A conversation with the CIO community

Leadership quote by photosteve01 / CC BY 2.0

Last June I had the pleasure to get my interview published on Netweek, the biggest magazine for the Greek CIO Community (the Greek IT Managers are both readers and editors). 

I am thankful to George Fetokakis, Editor-In-Chief of Netweek to make it possible and for the interesting questions.

Since I realized that the interview was only published in Greek, I decided to post it here in English and share it with a bigger community.

Trust you will find value in it.

Looking forward to your feedback and comments.

1. How did you get started in the Agile world?

Interesting enough, I actually started my Agile journey in Greece. At the end of 2009 I got the chance to be part of kicking-off the Agile transformation in a big development organization of around 2000 people. So I got to spend 3 months in Patras, together with other 18 apprentice coaches from all over the world and 9 consultants among the most knowledgeable Agile coaches and trainers at that time. Every single day of those 3 months was an incredible learning experience and that still remains the most exciting and fun period in my professional career. Which better place to start a life-changing journey than the place which gave birth to the Western culture?

2. What does success mean for you in this world? 

In my opinion success in this context for a company or an organization means: effectively leveraging on Agile values and principles to achieve your specific goal sustainably in the fast changing world we are called to live right now.

For a development team success means delighting your customer with products that actually solve their problems. For me personally success means contributing to transforming our world of work in something more meaningful for human beings.

3. What are the top skills that an effective Agile coach should have?

The two coaching skills which helped me most in my 7-year experience as Agile coach are: empathy and situational awareness. Empathy is a crucial skill for coaches and leaders.

I learned that people want to feel themselves valued and appreciate when someone is truly listening and not judgmental. This doesn´t come easy: it is a skill to practice to be able to listen for potential, namely listening to people not for what they are, but for what they can become in the future and be committed to help them become the best they can be.

With situational awareness I mean the ability to be really present, observe carefully and understand what is going on around you: the ability of “reading the room” or “smelling the room” beyond what is said.

4. How Agile (and Scrum) has changed the way that the developers think and work?

Agile and Scrum are incredibly effective change engines: they trigger a paradigm shift in everything. Not only in how we develop products and services, but in how we lead, in the way we collaborate with each other, in the way we interact with customers, in how we consider ourselves as professionals. Embracing agility means embracing continuous change, which in turn simply means embracing reality. Someone said: life is what happens while we are making other plans. Believing that things will stay still just to please our plans is the ultimately insane wishful thinking.

5. Scrum is simple but not easy.  How difficult is to make a company Agile?

Being simple is definitely one of the strengths of Scrum but also one if its pitfalls: it is so simple that many managers fall into the trap of believing it can become a magic wand for the company´s problems. A famous quote from Ken Schwaber, co-inventor of Scrum, is: “Agile development will not solve any of your problems. It will just make them so painfully visible that ignoring them is harder”.

And that´s where the tough part starts! Scrum is not plug-and-play! It´s not just a SW methodology upgrade. It changes some of the basic assumptions about how products get developed! It´s like installing an iOS 9 app on an iOS 4: it won´t work! You need to upgrade the Operating System! Only courageous leaders, who are willing to make an impact, dare to start the journey to upgrade their company´s operating system.

6. What should companies do to achieve a successful transformation in the Agile world?

The first step is about asking “Why?” What is the problem we are trying to solve? There must be a clear need for any improvement change: imagine how crucial it is to start off such a dramatic change. So any successful Agile transformation implies a top-down approach, in terms of Company values, leadership culture, business goals and management support. However, there are aspects that need to emerge bottom-up, like practices to be selected by self-organized teams. It has to be a sandwich strategy! Given the importance of the top-down part in the enterprise change, one of the initial steps is to educate managers, for them to understand the why, be able to share and communicate the vision, embrace Agile values and be ready to support people with a new leadership style. Many times this critical step is down prioritized, if not even neglected.

Finally it is extremely important that teams are organized so that they can deliver value to customer as fast as possible, replacing functional teams organized around the system architecture. Effective teams are cross-functional and have all the competences needed to transform a backlog item in a product increment within one Sprint.

