Your Agile Coaching Journey
In October 2018 I wrote about my own journey to becoming an ICAgile Certified Expert in Agile Coaching (ICE-AC). Since publishing that article I’ve had a lot of people ask me for more details on the actual process of becoming an ICE-AC. This article is intended to be a “how to” guide to going through the ICE-AC process. I’ll look at each step in the process and provide some guidance based on my own and other people’s experience going through the process.
Background — what is ICE-AC about?
Achieving the ICE-AC designation requires proving knowledge, experience and competency in the discipline of Agile Coaching. The bar for the certification is high and achieving it requires proving to a group of industry experts that the applicant not only understand what’s needed, and that they can actually apply the competencies in real-world situations.
ICE-AC is a prestigious certification that is hard to achieve. A high proportion of people who approach the assessment fail on their first attempt. This was certainly my own experience, and the feedback from the panel as to where I fell short was very clear and explicit about what I needed to do to fill in the gaps.
Don’t start unless you already have this
Applicants need to have at least two years experience working as a coach, having worked with multiple teams and with different approaches. We recommend a minimum of two years deliberate practice across the competencies of agile coaching before applying to sit the assessment. Someone who has been a scrum master working with a single team would not have the requisite breadth of experience.
The competencies of agile coaching are well described in the ACI Coaching Framework:
Agile-Lean Practitioner
An agile coach is often in the “first agilist” role providing guidance on the values, principles and practices of the agile approach in use at their organisation. They need to have a deep understanding of the “why” of agile development, and why & how the practices in different approaches support the agile mindset. They need to be able to lead by example and show the teams under their guidance what it means to be agile in their way of thinking and working. They need to be able to discuss the rationale behind their suggestions and not be wedded to any “one true way”.
Teaching
An agile coach will often be called upon to teach people new skills, and they must be able to do so effectively. This teaching could be formal or informal, in a classroom with a large group or in a conversation with a single individual.
Mentoring
A mentor provides their mentees with the benefits of their own skills and experience while holding the position that the mentee owns their choices about what they take from the conversation. As a mentor the coach provides examples and suggestions based on their own experience, being honest and open about the limits of their own knowledge.
Facilitating
An agile coach will often be called upon to facilitate various agile ceremonies and events for their teams. Facilitation is the art of enabling others to be effective in a group setting, working together towards a common goal and intended outcome. As facilitator the agile coach is showing how to hold a neutral stance and support the participants in defining and achieving their common outcomes.
Professional Coaching
The International Coach Federation defines coaching as partnering with clients in a thought-provoking and creative process that inspires them to maximize their personal and professional potential. Coaches honor the client as the expert in his or her life and work and believe every client is creative, resourceful and whole. The agile coach needs to be able to work with individuals and teams to enable them to find their own solutions to the challenges they face, rather than spoon-feeding them with answers.
Technical, Business, Transformation Mastery
The agile coach needs depth in at least one of these areas — they must be able to demonstrate deep knowledge and real mastery in a domain and have a working knowledge of the other two.
- They could be experienced technical practitioners able to guide others in their adoption of technical practices
- They might have experience and be knowledgeable in the areas of product management
- They could be experienced in change management and organisational design
It’s unlikely that one person will have deep skills in all three areas, although two of these competencies will be fairly common
Agile Coaching is not…
There are many misconceptions about agile coaching. Here are some things that are not part of the role of the coach:
Being a consultant; telling people what to do. An agile coach will at times need to teach people new skills and guide them in using those skills. They do not simply tell people what to do, nor do they do the task for them. When you do something for someone else you take away their power to do the task and learn new things.
The boss of scrum masters. An agile coach is a servant leader, guiding others on their journey to become better in their roles through advising, being the example and challenging dysfunctions.
The process police. The organisation may have chosen frameworks and the coach needs to be familiar with the frameworks in use with a deep understanding of the context in which those frameworks were designed. The coach does not police the teams’ adherence to the rules, rather they support them in experimentation and facilitate learning.
Getting ready
The ICE-AC assessment is a multi-step process — first you have to prove knowledge of the domain. This is achieved through gaining all three certifications on the path towards Expert — the ICP, ICP-ATF and ICP-ACC certifications. Knowledge does not make a coach, but knowledge is an important starting point for building the competencies of coaching.
After gaining the foundational knowledge, the aspirant expert needs to practice the craft, ideally under the guidance of a more experienced coach and mentor.
Keeping a record of your experience is important — you need to be able to prepare a CV that shows the coaching engagements you have undertaken and the types of work you have done across multiple teams.
Having built the coaching muscles through practice, the aspirant expert submits their application to be assessed. The application needs to include evidence of experience (a CV), references who will vouch for that experience and evidence of competency in two of the fundamental skills areas — Facilitating and Teaching.
The application
When you feel you have the requisite knowledge and experience you can start the application. The first step is to review the latest requirements for the certification and fill in the application form. This is done via the ICAgile website.
With the application you need to send a CV which highlights your coaching experience — this needs to be quite detailed and discuss the nature of the teams you worked with, the agile approach(es) they were using, the role you undertook with the team and which of the coaching competencies were exercised in the engagement with the teams.
Finding a mentor
ICE-AC holders are required to give back to the community in order to maintain their ICE-AC status. There is no renewal fee for the certification, but you are expected to support others on their journey — the mentoring program is a part of this.
Once your application is received you will be paired with a mentor to guide you through the process of preparing for the gate review and submitting your video evidence.
ICAgile keeps a list of available mentors and works to pair people up so their time zones are convenient and their interests coincide. There is nothing preventing a candidate from finding their own mentor, provided that person already has the ICE-AC and is prepared to be a mentor.
