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    The Road to Agile Coaching
    The Road to Agile Coaching
    The Road to Agile Coaching
    Ebook212 pages2 hours

    The Road to Agile Coaching

    By Mohammed Musthafa Soukath Ali

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    About this ebook

    An Agile Coach is someone who helps build super-productive Agile Teams and Agile Organizations.
    This book provides a well-rounded structured approach to become an Agile Coach, comprising three phases, Learning, Living, and Loading.
    In the learning phase, the Agile Coach goes through the comprehensive profile of the Agile Coach in terms of twelve commandments. Apart from theoretical learning, an Agile Coach needs to have hands-on experience in coaching.
    This book explains a great technique ‘LivingAgile project’ that was used to build thousands of Agile Coaches. The book shows how the Agile Coach can gradually accumulate the experience of coaching from a single team to team of teams to organization level coaching by leveraging LivingAgile technique on a variety of scenarios.
    While learning and living are the foundational activities to become an Agile Coach, she should also prepare to demonstrate her ability to external stakeholders such as a potential employer. This book provides related tips and an outline to prepare for interviews.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMohammed Musthafa Soukath Ali
    Release dateJan 1, 2020
    ISBN9780463026762
    The Road to Agile Coaching
    Author

    Mohammed Musthafa Soukath Ali

    Mohammed Musthafa Soukath AliSCJP, LOMA 286, PMP, PSM, PSPO, SA, SPCMusthafa is the author of the #1 Best Selling book ‘Scrum Narrative and PSMTM Exam Guide’ on Amazon and smashwords.com. He is the architect behind the prestigious TCS Agile Ninja Coach program and has trained over 500 Agile Coaches. He is the co-inventor of the TCS Location Independent AgileTM method and the TCS AgilityDebtTM framework. He is also the external Management Capability Adviser for some of the Tata Group Companies. He is a designated Agile Software Delivery Expert, having consulted with 15+ global customers. He published 9 papers in conferences with two international speaker invitations in Berlin and Spain. He is currently leading one of the largest Agile transformations in corporate history. He works out of Chennai, India.You can connect with the author through his LinkedIn network: https://in.linkedin.com/in/mohammed-musthafa-soukath-ali-9a857762

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    • 5/5
      Good for Agile but now, give me a picture of what agile coaches need to have.

    Book preview

    The Road to Agile Coaching - Mohammed Musthafa Soukath Ali

    Preface

    Who is an Agile Coach?

    An Agile Coach is someone who helps build super-productive Agile Teams and Agile Organizations. There are several descriptions about the profile of an Agile Coach. However, they are not comprehensive enough.

    In this book, we have defined the comprehensive profile of the Agile Coach in terms of twelve commandments. We also matched the commandments with a human analogy for easy remembrance.

    Is there a scope for Agile Coaching?

    Industry has recognized Agile Coaching as a formal profession. Competent Agile Coaches are already in demand. Read this blog to understand the scope for the Coaching job, ‘Agile Coaching is one of the Top 25 Best Jobs, US, 2019’ -http://blog.indeed.com/2019/03/14/best-jobs-2019/.

    Stephen Denning, a renowned management expert has highlighted Agile as the next management breakthrough in his book, ‘The Age of Agile’: https://www.amazon.com/Age-Agile-Smart-Companies-Transforming-ebook/dp/B072J5XPTP. You can also access this book via a trial version here - https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/the-age-of/9780814439104/. And the organizations with the best Agile Coaches are more likely to be successful in their Agile transformations.

    Tip: For me, learning the Agile coaching was a powerful weapon for my own personal transformation. Personal transformation is a bonus benefit. There are many stories of how the principles of Agile can transform your approach to anything both professional and personal. Please watch the Ted Talk by Emily on Agile Leadership where she explains how it has helped her - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NWMS5wDSPs8.

    Which path should I take to become an Agile Coach?

    Each of us may play different roles today. Project Manager, Solution Architect, Business Analyst, Test Lead, etc. Irrespective of your background, it is possible to become an Agile Coach if you can start with the right mindset and commit to do the heavy lifting outlined in this book.

    Also, there are choices to specialize. If you have inclination and passion for the organization-change-management, you can specialize in organization transformation coaching. If you have passion for the business domain, you can specialize in business transformation coaching. If you have passion for the technology, you can specialize in engineering/DevOps coaching. This book provides a starting point to become a general Agile Coach. Later you can choose to specialize further into one of these paths.

    How this book will help you?

    Though there are market programs offering training and there is some literature on the subject, there is no well-rounded structured approach to become an Agile Coach. This book provides a skeleton of such an approach. This book uses following concepts in the approach.

    • It uses a ‘mid-level abstraction’ technique to introduce elements of Agile Coaching. The content is neither too high nor too detailed. You can start from here and gradually build the details that are very relevant for you in your context.

    • Active Learning used in this book refers to not just passive reading of the content but taking frequent pauses to answer questions about what was just read, and then thinking, analyzing, and inferring the meaning through answering those questions. These granular interpretations are usually not evident in normal reading but pop out when backed by questions around them.

    ##

    Agile Coaching Vs. Others

    Is Scrum Master an Agile Coach?

    Scrum Master is also a Coach. However, the Scrum Master’s influence is limited to one or a few teams. A Scrum Master develops insights over time about the larger aspects of organization level agility, usually beyond the team to a large team of teams or even the organization. Industry names her as Agile Coach or Program Coach or Portfolio Coach or Enterprise Coach, etc. depending on her sphere of influence.

