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?

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?

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?

Bootstrapping a successful Agile Team

When starting up a new Scrum team, you cannot assume that the team starts sprinting right away. 

Setting the foundation for the team success is key! 

Lyssa Adkins very well says in her book Coaching Agile Teams that basically a new Agile team needs to learn 3 things:

• Learn about the Process (for instance the Scrum framework)
• Learn about the Team itself (starting from learning about one another as human beings and then setting the stage for self-organization and cross-functional behavior)
• Learn about the Product to build (i.e. learning about the work ahead) 

But how can an Agile coach make the team learn that?

I normally take inspiration from an interesting story from 17th century to help the team learn in an organic way: the story of the Hudson's Bay Company created by England's King Charles II in 1670.

This company was (and is still today) in the fur selling business: they provided supplies for the hunters who went to the North Canada to hunt bears or foxes and bought animals back from them to sell furs. After a while they realized their business was affected by a lot of hunters dying because they forgot essential supplies. Then in 1874 they developed a practice they called Hudson's Bay Start.

They provisioned the expedition with the necessary supplies. Then they sent the expedition team a short distance in their canoes to camp overnight. This was a test, very necessary so that, before finally launching into the unknown, one could see that nothing has been forgotten or that, if one had taken too much, being so near to the base, the mistake could be easily corrected.

In this part of Canada having the right supplies in the correct amounts was literally a matter of survival!

As I said, I take inspiration from this story and normally organize a Hudson's Bay Start for every newly formed Scrum team with a number of goals: 

• remove the first impediments to start
• check the development environment
• start building the team
• buy time to groom the Product Backlog 
• practice Scrum with a "safe failure" approach. 

Therefore I ask to build a fake application (a bowling game tracker, for instance, but you can find many ideas at http://codingdojo.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?KataCatalogue) in order to get the team away from the daily work and take them into a creative environment to let them learn faster and have fun.

When you start something completely new it is better to go out of your usual context, so that people are put on the same level (regardless their starting point) and thus are not afraid to experiment and challenge themselves.

The fake application creates the safe failure environment to practice Scrum, but it must be implemented in the real system and developed by using the actual tools, so that the development environment can be checked by really trying it out.

With a Hudson Bay start, you're less interested in the actual product and more interested in making sure the development and deployment process works.

One could ask: Why are you spending precious team time to build a fake application? Don't you have shipping deadlines to meet?

Of course we have, but it is also a matter of reducing risk.

The Hudson's Bay Start was not free for the Hudson's Bay Company either.

But the alternative for the hunters was dying in the wild!

Is Scrum Master (or team coach) a full time job?

That is a dilemma which pops up frequently and I'm pretty sure you got asked or asked yourself at least once.

Is this a real job or just a bit of meeting facilitation one can do in the spare time (maybe doing it for 2 or 3 teams at the same time)?

Someone told me few days ago: “You know: we have 7 development teams, 5 Product Owners, 3 Technical Coordinators and 4 Project Managers: we cannot afford to have full time Scrum Masters.”

!!!???@#**&%*!?: I thought.

A manager also asked me some months ago: “We decided to have one Scrum Master every 5 teams. Is this ok, according to Scrum?”

Well! The point is not if it is Scrum or not. The point is: what is the probability to have successful teams!

All in all, it's really interesting to see how much this role is challenged everyday, like maybe no other role in any company anytime before. And I also wonder why.

• Is it because we didn't manage to explain it in the Scrum courses?
• Is it just counterintuitive in our western culture?
• Is it simply because we do not have enough great Scrum Masters or team coaches to play as role models and the average players do not think they can (or are not allowed to) provide value besides pulling some coding or testing tasks?

However, this hot subject got up during a retrospective of one of the local communities I’m part of in Italy. While discussing the fears which are preventing Scrum Masters doing their job well, the most voted post-it recited more or less the following:

"I'm always puzzled whether I'm doing the right thing and sometimes I'm really scared because I do not know what to do".

So, what are the typical tasks a Scrum Master is supposed to do concretely to perform his job well?

And how much time you'd better spend on each task as a minimum to make it effective in an average 2-weeks Sprint?

We held a 1.5 hrs workshop and here below a present for you: a nice picture summarizing the results of our discussion.

Awesome, isn't it?

Evidence of few numbers is most times much more powerful than many words.

Getting back to my original question: is Scrum Master a full time job?

What would be your answer now?

Agile development will not solve any of your problems.