7. What words of advice would you give to people who are just getting started with Agile themselves?  

Every context is different: so simply copying from others will not work. Scrum is a good way to start, it is a great teacher: if you have never tried Agile development, Scrum can give you the framework to be able to start. At the same time, you need to know many things outside Scrum to make Scrum work effectively: having an experienced Agile coach to guide you through the first challenges can be a key differentiator between success and failure.

8. What are the biggest challenges that they have to confront, what are the biggest mistakes that they should avoid?

I have seen few recurrent failure patterns: Product Owners without authority, knowledge or time, superficial knowledge and lack of coaching on Agile practices and principles, complacency as opposite to a culture of continuous improvement. Well, avoiding these failure patterns is one of the biggest challenges to confront. One of the biggest mistakes is considering Agile as something to implement: Agile is rather something you are or can be. Agile is an adjective, not a noun.

9. What should people and teams do to make their workplaces and lives more productive with Agile and Lean?

There are few things that helped me become more productive and I have seen also helping individuals and teams I have coached:

• When you have a question to answer, spend time in understanding the question before jumping to the answer.
• Do not make assumptions: genuinely ask why. If you have to make assumptions, try to validate them as soon as possible.
• Challenge how things have always been done.
• Work on your strengths, more than your improvement areas.
• If you wish to succeed at anything, have a clear vision of what you want to achieve and consistently take baby steps in the right direction.

10. Where do you see things going to Agile in the future? What changes are coming?

I see contrasting things. From one side I see more and more “Agile” instances which have nothing to do with agility, where people and especially managers have lost or probably never got the original meaning of Agile manifesto: where, for instance, individuals and interactions are in service of processes and tools rather than the opposite. This can be also considered a normal evolution. When an innovation reaches the hype, it starts getting late majority or even laggards in the game: they probably accept Agile just to look fashionable or to please their boss. On the bright side I see a convergence of researches, theories, methods and practices coming from really different domains (Entrepreneurship, Neuroscience, Psychology, Finance, Management, Non-profits, even Military and Government) which are collectively creating a very visible red thread. And this red thread is all about coping effectively with fast change by using an empirical approach, embracing individuals as whole human beings not as resources to exploit, being mindful, decentralizing power, and creating meaningful relationships. That´s really exciting and resonates a lot with agility. On a broader scale, our generation is experiencing a growth in our consciousness as human race (let’s take for instance social responsibility) and that´s going to create benefits not only to our industry but to the entire world. 

The top 2 skills for being an effective Agile coach (or an effective leader)

Being an Agile coach is fun and extremely rewarding, but it is a tough job. 

Like a sports coach, you're supposed to help your team and your players perform at the best they can, without playing yourself. You have to influence with no formal authority, so you'd better have a very well equipped toolbox (skills, knowledge, techniques, and experience) if you desire to be effective.

I'm not here today to create a generic list of what those tools might look like. I just want to share the two coaching skills which helped me most in my 5-years experience as an Agile coach: 

1. Empathy 
2. Situational awareness

rosita by schaaflicht/CC BY 2.0

1. Empathy 

Empathy is a very important skill for coaches as well as for leaders, even though I think not many people realize this. 

No coach can be effective without getting trust from clients; likewise no leader can be effective without trust from people she is supposed to achieve success with. 

I learned that one of the most effective ways to build trust is to demonstrate that you truly care about people and you are committed to their growth. 

I learned that people want to feel they are valued. People appreciate when someone is really listening to them, puts herself in their shoes, is not judgmental and really tries to understand their viewpoint. 

Then of course you have to show that you can really help them and bring some value, but being “there for them”. when talking to peopl.e is a necessary step. Otherwise they perceive you just as a sort of knowledgeable professor. 

One of the most rewarding feedback I have ever received was from a Product Owner I was coaching: “It’s really impressive - he said once -  you look like you’re truly listening when we talk, not just hearing what I’m saying!”. 

Of course it is not always easy and it doesn’t come easy for me either. 

It is a skill to practice (and deliberately practice) to reach what David Rock calls listening for potential: it means listening to people not as for what they are now, but by thinking at what they can become in the future and be committed to help them become the best they can be.

Mount Everest by NASA/CC BY 2.0

2.  Situational awareness

With situational awareness I mean the ability to be really present, observe carefully and understand what is going on around you: basically the ability of “reading the room” or “smelling the room” beyond words. 

This skill always resulted to be very useful for me in many situations, especially when I meet a team for the first time or when I deliver training. 

