“Our Agile Coaches and Scrum Masters don’t add any value.”
I recently talked to someone whose organization removed all their Agile Coaches and Scrum Masters. It seemed a drastic move, but in their opinion, they didn’t add any value. I don’t know any numbers, but I’ve recently heard similar stories.
It does raise the question:
How do you show your value as an Agile Coach or Scrum Master?
Compared to the work of a Project Manager, Product Manager, RTEs, and even Scrum Masters, the role of an Agile Coach quickly becomes vague and abstract.
How do you show that you improved collaboration, interaction, and team(s) dynamics? How do you clarify that the team(s) deliver more value? How do you explain that you tweaked the organizational system and removed bottlenecks and dependencies?
First of all, don’t use maturity models. Growth is not linear and doesn’t happen in discrete phases marked by convenient external characteristics. Reality is far messier than your maturity model. For more details, check the article “Here’s What’s Wrong With Maturity Models.”
Use “Evidence-Based Management”
EBM is an empirical approach — developed by Scrum.org — that helps organizations use experimentation and rapid feedback to progress toward strategic, intermediate, and immediate goals. Connect your work as an Agile Coach or Scrum Master to these goals. Organizations can develop, inspect, and adapt their measurements as they run experiments, continuously using data to gain information and evidence while always keeping sight of their goals.
Try Kanban metrics
Kanban is a strategy for optimizing the flow of value through a visual, pull-based system. Various ways may be used to define value, including consideration of the needs of the customer, the end-user, the organization, and the environment. Kanban comprises three practices working in tandem: defining and visualizing a workflow, actively managing items, and improving a workflow (definition from the Kanban Guide).
Commonly used metrics when using Kanban are:
😅 Work in Progress: the number of Product Backlog items started but not finished.
🚲 Cycle Time: when work begins on an item and when the item ships.
👴🏻 Work Item Age: the time between when a work item started and the current time. This applies only to items that are still in progress.
✅ Throughput: the number of work items finished per unit of time.
⏰ Lead time is when a stakeholder request enters the backlog and is fulfilled to that stakeholder through a release.
Measure progress with the Agile Team Effectiveness model
The Agile Team Effectiveness model — developed by Christiaan Verwijs and Prof. Dr. Daniel Russo — is part of Columinity, a product that helps teams improve based on scientific insights. You can diagnose one or many teams, receive extensive feedback, and resolve broader organizational issues.
An Agile Coach or Scrum Master can use Columinity to offer support, remove impediments and bottlenecks, and visualize whether teams are improving. This makes your contribution more tangible and helps you explain the value you deliver to the organization.
Closing
Showing the value you offer to the organization is more critical than ever. It’s not easy, though. The three recommendations I provide in this blog post might help. If you’re interested, dig deeper into Evidence-Based Management, Kanban, and the scientific research behind Columinity.
👉 What (other) recommendations do you have?
👉 How do you show your value as an Agile Coach or Scrum Master?