Dr. Agile Coach

Mark Ridgaway
Nov 5 · 3 min read

How is an agile coach like your doctor?

Photo by Hush Naidoo on Unsplash

I’ve only been in the exam room a few minutes when my doctor walks in, asks how I’m doing, and starts tidying the room. Doctors don’t usually do the tidying so I’m sure I looked puzzled. Noticing this she says “I don’t mind doing this because at least I’m accomplishing something.” Not something you usually hear from a doctor.

She explains. Apparently, some people don’t really need to go to the doctor but do because it’s fashionable. And some who really need to go don’t follow the doctor’s advice. So, she isn’t always sure she accomplishes much.

As an agile coach, I instantly connected with that!

Sometimes I’m not sure I accomplished anything with the software teams I coach. Did the things I say get through? Or worse, did I force my need for accomplishments onto the team? The whole “You can’t inflict help” and “Do no harm” thing. Just like a doctor, agile coaches can’t force anyone to do anything.

How do I know I made a difference? How do I measure my effectiveness?

I can survey a team immediately after working with them. But the goal isn’t a well received presentation or coaching plan. The goal is a team that applies the agile practices they learned.

I recently heard a different approach. Stop measuring what you do while you’re working with a team. Instead, measure what happens after you leave the team. Teams may follow your advice while you are with them. But what happens after you leave, or the pressure of the next deadline hits? Do they continue to use what you taught, or does muscle memory take them back to their old ways?

How can I improving my teaching, mentoring, and coaching to keep teams moving forward, instead of going backward?

My coaching team decided to use two questions to measure our effectiveness. The first is “Have you continued to use the agility practices you learned [while working with the coaches]?” (We tailor that last part to the specific engagement.) The possible answers are yes, no, and perhaps not applicable. This keeps it simple.

We pair this with the question “How likely is it that you would recommend the services of the agile coaches to others?” The answer is numerical with a range from zero to ten — “Not likely at all” to “Extremely likely”. We use the scores to generate a Net Promoter Score. You can Google it for the details, but it’s the percentage of our customers who recommend us to others minus those who don’t, while ignoring those that are neutral.

We ask these questions one month after an engagement so teams have time to apply what they learned and time to formulate thoughts on the coaching. All team members answer individually. We can ask the questions again later, possibly at 3 months and 6 months, to see if the responses change over time.

Answers to both questions will help us understand the effectiveness of our coaching. Although there can be many reasons why they answer “No” to the first question, we can follow up with the team if needed. We also ask for additional comments, which help us inspect and adapt, and we can use them to promote our coaching team.

So far the number of responses is good. And people are giving useful feedback on their ability to practice what they learn. That’s the intent of the questions — to get valuable feedback to help the coaches, and our teams, improve our agility.

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