You can understand for instance, who is with whom or against whom; who is more senior, or who the leader is; who embraces new ideas or who is skeptical. Of course I do not use it as my only source of information, but I learned to trust this sense, which I consider a mix of “gut feeling” and experience in observing human behaviors. 

I apply this skill continuously: for instance I use it to diagnose how a team is collaborating. I observe them during the day, at Daily Scrum and in other ceremonies and I try to understand what is “really” going on to understand what to do or not to do.


What are the skills which are most effective and helpful for you?

Change is optional: survival is not mandatory

As many of you can have guessed, the title I chose for this post is inspired by a quote from W.E. Deming.

When I got to know Deming for the first time, many of his lessons came as a revelation to me: they were kind of resonating with my personal thoughts and reflections, but still they cleared out many clouds.

One of those I prefer is: 

“…most troubles and most possibilities for improvement add up to proportions something like this: 94% belong to the system, 6% are attributable to special causes.” 

I think that this simple sentence can trigger several reflections about how to make things happen and especially how changes can have a chance to happen and possibly stick.

Below are mine, from my personal survival handbook J.

1. Look at the system

An organization, even a single team, is a complex network of people, who are complex beings. If you really want to leverage on all potentials to affect it, you must look at it as a whole system. 

Try to sketch the possible options you have ahead, possible impediments and way to overcome them to reach your goal: you might realize that you need to take many steps, in order to get any progress. 

Prefer actions who affect the environment around or the process to do things, instead of addressing directly a specific problem: they will have a more lasting impact. And, whatever level you want to affect, consider acting also one level up.

“It does not happen all at once. There is no instant pudding.”-W.E. Deming

2. Involve people

Try to understand your team or organization very well. Learn about the invisible networks, the inner relationships among people, who is friend of whom, who is most sensitive to certain subjects and who counts more or is more influential on certain subjects, whether he has a formal power or only a de-facto leadership. Talk to people, with a preference for informal chats (coffee machines are a perfect place sometimes).

“A desk is a dangerous place from which to view the world” – J. Le Carré

Create an alliance: find initiators to support you and involve them in creating a shared strategy for the change. 

Chase innovators eager to try new things out first and learn from people actually doing the work. 

Find also sponsors to support you in difficult situations and leaders who can help with crossing the chasm and reach out the majority.

“The greatest waste … is failure to use the abilities of people…to learn about their frustrations and about the contributions that they are eager to make”- W.E. Deming

Strive for ways how to collect as much feedback as possible, especially from skeptics, but do not spend time in convincing cynics and possible saboteurs.

3. Communicate properly

You cannot just plan your change at your PC, create a slide ware and then ask to deploy it to the whole organization.

How many times have you tried to do that way? How many times did it work?

“Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”- A. Einstein

Instead explain the “why” for the change; make people aware of what it might mean and relate the change to their daily problems.

Have people desire the change (what’s in it for me?), support them with the change, provide the necessary knowledge and give them time to learn. 

Offer role models, lead yourself by example and help people with mentoring and coaching on how to change.

“If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.” – A. de Saint-Exupery

4. Reward behaviors not outcomes

When you make a change or learn something new, usually your performances at the stuff affected by the change are getting a bit worse, especially at the beginning. So give room for experiments and possible failures, so that people are not afraid to try new things.

Celebrate short-term wins and success stories; make them visible and share the results with information radiators. 

Publicly reward those who are learning more or sharing more with others, so that the change can go viral. Express appreciation for the right behaviors so that the desire for change is continuously reinforced.

“The most important figures that one needs for management are unknown or unknowable” – W.E. Deming

5. Use an empirical step-wise approach

Before taking any step, try to guess which effect it will have in relation to your goal.

Make a hypothesis and try to validate it as quick as possible with minimum viable actions and fast feedback.

However changes in a complex environment are never a linear process you can plan upfront, set goals and KPIs, deploy it to the organization and track the progress. That’s why sometimes you must simply try things out. That is sometimes absolutely not bad, stated that you try to fail fast and reflect on what you learned to find a different path.

Of course using an empirical process control implies that you can observe your system to be able to inspect and adapt. Therefore enable full transparency; make relevant information visible as much as possible from everybody to everybody to be able to really understand what’s going on and act accordingly. Otherwise your change will degenerate into chaos.

