Agile Coach: A beacon for success| Agile Story 28
As you may know from my previous blogs ( Agile & teenagers, Yoga & Being Agile), I love to relate my personal experiences with Agile methodology. I recently did a trek to Hemkund sahib. It was my first Himalayan trek. I am fortunate to live in a town surrounded by the Sahyadri hills and not a complete novice at trekking. But the Sahyadri hills are dwarfs as compared to the mighty Himalayas. I had lot of apprehension about the trek and rightly so. It is a steep climb of almost 7,200 ft in just six km starting at an elevation of 8,000 ft to reach 15,200 ft [to put things in perspective height of Everest is around 29,000 ft]. I was not sure whether I would be able to reach to the top or not.
I could draw parallels between the trek experience and agile. So, the product vision was to reach the top of Hemkund sahib.
- Agile coach — A good trek guide is the one who has already traversed the trek path multiple times. He knows its shortcuts and pitfalls. Most importantly he knows you, your stamina, your current mental & physical fitness. He not only advises you on the path to be taken but also encourages and supports you to help you reach the top. He is there to buck you up whenever you feel like I cannot go any further.
Similarly, an agile coach has a lot of agile implementation experience. He knows the level of agile maturity of your current team. He can provide customized advice on your agile implementation. He will be there to handhold you throughout the process.
2. Agile Maturity Assessment — As my trek guide said, “The way to the top is through continuous baby steps.” You must pace yourself for the whole climb and not get tired in the initial phase itself. We cannot implement the whole agile methodology in one night for a team with very low agile maturity. We need to take baby steps in the agile implementation as well. If we take huge strides during the climb, then we are bound to get tired quickly and more likely to give up eventually. If we try to implement all the agile principles at once it is bound to fail, making team think that agile is not suitable for us, but the fault was in the implementation plan and not in the team or agile methodology.
3. Roadmap — Fellow agile practitioners, coaches & leaders pave the way for other practitioners to follow for an agile implementation. Pilgrims, other travelers & guides to Hemkund have paved the way to the top of Hemkund sahib. We have a clear roadmap to the top with clearly defined milestones.
A clear paved path is a big advantage at Hemkund sahib, which may not be available for other treks. You know what distance you need to traverse and what is the elevation gain. This helps you determine the complexity of the climb. Similarly, it helps the team if the product owner with the help of agile coach can layout the roadmap for the product. It helps the team in understanding the complexity of the implementation.
4. Velocity — Some people will complete the climb in 3 hours while others will take 4 or 5 hours. It does not matter as long as you reach the top. Eventually if you do many such treks your time will also reduce. Initially the team’s velocity will be low but as they mature their velocity is bound to increase.
5. Continuous improvement — When the initial climb seemed very arduous and overwhelming for me, I drew unexpected inspiration from the song from the movie “Aakhein”
रुकने का नही, थकने का नही, लाईफ में चलते रेहने का !
If you do not stop and continue at a steady pace, then your body warms up and the climb gets less daunting and more enjoyable. As your agile team gets in the groove of agile implementation their quality, velocity and morale improves. Of course, as colleagues boost us in professional life, the encouragement from fellow travelers also inspires us to continue the climb.
The key take-away for me from this experience was, if you have an experienced guide as mentioned in the first point all other points will automatically fall into place and your journey to the top will be smoother. Similarly, if you have an experienced agile coach then he will ensure all other points are followed appropriately and your agile implementation succeeds. This is just the start, hoping to conquer many more summits in personal life and do many more agile implementations in professional life.
Disclaimer: The views expressed in the article are my own and don’t reflect company’s opinion. They should not be considered as an advice or suggestion in any way.
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