1. Agile Coaching Challenges
Vasanthan Philip
2012, October

2. Agenda
• What is Coaching
• What to look for
• Tuckman’s Team Development Model
• What to look for
• Coaching Interventions
• Lean Thinking
• Scrum Master as Coach
• Coaching Agile Managers
• Conclusion
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3. What is Coaching
“Coaching is unlocking a person’s potential to
maximize their own potential. It is helping people to
learn rather than teach them.” – John Whitmore
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4. What to look for
• Warning Signs
• Understand the context
• Get leadership support
• Gain team’s trust
• Navigate through force fields
• Teach relevant techniques
• User empirical data for change
• Help teams conduct RCA
• Stay engaged – Help teams Inspect & Adapt
• Play Games
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5. Tuckman’s Team Development Model
• The teams current stage affects its ability to
work
• The help and assistance of the coach must be
adapted to the stage of the team
• Stages
o Forming, Storming, Norming & Performing
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6. Teaching Lean Thinking to help teams
• Aim at reducing the workload teams have to
work on at any one time
o Working on too many things at once makes
productivity go down and defect rates go up
• Push versus pull
• Thinking scientifically and respecting people
• Use Kanban to make teams work in a
sustainable pace while limiting WIP
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7. Coaching Interventions
• At the start of the Sprint
• In the middle of the Sprint
• Towards the end of the Sprint
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8. Scrum Master as Coach
• Help Scrum Masters deepen their skills
o Exploratory, apprentice, coach
• Exploratory – Make them watch you perform the role
• Apprentice – After making them watch you, invite them to
be your apprentice (making them good at observation and
choice making)
• Coach – Slowly transition them into your role (the coach
moves into an advisory role)
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9. Coaching Agile Managers
• Coaching in three fundamental areas
o In managing teams
• How to be an “intimate outsider” and champion of team
o In managing investments
• Asking “What is the best investment now?” instead of
“Are we on schedule and within our budget?”
o In managing the environment
• Bringing a lean perspective to focus on flow and the
elimination of waste
• The key is training them on their role
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10. Asking Powerful Questions
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11. I am a Good Coach
• When
o I have Instilled agile practices
o Started up Agile Teams
o Peer coached and coached the whole team
o Coached product owners and outsiders
o Coached the team through change
o Instigated path to high performance
o Accepted their ideas above my own
o Mastered myself
o Navigated conflicts
o Set myself on a path of learning and development
Source: Coaching Agile Teams – Lynda
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12. Thank You
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