“It is not enough to do your best; you must know what to do, and then do your best.” – W.E. Deming

How much time and effort are you spending really nurturing your system?

How much are you learning from people actually doing the work?

Are you really making changes happen or just increasing the entropy of your system into chaos?

And if don’t mind about change and how to make changes effectively, skip the whole article and just consider that: 

“It is not necessary to change. Survival is not mandatory.” – W.E. Deming

What I learned from being a Scout leader

Summer has definitely come! July is time of vacation, but for many of the 40 million Boy and Girl scouts in the world is also time for summer camp, the culminating and final event of the year.

Next Tuesday we’re also leaving for our summer camp: 10 days in the mountains, 200 km far from home. Thus for me as a Scout leader this is basically working time, busy with all needed preparation activities.

I have always found many similarities and common approaches between being an Agile coach and being a Scout leader: I learned a lot from both worlds, lived many resonating values and principles and re-used successfully experiences from working time in my volunteer cause and vice versa.

In particular you know that I’m interested in training and how people learn: I’ve been actually interested in that for more than 20 years, just because educating boy scouts is basically giving them the opportunity to learn and become the best they can be.

Our founder Sir Robert Baden Powell said there is always at least 5% good in any person, so a Scout chief’s goal is to pull that 5% out and make it bear fruit. BTW, “to educate” comes from the Latin “ex ducere”, which literally means “to lead out” what a person already potentially is.

Therefore I understood a lot about how kids and people in general learn out of scout educational model.

Basically it is an experiential model and one of the pillars is represented by the triplet Experience-Symbol-Concept.

1. Experience

The person is offered a meaningful experience, which is different depending on the context, not just for the sake of the experience, but to let her elaborate it by means of a symbolic language. It is generally a concrete experience lived at level of feelings or physical emotion.

2. Symbol

The symbol joins the experience with its meaning, i.e. the learning point. It is a concrete object or fact which is used for reminding the emotions lived during the experience and mediating its conceptualization.

3. Concept

By debriefing and recapping the experience, you get an understanding. And just because you live again the experience through the glasses of the symbol, you are able to make it kind of universal and conceptualize the learning.

Of course this is the path followed by the trainees. A trainer has to go the other way around: she must start from the concept, from the learning she wants her scouts to achieve, in order to build a suitable experience which can exactly lead to the concept she started from.

This method, supported by other concepts like self-development and co-education (basically a concept of collaboration in helping each other grow), proved to be very much effective over more than 100 years, especially in teaching and learning skills like self-organization, leadership, ability to plan, collaboration, imagination, improvisation, dealing with uncertainties and the unknown, which ended up in being so crucial in the 21^st century industry.

What’s your opinion about that? Feel free to comment.

If you want to know or discuss more about this subject contact me on Linkedin, Twitter or Google+.

Are you an Agile coach?

In the last 3 months, I met an incredibly high number of people, who call themselves Agile coaches: it looks like it is a fast growing family. For some reason when introducing each other, every time it is like a dejavu and it seems to me to hear the very same words: “My name is xxx, I am an Agile coach. And you?”

And this makes me smile every time, because it reminds me a tale from a friend of mine. 

When her sister was a child, they met a Great Dane: you know the huge dog, which size is more comparable to a horse than a dog?  

So her sister approached the dog and said: “My name is Carmen. I am a 6-years old girl. And you?

There’s a lot of misuderstanding about Agile coaching (as well as a lot of mystification around Agile, I hope I can write something about in the near future), but still in my view it is one of the most challenging and yet exciting jobs in the world, even if honestly or on purpose misled.

I will try to share what it is in my view.

Let’s start with the word “coaching”. It comes from the English word “coach” and gives the sense of taking a person from a point A to a point B. Myles Downey in Effective Coaching defines it as “The art of facilitating the performance, learning, and development of another”.

But an Agile coach (likewise as I said some weeks ago for an Agile manager) is not only a coach.

First of all in coaching it's the coachee to define the direction, like a “coach” doesn’t take the lead itself in defining where to go: it’s all about the coachee's agenda then.

On the other side, if you’re an Agile coach is not only about your coachee's agenda, it’s also about your agenda of teaching about Agile values, principles and practices, because you know by experience that they can improve their performances as individuals and teams by being and living Agile.

