Coaching Agile Teams
Engage us for a couple of days initially, allow us to take a look at how things are running, maybe carry out a formal assessment of where you are as an organization, or where a particular team is, in adopting agile practice. Subsequently you can engage us on an ad-hoc basis to coach your team(s) and gradually improve the agile capability. This includes helping your business customers to carry out their roles on an agile team.
A team is only as good as it thinks it can be, and unless it knows how good it could be it cannot get better.
Coaching is all about observing and noticing, then suggesting ways to improve in a very subtle manner, so that a new behaviour may stick. Take the guys in the boat: none of them can see how all the other teammates are rowing (apart from the bow, and even he can't see the mistakes he is making. Only the cox sees all, and thankfully also knows where to go...
Coaching is all about observing and noticing, then suggesting ways to improve in a very subtle manner, so that a new behaviour may stick. Take the guys in the boat: none of them can see how all the other teammates are rowing (apart from the bow, and even he can't see the mistakes he is making. Only the cox sees all, and thankfully also knows where to go...
Coaching Really Makes a Difference
For agile teams coaching makes a big difference. It enables a team to change direction and correct bad behaviour. Good coaching results in the team itself noticing what is wrong, and the team putting mechanisms in place to correct itself. The effect of good coaching is that you do not know you are being coached, and you think you have improved all by yourself.
You should not attempt to provide solutions when coaching, but help the team to find the answers.
For agile teams coaching makes a big difference. It enables a team to change direction and correct bad behaviour. Good coaching results in the team itself noticing what is wrong, and the team putting mechanisms in place to correct itself. The effect of good coaching is that you do not know you are being coached, and you think you have improved all by yourself.
You should not attempt to provide solutions when coaching, but help the team to find the answers.
Here's How We Can Help
We offer coaching for agile teams, addressing typical issues like:
We offer coaching for agile teams, addressing typical issues like:
- The business is not engaged: how do we get more collaboration?
- The planning/review meetings are not working well: too much time is spent discussing detail that is not interesting to the team, or the Product Owner is telling development which solutions to use
- The Scrum Master is acting like a project manager, telling team members what to do and using the scrum stand-ups like status update meetings
- The team is not self-organizing, instead team members are doing what they think is needed according to what they are hearing from "on high"
- Estimation feels like a black art, there is no sense of "done", testing is a separate activity, and so on
