks. In the agile role you have to know each and when to use all these diverse frameworks.
  3. Open-minded Agile coaching
    4. Agile coaching will make your professional versatility challenging. The agile practice is very recent and is still being created. You must also constantly be open to new strategies, resources, and ideas as a coach. This is because agile transformation is ongoing and varied.
  4. Servant Leadership
    5. There is no set agile role or leadership position, but they work best from the top-up. They do not say what happened or did not, but let teams and companies gain an insight into and responsibility for their own performance.

    It works only if you can gain the trust of the people. You ought to be compassionate and empathetic.
  5. Conflict Resolution
    6. Self-managing teams can do what they think suits them in an agile environment. This also ensures that they can overcome conflicts and differences of opinion within the team. The problem is not to be handled by a boss.

    Conflicts at work in themselves are not a catastrophe as long as they are not out of control. Because team members are usually aiming at the same goals, conflicts usually aren’t as counter-productive as they could be. As key drivers in organisational problem-solving, Agile coaches play a significant role in defining and allowing transparent or underlying issues to be addressed. It helps others to question how they feel or present their point of view.
  6.  Patience and stamina
    7. It is usually an arduous process to develop an agile mindset. Not everyone will think the new way of working is good, especially instantly. It will take some time for people to just to agile adoption. A professional coaching role requires you to concentrate on the bigger picture and aspects which will work as you look ahead.

Depending on the needs of the company, the role of an agile coach may be temporary or continuous. Large-scale companies with a number of agile teams may want to have an agile coach at work to help track processes in the long term. For most companies, especially small- and medium-sized organisations, an agile coach on a contract basis is more helpful. When everyone has adapted to an agile mindset and the coach departs.

Agile coaches not only assemble an agile team, but they also assist the company with implementing agile as an essential organizational change. A good coach must foster the support from workers and key stakeholders to execute the agile methods successfully

Since there are several agile frameworks, in order for an agile coach to be a true expert in most of them, they will need agile training for separate certifications. You need to decide which of the frameworks would help you the most in whichever organisation you’re in and then get that certification. From there, you can get parallel certifications that expand your agile knowledge.

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