    The titles may vary between organizations. You should understand that an Agile Coach is predominantly someone who wears multiple hats of coaching and possesses larger influencing abilities than a Scrum Master to maximize the potential of several teams and even the whole organization. Part I explains 12 commandments of an Agile Coach, and some of the attributes explain this larger influencing abilities in detail. If you are a Scrum Master, you can check if you have them already or enhance yourself in required commandments.

    -------------------Question-start-------------------

    A Scrum Master is the same as an Agile Coach.

    a) True.

    b) False.

    -------Answer-------

    Scrum Master does coach. However, an Agile Coach carries more experience around multiple hats of coaching including mentoring, facilitating, Human Sense oriented problem solving, and influencing. The Agile Coach possesses larger influencing abilities at organization and leadership levels. The correct answer is ‘b.’

    -------------------Question-end-------------------

    Tip 1: Being a Scrum Master is a good opportunity to train yourself as an Agile Coach. But you do not need to always start in a formal role as a Scrum Master. You can start as a more generic Agile Coach, coaching the team on a broad base of Agile principles than just Scrum.

    Tip 2: I was coaching teams even when I was a Scrum Master. However, I realized that I needed to coach other business stakeholders (beyond the Product Owner), Organization leaders, and the other teams we depended. And it required me to improve a couple of my abilities. One was the ability to influence a larger organization. The other was the ability to use a ‘Human Sense’ oriented mindset to make it easy for the stakeholders. Knowing Scrum, Kanban, and Extreme Programming wasn’t sufficient. I realized that being a Scrum Master was just one of the starting points to becoming an Agile Coach but there was more to cover to become a capable Agile Coach.

    Coach Interview Alert: What is the difference between an Agile Coach and a Scrum Master?

    What is the difference between an Agile Coach and other similar Coach titles?

    There are competing titles similar to Agile Coach, such as a Life Coach, Personal Coach, etc. These other types are mostly oriented towards individual-improvement and are heavily rooted in psychology. Agile coaching is oriented towards maximizing the potential of teams. Agile coaching is heavily rooted in the principles of The Agile Manifesto and Servant Leadership.

    Subsequent usage of the word ‘Coach’ in this book means ‘Agile Coach.’

    Sources to learn about Agile coaching

    Agile Coach as a profession is still evolving. There is a lack of robust training sources. There are some places to start, but none of them offer an all-rounded training. This book provides the skeleton to such an all-rounded perspective. You can augment this with other sources listed here:

    • Agile Coaching Institute: https://agilecoachinginstitute.com/

    • International Association of Facilitators: https://www.iaf-world.org/

    • To know more about the other coaching types such as Life and Personal: https://www.linkedin.com/company/international-coach-federation/

    ##

    The Approach to Become an Agile Coach

    A Simple Approach

    This book provides a simple three-phase approach, Learning, Living, and Loading, to become an Agile Coach. It is shown in figure 1.

    Fig. 1- Becoming an Agile Coach - Approach

    Learning

    There are 12 commandments to Agile coaching. You need to understand these 12 commandments and identify your current gaps against each. You should capture these gaps as a list of items in a Personal Backlog.

    Living

    You should take steps to bridge the gaps captured in the Personal Backlog. You should create opportunities to refine your coaching skills. This book provides a mechanism called ‘LivingAgile’ to create those opportunities.

    Loading

    You must test your preparedness for the coaching job by undertaking mock interviews and assessments. Update your enhanced skills and experience in your CV.

    ##

    PART ONE

    Learning

    "Being agile is a combination of three senses:

    (1). Human Sense

    (2). Common Sense

    (3). Agile Sense

    in that order."

    ##

    Learning Twelve Commandments

    An Agile Coach is someone who facilitates building super-productive Agile Teams and Agile Organizations. In this book, we have defined the comprehensive profile of the Agile Coach in terms of twelve commandments. We also matched the commandments with a human analogy for easy remembrance.

    Fig. 2- Twelve Commandments of a Coach

    Tip: As you go through the commandments one by one, you can spot your gaps against each. When you come across such gaps, capture them in written form as a Backlog (list). This Personal Backlog of gaps is a reminder to plan improvement actions to become the Coach.

    ##

    Commandment 1- Constant Learner (Left Brain)

    A Coach is a constant learner of Agile and associated knowledge areas.

    The Coach should know four types of knowledge: standard, emerging, derived and guessing.

    Standard Knowledge: The Coach learns the industry standard-knowledge from authentic sources. This is the fundamental requirement for a qualified Agile Coach. She does not treat random knowledge-gathering such as reading through unverified online articles as the source of her Agile knowledge. Instead, she starts with fundamentals using quality books and trusted sources, by the authors of ‘The Agile Manifesto’ in particular.

    Example: The Coach spends an hour every day to go through the blogs written by the authors of The Agile Manifesto.

    In my experience, standard knowledge is where even experienced Coaches make mistakes. Many Coaches gain their Agile knowledge from sources without regards-to if the source is the standard on the subject. If you have gained the fundamental knowledge only through the job or general reading on the internet or some commercially motivated poor-quality training, validate your Agile knowledge. Most likely, you may realize that your fundamentals are not standard.

    Standard knowledge is the starting point

    Foundation: The term ‘Agile’ is associated with ‘The Agile Manifesto.’ The Agile Manifesto was written by a group of representatives of ‘alternative implementations of software delivery models’ in February 2001. The Agile Manifesto,

    • is a proclamation of a better (alternative) way-of-working to create software.

    • is a set of values and principles describing the alternative way-of-working.

    The Coach needs to be

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