So an Agile coach is not just a coach (and even less just a facilitator), but he’s able to be a teacher and a mentor, when it is time help people who do not have enough tools to perform a certain task or solve a certain problem in the complex world of SW development or in the art of working as a performing team.

Then, while it is enough for a professional coach or a facilitator to master only coaching skills or facilitation tools, without necessarily knowing anything about their clients’ or team’s context, only first-hand experience and hands-on practice can give an Agile coach enough tools and credibility to give some direction when it is needed by the circumstances: you want your team to be off their comfort zone to be able to learn, but not too much to fall into chaos or panic.

And being a teacher is even a different job, where you need specific skills and practice different tools: that’s why you could have heard about “allied disciplines” as the tool set for an Agile coach.

But what should you exactly be able to teach, mentor and coach about? 

Let’s see what we can derive from the Agile manifesto.

1. Individuals and interactions over processes and tools

Encourage self-organization and collaboration: they are keys to success. Help them learn how to work effectively by means of experiment, fast feedback loops and safe failure. Help them see their conflicts and to choose what to do about them.

2. Working software over comprehensive documentation

Help people to get things done. Teach, mentor and coach on Agile technical practices, both individuals and teams. Stimulate a culture of SW craftsmanship in your company, based on mastery and apprenticeship, excellence and deliberate practice, ability to find solutions to always new problems.

3. Customer collaboration over contract negotiation

Teach and coach your company on Agile values and Lean principles, so that they can be more effective on the market. Have business and development like one team: teach them not to play the contract game inside the same company. Promote a culture of continuously creating learning, by means of close collaboration with the customer on the product.

4. Responding to change over following a plan

Train your team and organization to be able to keep as many options open as possible until the very last responsible moment and make informed decisions. Enable cross-functionality and e2e approaches to be more flexible to change. Coach your organization to always look at the big picture to focus on the most important stuff, validate hypoteses instead of blindly follow plans and change direction when needed.

And you should live yourself and role model the values and principles you would like your team or your coachee to learn: you cannot just be on stage.

For instance, challenge yourself the status quo and continuously improve: be soft with people and tough with processes, as Toyota teaches, starting with your own way of working.

So be the first to experiment, look for fast feedback loops on what you’re doing and reflect on the results. Continuously learn and practice new coaching and teaching techniques, be passionate and energize others. Be ready to share what you learned and contribute to local and global communities. 

Empower, be always there to protect your team and have the courage to stand for what you believe in.

You don’t work as an Agile coach: you ARE an Agile coach. Aren’t you?

A Lean manager is not a coach!

Or is not only a coach.

Or, even better, is not primarily a coach.

Many times I heard people saying that traditional management style do not apply in an Agile and Lean context and therefore it must be replaced by coaching as THE way to help people develop.

I think this is wrong or at least shows a narrow, easy and fluffy view of what a manager is supposed to do for an organization in the 21^st century who wants to run its operation inspired by Lean thinking.

But let’s have a look at the different Lean disciplines one by one and try to understand better what is the essential contribution needed from you as a manager.

1. Eliminate waste

First step to eliminate waste is to see the waste. So you should know (and know very well) the Value Stream of the product(s) you’re working with and continuously challenge the current practice to identify waste. 

But this is not enough: a Lean manager should help teams remove impediments they are not able to resolve by themselves and systemize solutions in the organizations to prevent the same impediment from coming back again (see more about this in my previous post 3 things we can learn from TPS)

2. Build quality in

This means for a manager working to build a culture of discipline and excellence, that is guide on principles and values instead of giving complex rules, teach people not to cut corners, challenge people to high performance and lead by example. And yes, that implies true leadership.

3. Amplify learning

Most managers face competition with other managers trying to meet locally optimized goals and maybe look good to the next level up. But this wastes a lot of organizational learning, which can be effectively used by pairing up with peers. So building and maintaining a network of peers is essential as well as continuously challenge own management style in the light of Agile and Lean principles (see also Cultural transformation through deliberate practice of behaviors). But amplifying learning also means:

·         concretely encouraging experiments, fast feedback loops and safe/fast failure

·         providing and being open to feedback

·         striving for a radical transparency (as Steve Denning calls it) as the unique way to control the complex system your organization represents

4. Defer commitment

Keep your options open up to the last responsible moment and be capable to live with uncertainty: there’s no other way around (have a look here). Furthermore early commitment could mean discard too early real options which might have provided more value, just not to afford the cost of deferring a decision.

