Agile Coaching – Why is it important?

The transformation from a traditional organization to an Agile organization is challenging. Not everyone understands their new role Agile Coachingimmediately. An experienced coach helps everyone, from management to team members, understand their new roles and responsibilities.

Another Agile implementation challenge comes from team members who now have more freedom, need to work more autonomously and need to be self organized. Feedback and ongoing guidance from an Agile coach helps team members adapt more quickly to working Agile.

Our Agile coaches are not only certified, but they have been working Agile for over a combined 50 years. Take a closer look here.

At SPL we provide Agile coaching specific to your needs:

  • Agile Growth Plan coaching (Team, Leadership and Enterprise)
  • Agile process coaching
  • Individual coaching (Scrum Master, Product Owner, team member, leadership)
  • Team and team building coaching
  • Project coaching – Our project coaching addresses the challenge most organizations have getting their first few Agile projects off and running agile. Even with our simulation powered Agile training, actually applying what is learned on agile projects can be stymied by your organization’s own unique challenges and questions that may not have been covered in the training. The good news is our agile guides have been there and know how to meet those challenges and answer those questions. It doesn’t matter whether they are technical, process, change management, cultural or leadership challenges, our Agile guides have the experience and skills to keep your project and team moving forward as they transition to being agile. Depending on the specific project and challenges our Agile guides will work as a member of your team in the capacity of a coach. It might be to mentor or guide the Scrum Master, Product Owner, or a team member. The guide will most likely work with all three roles as the project gets started and as members of the team get more comfortable in their new roles.

Agile CoachingRequired agile coach skills:

  • Working with people: listening, giving feedback, asking questions, building trust and rapport
  • Facilitating change: enlisting support, reaching agreement, spreading success, learning from failure
  • Systems thinking: seeing the bigger picture, identifying levers for change, communicating danger signals

Benefits of agile coaching:

  • Working with the agile team there is immediate application of the agile methodology and the benefits that come from implementation. An experienced agile coach ensures the transition to agile goes smoothly. Coaches help put training into context to lead the agile team down the path toward self-sufficiency. Coaches bring both the tried and the new practices and processes to a team and organization, reducing the degree of trial and error commonly found in homegrown experimentations.
  • Having many previous experiences with agile transitions enables the coach to anticipate and recognize implementation challenges and how best to overcome the challenges. The bottom line is, they’ve likely “been there and done that” so that when your unique organizational circumstances present challenges or roadblocks to the agile transformation, they can confidently step in to lead the way over, around, or through the obstacles.
  • Coming from outside of the organization, an agile coach guides the implementation and transition without preconceived notions or bias about your organization. For many reasons it is often easier to listen to someone from outside the organization vs. someone from within the organization.
  • Agile coaching creates an environment that allows teams to face their difficulties and work on a proper solution instead of ignoring problems
  • Sometimes an organization may find the real value of agile is eluding them. An experienced agile coach can assess where things got off track, and guide them back to where they need to be.
  • As a mentor for the Scrum Master an experienced agile coach is there to provide slight adjustments to how the Scrum Master performs their role which can have a huge impact on the individual, the team, and the product itself.
  • As a partner an agile coach works right along with the agile team in the same environment (Agile Jump Start), on the actual project(s) you are struggling with, to help bring out the best agile has to offer for your organization.