It will just make them so painfully visible that ignoring them is harder. - Ken Schwaber

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? 

The hard job of growing great Scrum Masters - 2

As you might guess, I'm really interested in this subject for taking the time to write a second post about it.

Few weeks ago I was talking with one of the Product Owners in my team (I am currently coaching the PO team). I had asked him to give me feedback on my work and we happened to talk about what I think is one of the missions of an Agile coach: to recognize Agile talents.

Surprisingly enough for me, he could recognize this as a very valuable point, but the rationale behind his belief challenged my current thinking quite a bit.

We came to discuss about what he considered as key characteristics for a potential Scum Master.

"There are some key qualities" - he said - "that a person who wants to be a Scrum Master must have and cannot be learned, regardless how many books you read or how good your coach is!”.

I must say this was a bit hurting my self-esteem: I thought I could teach or help any apprentice Scrum Master to learn practically any skill necessary for the job.
At least until then, when I realized he had a valid point.

But then I asked myself: what are these skills or qualities which are essential to hire a new apprentice Scrum master?

This question reminded me a blog post from Esther Derby I had read some days before, called Scrum Masters and Agile Coaches: More than a Title.

With the usual inspiring style, she talks about what are the Essential Qualities for a Scrum Master (Initiative, flexibility, optimism, determination, resilience, working in a team environment, supportive, not cowed by authority) and what are the Desirable Qualities (Detachment, discernment, Able to navigate conflicts).

However what hits me most is what she calls The Elimination Factors, patterns of thought and behavior that would eliminate a candidate from consideration. 

Here they are: Preference for directing others, defensiveness, judgmental attitude, low threshold for frustration.

The most interesting and surprising coincidence for me was that 2 of these relate exactly to the key qualities my colleague Product Owner mentioned and was able to see given his experience in Scrum: impressive, isn't it?

But what is your view about this issue?

The hard job of growing great Scrum Masters

Back to trenches after restful summer vacations, I was reflecting about what could be my focus areas for the last part of 2012 as an Agile coach.

Feeling me committed as Certified Scrum Professional to the Scrum Alliance motto "Transforming the world of work", I was wondering what could provide me the highest Return On Investment, given the always scarce resource of my available time and the goal to be a change catalyst for my organization.

Then, as a careful Product Owner, I made some calculations: if I coach a team of 7 people, I will get 7 agilists in the best possible case, but if I coached 7 Scrum masters, I could theoretically get 7 team of agilists.

So: what would you do?

Yes, one of my focus areas should be coaching Scrum Masters to get great Scrum Masters and eventually good Agile coaches to coach even other Scrum masters in a domino effect leading to the transformation of the world around me.

Great plan, you would say, but...

I don't like "Yes, but...", but there's a "Yes, but..." this time. 

If you are satisfied in growing average or inadequate Scrum Masters, well it is not a big deal, BUT most of the troubles we have also in our private life are due to the fact that there are too many inadequate or average people around. 

Instead the biggest concern of an Agile enterprise should be to build self-developing high-level professionals in all roles, including world class developers and high professionals as Agile leaders, either Scrum Masters, Product Owners or Managers: all require high skills, correct behaviors and discipline.

Focusing on Scrum Masters, if you want to get an idea about what a great Scrum Masters should do and how he should behave, you might want to have a look at the Scrum Master's checklist website.

Said that and given the incredible amount of skills a good Scrum Master is supposed to have, growing a great Scrum Master becomes really a hard job, which implies using a lot of different tools and approaches to get the learning through.

I consider 3 pillars as fundamental:

·        Training

·        Mentoring

·        Self-Learning

In particular here is what I found in my experience relevant to be addressed with an apprentice Scrum Master, meaning a person having worked for a while in a Scrum team, willing to become a Scrum Master and, most important, passionate to learn:

·        Dedicated training for a diversified skill set, ranging from Agile leadership, Coaching techniques, to “How to write a good Product backlog”, to SW craftsmanship

·        2/3-months mentoring from an experienced Agile coach, co-preparation of Ceremonies, co-coaching and, what everybody always finds very valuable, concrete feedback by real observation in the daily work

·        Since agility, as we said, asks for self-driven competence management, where people actively educate and improve themselves, self-learning is an essential part, including participations to CoPs, reading blogs and books, watching webcasts or listening to podcasts.

Whether you find this interesting for you or not, enjoy your own journey in transforming the world of work, whatever it is.