5. Deliver as fast as possible

The fastest way of achieving a goal is to let a diverse team of skilled people self-organize to better judge how to solve the problem. And the best way to have them self-organize is to define what the goal is, make it compelling and clarify what constraint the environment around puts to the direction. Then if you want to help your team or organization to deliver as fast as possible, set a clear vision, explain clearly where to go and why, align all stakeholders around that vision and get fast feedback. Then set specific goals derived from the vision: in that sense you’re the PO of your organization, so write a backlog of stories aligned with what you think is the ultimate goal to reach. And finally give space to your teams to reflect on what they are doing to find ways how to go even faster.

If you're not a front line engineer, there's only one reason for you to exist: help your team move faster - Jan Bosch

6. Respect people

Who dare disagree with this? Actually this apparently generic statement hides a deeper meaning. It stands for: give people the environment and support they need to do a great job and trust they will do their best to accomplish their goal. So it’s not simply saying to a team: Now you’re empowered to do what you want, but putting them into the conditions to succeed. So it’s about staying close to the teams, Managing By Walking Around and Listening (MBWAL instead of MBSR – Managing By Status Report), energizing people around you, assisting on personal development. And yes: that might be teaching, mentoring and coaching as well.

7. Optimize the whole

Optimizing the whole means having an e2e view of your system, product or organization and consequently as a manager selecting the right metrics which can help you improve, measures only what adds value (less is more) and whatever you want to measure, measure it one level up.

Of course, being a Lean manager does not mean taking decisions your team would be able to take themselves, asking for reviews and reports or pushing activities on your people.

On the other hand coaching is all about the coachee agenda, but improving theValue Stream, build the organizational culture, set the direction or define proper metrics cannot be other than about your agenda as a manager.

So were you one of those who thought that managing an Agile and Lean organization meant just coaching?   

What’s your thinking now?

12 secrets of a successful Agile transformation – Part1

Last week I was discussing with my brother, who works as chemical engineer and is now preparing to pass his exam for a Lean Six Sigma Green Belt Certification.

He’s studying mainly about Lean production and I was explaining him how Agile has its roots in the Lean principles and disciplines and how essential is Lean thinking and Lean management approach to support an Agile SW development.

My brother is a clever guy: so he understood very well that embracing Lean means much more than the mere application of a number of practices. So is for Agile SW development.

He’s maybe a little too clever to ask me something like: “You say that you’re an experienced Agile and Lean coach: so what do you think it is needed for an organization to really leverage on Agile and Lean to deliver quality products in an effective way? What do you think are the key ingredients to have a successful enterprise transformation?”

Cheeky enough, isn’t it?

But somehow he forced me to step back, reflect, gather my thoughts and summarize my experience and learning from the last 3 years.

Here comes then a list of 12 tips as outcome of that exercise, which I intend to share with you in a series of posts. I will start with the first three today:

1. Why?

Before exploring how to implement an enterprise transformation to an Agile organization, the first step is about asking yourself “Why?” What is the need behind? What is the goal you intend to achieve? There must be a clear need for any improvement change: imagine how crucial it is to start off such a dramatic change. The “Why?” must be clearly understood and the vision for the change communicated and shared to align the whole organization. Otherwise you’re doomed to fail even before starting (more about Why Agile? here)

2. The approach

Due to what we said above, it is easy to understand that any successful Agile transformation implies a top-down approach, in terms of Company values, Management culture, Vision, Business goals and above all senior management support: you cannot do anything otherwise. However, changing an organization (irrespective whether big or small) into being Agile is not like the nth Change Program to be deployed with targets to comply with and a well-defined plan to stick to. There are aspects that need to emerge bottom-up, like practices to be selected by empowered and self-organized teams. So an Agile transformation is a sandwich transformation: you need 2 equally big slices of bread and both are essential.

