Let’s Face It — Coaching Remote Teams Sucks

For most agile teams, that means that some or all of the members are working remotely. Coaching remote teams sucks. It is efficient but not effective.

Summary: The pandemic has caused a permanent shift in ways of working. For most agile teams, that means that some or all of the members are working remotely. As a coach, I feel that coaching remote teams sucks. It is efficient but not effective.

What do I mean by coaching remote teams?

Let’s start with some agreement on what I mean by coaching remote teams. By “coaching” I mean the work that an agile coach does to support a team to leverage agile and Scrum and self-organize.

Scrum Masters also coach as part of their role so this also applies to them even though they do more than just coach.

And when I say remote teams, I mean teams that are partly or completely distributed. Remote team members are not sitting and working together.

Prior to the pandemic, surveys showed that 75% of teams had at least some members who were distributed. During the pandemic, that number shifted to nearly 100% remote. Recently things have shifted slightly though most teams are still remote.