How to be an Agile Coach - Step-by-step guide from my experience

This article is inspired by my read from " How to be Life Coach? "

I am using my applied creativity to be as creative and thinking not just outside the box but beyond, so why not give it a shot?

Learning and having a growth mindset allow you to try things you've never done before.

Will it be a full blown thingi -----NO NO , it will evolve, its an iterative way to write my thoughts around this role.

Though I have been profoundly tutored by a select few, I have the utmost respect for my mentors and role models who have helped form my profession.

I am now putting more of an emphasis on seeking expert assistance since I have come to see the value of mentoring from specialists. I'm still unable to afford the best, but that time will come soon. So till that time, write your mind .. gather feedback, handle the inputs and keep growing...

You will see a better version of this article , soon.....

but I wanted to start, I will therefore break down my journey into two steps and utilize those as the foundation for this blog.

When discussing the software development life cycle - there are 2 ways to develop - Waterfall and Agile. I have worked in both but for the past 14 years, my focus has been on Agile development.

My engagement started with

I experienced a first-step Understanding of the challenges in doing the agile method, idea, or later being part of agile into practice is the essence of agile coaching.

It also involves coaching, mentoring, and teaching leaders, individual members, teams, or programs to advance in that direction. It all depends on your role. Coaching your team members or related businesses is what it means to be a Tech Lead, PO, or SM.

As your experience grows, it becomes more about the teams (i.e., technologies, tools, products, domains, and industries) that you have investigated and how to coordinate various initiatives and teams.

The second phase, experiences, focuses on comprehending mental processes, refuting presumptions, and assisting both individuals and groups in seeing things from various angles. In the end, it's around the Business or Customer Value generated.

From my experience, Agile Coaching has been about Understanding the problem customer is facing - building products that they want & and using the right strategy, discovery and delivery from design to delivery of a product. Now the implementing part is with any agile method.

Overall this article will contain:

• What is Agile Coaching?
• Agile Coaching: A Job Description ( Team Level, Program Level, Enterprise)
• Who Can Become an Agile Coach?
• What did no one tell me unless I experienced or I was at that stage?
• How to Become a Coach: Step-by-Step Guide
• Education Requirements & Qualifications
• Do You Need a Certification or License?
• How Long Does It Take?
• Major Training (Online and offline)
• Helpful Resources
• A Take-Home Message
• References - To Follow soon

Agile Coaching

This role comes into the picture when a real transformation will happen. Leaders understand that people will go back to old habits when they hit roadblocks so we should have skilled coach/coaches around us who can help us in this journey (long or short)

Job Description

An agile coach helps organizations, teams, and individuals adopt agile practices and methods while embedding agile values and mindsets. The goal of an agile coach is to foster more effective, transparent, and cohesive teams, and to enable better outcomes, solutions, and products/services for customers. As you roll up and help multiple agile teams program coaches and when you have coached multiple programs you have understood the real challenges around people, processes, and technology and are ready to coach people for enterprise-level

What I experienced at the Transformation Level

Though a lot of things are common sense how other frameworks and models work is also useful to understand. To replace one thing blindly is not possible. there will be mechanisms and every industry like banking, Life Science, Manufacturing, telecom, media, Retail has its own challenges. Fortunately, I have worked with most of the domains by now and realized the facts.

Understanding Compliance, Audits, Capex-Opex, Monitoring, Security and driving the discussion to move towards agile transformations are key pillars. You will not know all the responses but these are important aspects

Do You Need a Certification or License?

You need experience working with teams for sure to coach. every team will be unique but there will be some common challenges. Certifications and training might act as enablers or understanding if you are entering in Coaching world but as you process some behavioral styles play a more vital role. Your Servant Leadership skills and some knowledge of professional things will help you.

Start with reading Books on Agile Coaching:

2 books as a beginning have sum up everything for me Rachel_Davies (Agile Coaching - Prgmatic Progrmmers) and Lyssa Adkins (Coaching Agile teams), I read the 2009, and 2010 editions but you can always find them in Amazon

What will you typically do in any transformation as a Coach

• Definition of transformation clarity - Agile Transformation is fundamentally about forming agile teams to build or maintain a s/w product incrementally, tested and release ready . For large solutions or scale, it’s creating networks of loosely coupled teams, coordinating dependencies, managing trade-offs, getting things into the market fast, and measuring throughput.

so first thing is to create the clear definition of transformation and then removing the impediments continuously that get in the way of accomplishing these things.

• Clarity of how the teams and networks of teams are formed - once definition of transformation is clear then you start the team formation - it may be a single product team or group of teams. Scaling starts when you have more than 200-300 people part of same transformation. With small groups its just TEAM level agility. Be simple, talk about value and principles. Based on work choose model - Scrum, Kanban, Lean, Scrumban or XP....
• Team Agility or technical Agility - this is first step in any transformation where you pilot with couple of teams to show success of the agile ( by 2022 most of the Orgs have passed this phase they have run pilots and know AGILE works) but still if its your Org's first agile team - treat it as your first initiatives and run the learnings and communications.
• Administrative tasks include preparing for sessions and taking notes thereafter, preparing contracts and legal documents, bookkeeping, marketing activities, and further education and training.

How Long Does it Take

• Not the number of years but the number of teams and transformation matters
• Role understanding and execution - either you have played or you must have mentored or worked closely at team level, program and portfolio level
• To be at Portfolio level - work as a leader, with the leader and for a leader with a vision
• It took me almost 10 years, 52 teams and 5 transformations
• I have 22 certifications, have read more than 100 books and have taken free/paid workshops from more than 100 mentors/trainers/coachesEducational Requirement or Qualification
• Growth mindset for sure if not solid qualification, you have to learn and improve continuously
• Understanding of technology, business and people psychology is integral
• Use Lyssa's framework - Tech mastery, business mastery or transformation mastery , more comb shaped skills you acquire - easy for youMajor Trainings offline and online
• Starting with PMI-ACP, SM, PSM , CSPO etc.
• Then after working with a few teams choose on IC Agile
• plus facilitation, visuals, clean language, HSD, ....
• Story writing, Product Canvas, Lean Change Management, Prioritization, Estimation
• Collaboration tools like Miro, Mural, Collab , PI Planning
• SAFe SPC
• Management 3.0
• Liberating Structures
• Knowledge on OKRs, Product , Flow metrics, Value stream management
• ++ there is everyday new things to add to your kitty

Take Home Message

If you have a strong vision to be an agile coach, the sky is the limit....

You will learn, fail but it's an amazing journey to see your people and teams succeed.. Those thank-you messages and appreciation emails from clients will keep you engaged. there will be dull days but who does not have those..

• Being a Punjabi girl - many people suggested me to switch : I followed my heart and passion & I feel I am successful and happy
• Emotional decisions - You will make but sooner you learn to handle, more easy it will be
• You are the BEST version of yourself - Don't compare, have role models or learn from others but you will be FIRST and UNIQUE COACH for that event or Program. Noone will be ever able to take that pride from you
• Even you have Coached a single team - Your impact have made a difference
• Failures are stepping stone , Tomorrow is a new day - Try new things
• Normalize Quitting - you will quit , CHANGE Is hard but its our reality

References

Working on it will update soon