3. Training managers

Given the importance of the top-down part in the enterprise change, the very first step is training managers, for them to understand the why, be able to share and communicate the Vision, embrace Agile values and be ready to support people with a new leadership style. Many times this critical step is down prioritize, if not even neglected. It is too easy to fall into temptation that becoming an Agile organization means making Scrum teams work and that managers, well, they are clever enough that can handle themselves or can get it with a short summary from a developer attending a Scrum course: being a manager in an Agile organization is a totally different job and requires new tools which must be learnt and cannot be improvised.

How do you see yourself and your story compared to these three items?

5 things you should know about Organizational Coaching

Some days ago I was having a coffee with one of my colleagues.

While answering to his request of feedback about his work as a Scrum Master, we ended up in talking about what organizational coaching means in practical terms, what it is really and what it takes to be effective.

I cannot report the whole interesting discussion, but here are some takeaways as summary for you: 5 things you should definitely take into account, if you want to become an organization coach.

1. Use a system approach

An organization is a complex network of people, who are complex beings. If you really want to leverage on all potentials to affect it, either to make it better or simply to help your team, you must look at it as a whole system. Try to sketch a strategy of the possible options you have ahead, possible impediments and way to overcome them to reach your goal: you might realize that a single isolated step is not enough, but you need to take many steps, in order to get any progress.

2. Know your organization

Try to understand your organization very well. Learn not only about the official and visible structure. Learn much more about the invisible networks, the inner relationships among people, who is friend of whom, who is most sensitive to certain subjects and who counts more or is more decisive on certain tables, whether he has a formal power or only a subtle influential leadership. You cannot imagine what competitive advantage this will give to your effectiveness.

3. Act on different levels

Challenge the status quo and don’t limit yourself to the most obvious actions. Prefer actions who affect the environment around or the process to do things, instead of addressing directly a specific problem: they will have more and lasting impact.

Talk to people, with a preference for informal chats - coffee machines are a perfect place sometimes :). Try to find initiators and innovators to help you and sponsors to support you in difficult situations. And, whatever level you want to affect, consider acting also one level up.

4. Understand the effect of your actions

Before taking any steps in your strategy, try to guess which effect it will have in relation to your goal. Make a hypothesis and try to validate it as quick as possible. Find even people who to share your thoughts to and get feedback. The sooner you know if your strategy can work well or not, the better it is: you will then be able to adjust it if necessary and speed up the achievement of your goal.

5. Try things out

Finally organizational coaching is not mathematics and the system to act upon is many times far too complex to draft a strategy since the beginning, indentify any viable action or understand the effects of possible actions. That’s why sometimes you must simply try things out. And that's not wrong, stated that you try to fail fast and reflect on what you learned to find a different path.

That’s my experience. What did you learn in yours?

Peter Pan

This week was the time for Scrum Gathering Barcelona 2012, the Global Scrum Alliance event in Europe.

Unfortunately I could not attend this year, like instead I did last year when I went to Scrum Gathering London 2011 (by the way I was one of just 3 Italians attending out of more than 300 people and was actually the only one working in Italy: don’t know exactly what it means, but it doesn’t smell very good anyhow).

On my way to England, I happened to read a nice article on the British Airways magazine describing Peter Pan as an ideal business man. 

Yes, you got it right: a business man! 

This made me think a bit.

Then I realized: Awesome! Peter Pan is also a prototype of a great Scrum Master or Agile coach.

He persuades and stimulates others, leads by example and isn't afraid to get hands dirty when needed.

As a mentor, he can take any young person and mould them into a fearless and vital member of the team.

Socially aware, Peter gives his team a strong sense of community and a reason to get up in the morning. The work is dangerous, however: battling pirates and crocodiles is not usually a career path open to the under-16s, but Peter helps his team overcome all impediments, show courage and face challenges looking impossible at a first glance.

Since he loves to fly and isn't afraid of confrontation, he is a perfect leader and by using unconventional tools out of normal practice (like brandishing a small sword in the boardroom), he gets great results.

His tendency to remain eternally youthful can be grating though: sometimes he can't understand why adults forgot their childhood and refuse to join him to fly. 

Thus, deep down he's lonely, with his only constant companion Trilly who sometimes he's not even very nice to. But as a good servant leader, he inspires trust and makes his team of young people able to do anything and get what they dream.

Well, I must admit I feel like Peter Pan sometimes (and be sure not because I suffer any syndrome).

And you?

Who (or What) is the Hook to defeat in your organization?