The role of the mentor is to help the candidate prepare for the in-person assessment. The mentor and candidate will sign a mentoring alliance which defines the scope of the relationship, agreed goals, meeting cadence, monitoring progress, etc. and will be lodged with ICAgile. Generally the mentoring agreement will span 6–9 months or until the mentor feels the candidate is fully prepared for the ICE-AC expert panel assessment (whichever is sooner.) ICAgile will provide the latest ICE-AC evaluation rubric and other templates and tools to help mentors and candidates on their journey.
Once the mentoring alliance is lodged with ICAgile and the deposit paid the candidate is considered to be on the ICE-AC journey.
Practice, practice, practice
During the mentorship period the mentor and candidate will meet (in person or virtually) on a regular basis. The mentor is expected to show the competencies in action and observe the candidate as they apply the competencies.
One of the most common areas where candidates fall short of the required standard is in the application of a professional coaching stance. Professional coaching requires neutrality, and the ability to use powerful questions to allow the coachee to uncover the solution to their own challenges. This stance is hard, especially for people who are used to giving advice and providing answers for others.
Another area where candidates often struggle is the mentoring stance — mentoring is not giving advice and telling the mentee what to do, rather it is offering the mentors own experience and knowledge and allowing the mentee free choice about what they take from the interaction.
It is strongly advised that the mentor and candidate practice professional coaching and mentoring very early in the engagement so they can identify areas where more practice is needed.
Those videos
Two of the competencies of agile coaching are teaching and facilitation. To prove competency in these two areas the candidate is required to submit video evidence of them facilitating an agile practice with a group of people and of them teaching a group of people a new agile practice.
For the facilitation video the candidate must also submit the facilitation guide for the session — the goals of the session, the structure, which tools and techniques to be used, calls to action, concluding and follow-up activities. Likewise for the teaching video the lesson plan needs to be submitted.
For both videos the candidate needs to include a document showing the timelines when key activities happened, where specific techniques or tools were used and examples of the competencies in action. This timeline is very important for the panel assessment as the candidate must point out which sections of the video will be shown in the live assessment session.
Submission of evidence
In order to reserve an evaluation panel assessment date, candidates must submit the following to ICAgile after reviewing it with their ICE mentor:
- Contact information (Full Name and Contact Email) for three references from teams the candidate has coached (the candidate is responsible for obtaining consent from the references to submit the information to ICAgile.)
- Video of candidate facilitating an agile practice along with a facilitation guide and any other supporting materials
- Video of candidate teaching agile concepts along with a lesson plan and any other supporting materials
- Nomination from their mentor, in writing, saying they feel the candidate is ready for the panel (email is sufficient)
- Balance of payment
After reviewing and accepting the above, ICAgile and the candidate’s mentor will work to schedule the evaluation panel assessment.
The panel
The panel is made up of three ICE-AC holders who have been trained in assessment. One of the panelists will be a track founder, someone who contributed to defining the learning outcomes and competencies in the ICE-AC assessment rubric.
The experience
The goal of the panel assessment is for the candidate to demonstrate to the committee that they have the necessary Agile Coaching competencies. The committee does not want to hear the candidate talk about what they would do as a coach, they want to see the candidate in action.
The actual assessment session is divided into 4 parts. The first part will be a review of the recorded material, the second part will be a live coaching session, the third will be a live mentoring session, and the last part will be an open Q&A session. As this is an intensive process, the applicant should make sure to be in a quiet space with no distractions.
1. VIDEO/AUDIO MATERIAL
The committee will ask the applicant to show around 10 minutes of each recording facilitation and teaching). They will ask the candidate to jump to certain time markers and will ask specific questions about what they observe.
The candidate should recommend to the committee certain scenes from the recording to the help illustrate his/her teaching and facilitation skills.
2. LIVE DEMONSTRATION OF PROFESSIONAL COACHING
The applicant will be asked to conduct a 10-minute coaching session with one of the review committee members.
This will be a one-on-one coaching session.
The review committee member will select a topic of their choice. The candidate will not know the topic ahead of time.
The applicant is expected to engage in a coaching conversation using professional coaching skills (such as powerful questions, holding the coachee’s agenda, etc.) to generate insights and further action.
3. LIVE DEMONSTRATION OF AGILE MENTORING
The applicant will also be asked to conduct a 10-minute mentoring session with a review committee member.
The mentoring session could be about an agile practice, process improvement goal, team dynamic issue, collaboration between the business and development, etc. The candidate will not know the topic ahead of time.
The candidate will be expected to help the mentee by asking questions and providing multiple approaches to help the mentee resolve the issue being discussed.
4. Q& A
This is an open question and answer session with the committee. They will have access to the references’ responses and will ask questions about these and any other types of evidence they need to see prior to panel deliberation.
EVALUATION AND FOLLOW-UP
After completing the Q&A session, the session facilitator will ask the candidate to drop off of the videoconference while the panel deliberates. The facilitator will then contact the candidate to rejoin approximately 20–30 minutes later.
At that time, the panel will provide direct feedback in alignment with the evaluation rubric. If the candidate passes, ICAgile will talk to him/her about official steps to award the certification. In the event that the candidate falls short in certain areas, the panel will provide specific feedback on what needs to be done for the candidate to pass. In this case, ICAgile will also provide feedback to the mentor so that the mentor and candidate can work together on next steps.
Feedback and learning
ICE-AC is big step in a coaching journey. Going through the assessment is a rigorous process and the panel recognises the commitment candidates make and they are very deliberate about the feedback given to candidates. Pass or fail you will get valuable feedback and advice on where you need to build your competencies and enhance your skills.
