A day in the life of Ian D — Agile Coach
Our ‘A day in the life of’ posts give you an insight into what a typical day looks like for our ASOSers in Tech (hint: there isn’t one) and how they started their careers. Hopefully, you take something inspirational away from it.
This one’s about Ian D who’s an Agile Coach.
My alarm clock goes off…
At about 6am. I get up and ready to take one of our dogs, Max, for a nice long walk.
I’m responsible for…
I’m part of the Technology Capability & Competency Team, working alongside my fellow Agile Coaches. We partner with many teams and individuals across Tech, from engineering teams, Platform Leads, Lead Engineers to the Head of Software Engineering. Our goal is to promote an Agile mindset and encourage people to collaborate to solve the challenges they are faced with.
I got the job…
I used to be a Software Engineer (not a very good one though!) before becoming a Team Leader. When I heard about the Scrum Master role, it seemed like the perfect fit — working with engineers but also helping bring people together to operate more effectively. My first experience of being a Scrum Master was in 2012 and I haven’t looked back! I’ve worked in a number of different sectors — Government departments, large supermarkets, airlines to name a few. When I saw the ASOS Agile Coach role advertised at the end of 2019, I knew it was something I wanted to be a part of.
My typical day looks like…
Most days start with a coffee whilst checking emails and my calendar. The great thing about this role is that no days are the same, usually I’ll attend some team stand ups — typically I’ll be working with them for the early part of the day. From there, I join our team remote sync — we all check-in for the day and see where we can help one another or share any important details. I frequently work with groups of teams within ASOS around metrics to help them seek improvement, I’ll often find myself in Azure Devops, JIRA or some other data source looking for trends with people from the teams.
I also end up designing or facilitating a lot of workshops which means I spend a fair amount of time in tools, such as Mural, creating the canvases to use in these sessions. Working remotely has forced us to think about different methods of collaboration — keeping people engaged in a virtual setting has certainly been a learning curve.
My evenings have me…
I have two young children and three dogs, so most evenings are usually consumed with keeping them all entertained! I coach my son’s football team so can be found either at training, planning training or arranging a game.
I also like to play Xbox of an evening, so if it isn’t Fortnite with my son, I’ll probably be playing FIFA Ultimate Team.
My most memorable moment at ASOS
As a team of Agile Coaches, we’ve helped build and deliver an accredited Lean training course for members of our Supply Chain function. To do this, we’ve collaborated with numerous people across the whole of ASOS. Here is a picture of the entire team celebrating the accreditation with the now customary double thumbs up cheesy grin.
The best part of my job…
I love the variety, but the best part is working with people. Whether that be individuals or teams, I really enjoy helping them solve challenges and improve things. I’m a pessimist by nature (just ask any of my teammates!) but when it comes to people and what they can achieve, I’m a huge optimist.
One new thing I have learnt in the last year…
Other than just how hard it is to be a primary school teacher, I finally gained my Personal Coaching Accreditation last Summer in lockdown, which I’m really proud of. My coaching journey begun in May 2019 and has involved completing a set of modules and 50 practice hours. It’s absolutely helped me in my role at ASOS — enabling people and teams to achieve their potential.
Hi I’m Ian, I’m an Agile Coach at ASOS. In my spare time I’m either pretending Arsenal are still invincible, watching cricket or quoting lines from The Office.
ASOS is on the lookout for awesome Agile Coaches to join our team — find out more here.
