How to get the most out of your Agile Coach
Agile Coaching, when done right, can be one of the biggest boosts for the effectiveness and success of your teams, the organisation and the customers. Whether you’re in the process of recruiting an Agile Coach to your organisation or you already have an in-house Coaching discipline already, it’s worth considering what you can do to get the most out of this unique role. Having worked with many teams at various stages in their Agile journey, here are some of the patterns I’ve seen which go some way towards helping the Agile Coach help you.
1. Lay the groundwork
The most difficult introduction to a team for an Agile Coach is rocking up to a stand-up unannounced, and having to hastily introduce themselves to the team there. In cases such as this, the Coach has to work harder than necessary to overcome any initial scepticism and gain the trust of the team.
A far more productive set-up is for the teams and wider organisation to be informed prior the Coach’s arrival and, if possible, for each team to consider which areas it would want help in. This establishes a mutually beneficial relationship at the start: the Coach who is there to help, and the team which is prepared to be helped.
2. Provide an access-all-areas pass to your coach
You may notice that the suggestion above recommends that the wider organisation is informed about the Coach. There’s a good reason for this: even if the Agile Coach may never work with every corner of the business, there’s a high likelihood that when the Coach starts to help teams in tackling their problem areas, they will invariably examine the relationship the team has with its stakeholders. When those stakeholders end up being Marketing, Finance, Sales, Customer Service and any other non-tech function, the Coach needs to be able to work with them in the same way they might any team. And this only works if those functions are also aware of the Agile Coaching available to them and prepare accordingly.
3. Be open to being coached
When you boil the work a Coach does down to its most basic, it’s to hold a mirror up to the team, and to ask them if they’re happy with what they see. Where necessary, a Coach will do this with individuals too. The kicker here is that it’s often those who believe they don’t need any coaching who are most in the need of it. The initial surprise of this can cause individuals to become closed and defensive; after all, the Coach is pointing out occurrences where their behaviour is causing more harm than good. Even if this reaction is understandable, it’s not very helpful to anyone. Instead, if you’re working with a Coach, and they start offering you individual feedback and coaching, you should see it as a positive: you’re someone who the Coach believes has the influence and skill to improve things for the whole team and organisation.
4. Make the time for your teams
Anyone who has tried to learn a new skill will know that simply paying for a course isn’t enough: you have to make the time and put the hours in. The same is true of Agile Coaching. Help your teams free up their calendars and lighten their workloads; they’ll need time to learn, explore and try out new ways of working. Rather than seeing this as a situation where the teams do less valuable work, see this instead as a scenario where teams only do valuable. You’ll help them cut away the fluff which only slows them down, giving them the necessary space to make the most of their coaching.
5. Give feedback and guidance to the coach
A coach doesn’t necessarily work off a backlog or a roadmap like many others in the organisation might, instead casting their net wide to find areas which need their focus the most.
But that doesn’t mean you can’t influence their attention to those areas you believe to be problematic. Perhaps there’s a team which doesn’t seem to be delivering, or a product area which never seems to solve customer problems. Although you could wait and see if the Coach discovers this themselves, it’s far more beneficial to alert the Coach to this and discuss possible solutions to the predicament. A good Coach will probe a little to understand why you feel this area needs special attention, but assuming you’re in agreement, it gives the Coach early momentum in helping the team and organisation to be better.
When implemented well, Agile Coaching can transform teams and organisations to work better, happier and deliver valuable products to customers with more regularity. With the above steps, you can give your teams and the coach the best possible start in what should be a very fruitful collaboration.
