Who is an Agile Coach?
Though, there is no universal definition of what is an Agile Coach. I want to define it as someone who has developed deep expertise to help people, teams, and organisations enable better customer outcomes by focusing on an organisation’s internal and external orientation.
The first Agile Coaching Competency framework was developed by Lyssa Adkins and Michael Spaydback in 2011. The model has been adopted and adapted as the application of Agile has grown over the years. I have taken this model as a reference to help illustrate the focus areas of an Agile coach when it comes to Coaching.
My definition of Agile Coaching
Agile Coaching is helping people, teams and organisations to do a job better or improve a skill by embracing the Manifesto and principles of agile.
Focus areas of an Agile Coach:
In my experience, There are three core ways to serve your client that they could only accomplish with help. Three unique ways an Agile Coach can help their clients are:
Source: tryScrum.com
Agile Competence Framework- Credits: Agile Coaching Institute. Further expansion Source: tryScrum.com
1. Team Coaching
Many teams get so used focus on the execution, which they’ve always done, that they don’t realise they have a shared purpose. As a team Coach, you are responsible for helping teams align around a shared purpose and establish healthy team relationships to make decisions collectively by shifting their perspectives from coworkers to the community.
Team Coaching Competencies
Promote Self-Management
Maintain authentic distance
Facilitate Collaboration
Cultivate Systemic Awareness
Exhibit Ethical Behaviors
Promote Software Craftsmanship
Team Coaching Tools
Psychological Safety
2. Business Coaching
This is tricky for most agile coaches. Here the focus is to coach and seed a Product thinking mindset.
“More businesses die from indigestion than starvation.”
David Packard
As a business coach, you help people believe that doing less is more. You are responsible for helping teams and organisations discover the benefits of customer-centricity, design thinking and discovery. To have a holistic approach to Coaching, we suggest business coaches develop proficiency in the following areas:
Business Coaching Capabilities
Promote Customer Centricity
Replace output with outcomes
Facilitate Continuous learning through empiricism
Integrate learning and action
Empathise customers
Cultivate Innovation
Business Coaching Tools
Feature Fake
Customer Journey Map
Lean Analytics
3. Leadership Coaching
Many leaders get so used to doing things the way they’ve always done them that they don’t realise they have blind spots. As an Agile leadership Coach, it is your responsibility to bring your outside, objective perspective to help leaders see what they could never know for themselves.
Before transitioning your career as an Agile coach, ask yourself the following questions. These are not assessment questions; these are designed to give you an overview and get your mind thinking about why you want to become an Agile coach. Read More>>
About Author
Venkatesh Rajamani has more than 17 years of experience delivering working software in short, feedback-driven cycles. He has helped many organisations adopt agile software delivery practices, including large banking, payments, telecom, and product organisations. He started his career as a Software Engineer and spent almost eight years as a hard-core Programmer. He has worked for or with large software delivery organisations, including HP, IBM, Logica, Paypal, Ericsson, RBS and HID. He founded tryScrum.com in 2018 to execute his mission of Humanising Organisations. Venkatesh is fluent in 4 languages. He is based in Chennai, India and sets the overall direction for tryScrum. He is the world’s first to hold PKT, CAL-Educator, PST, CEC & CTC together. He loves reading books, travelling and public speaking.
To read more blogs from me visit www.tryscrum.com/blogs
