Agile Coaches Should Eat Their Own Dog Food
11 ways to embrace agility
As an Agile Coach, I help organizations and their people to embrace the fact that we don’t know what will happen. I help them understand why they can’t trust their thorough analyses and detailed long-term plans. I coach them to take small steps, learn and adapt. I underline the importance of self-organizing teams to find the best path to value.
Over the years, I have been baffled by Agile Coaches who think these aspects don’t apply to their work and responsibilities. People who think that introducing off-the-shelf so-called Agile approaches does the trick. Who think their work is clear-cut or at the most require thorough analysis to plan the best path to Agile success.
I have always embraced the uniqueness of every situation, organization and group of people. With that, I understand I need to eat my own dog food. What’s more, I think it is bad when Agile Coaches don’t recognize their complex environment or find the Agile way of working too uncomfortable or time-consuming. This is damaging their credibility.
Today I will focus on 11 ways for Agile Coaches to eat their own dog food. Let me know what you think in the comments!
1. Work towards creating value
One of the pitfalls of an Agile Coach is to tick off a list of things to be done to help an organization become more Agile. They focus on the activities, ensuring they are finished properly. However, focusing on activities and output alone is not the same as creating value. Agile Coaches should help organizations become more effective in creating products their customers love. This should be on their radar. Not a list of actions (alone).
2. Create value regularly
I dread the Agile coaches/consultants who come with a multi-year approach to transforming the organization. I’ve seen them disrupt people for months on end only to arrive with something of (unproven) value at the end of the journey when the entire approach is ready to be launched.
This is wrong for at least two reasons. Firstly, it is risky because no one knows if the solution will work while a lot of time and effort is put into it. Secondly, it makes far more sense to deliver value regularly, improving the organization one small step at a time. The goals can be grand, but many steps of small improvements people can immediately profit from are always better than a big bang after months.
3. Keep it as simple as possible
Many issues organizations, teams and people have to create value may appear difficult to solve. Often, however, solutions can be simple. Maximize the work not done. Often the best way to meet the needs of your users and stakeholders is an easy fix.
For example, when Finance doesn’t have a good view of the cost and potential benefits of a product, refrain from creating all kinds of new reports to accommodate for this. Instead, invite them to the table, like at the Sprint Review, and discuss this topic. When the compliance officers don’t know what they are dealing with when they should assess a new product increment to be released, perhaps don’t have information sessions to inform them. It may make far more sense to ensure they are actively engaged from the start.
4. Don’t force your ideas
Agile is all about collaboration between the team and their stakeholders. Together, they find the way to great value products. The same applies to improving the organization’s effectiveness and efficiency to create value.
Agile Coaches bring their insights and experience to help the people in the organization find the best way forward. They guide them to experiment and learn. The worst the Agile Coaches can do is think they know better and force their ideas.
5. Don’t act alone
Agile is all about teams of professionals with unique skills collaborating to create value. Together they have all the required skills to reach their goals.
Agile Coaching has many aspects and you’ll be hard-pressed to find coaches that can do everything equally well. On top of that, creativity blooms with different perspectives on a situation.
I have great experiences with pair programming and mob programming creating meaningful training material and facilitating Agile journeys.
6. Proof your value
One of the cornerstones of Agile is reflecting on the impact of the things you have created. Verifying assumptions like: “Are our users as happy with the new functionality as we expected them to be?”
Agile Coaches should take this to heart and also ensure they deliver value. Their service may not be as tangible as a physical product, but there are plenty of ways to verify if their work solves an organization’s issue. It is perfectly possible to understand if the organization indeed removed silos and how this impacted its effectiveness. It is also verifiable if the organization improves their time to create verified value based upon the Agile Coaches’ guidance.
7. Engage with your stakeholders regularly
To understand the needs and desires of your stakeholders and receive feedback on what you have brought to the organization, I advise you to have regular moments of reflection with them. I have had great experiences with Sprint Reviews where we showed the results of the work we had done in the previous weeks and discussed with our stakeholders if this met their expectations and needs. As an example, we showed how trainees responded to our pieces of training and how they changed their way of working based on what they learned.
On top of showing the impact of our work, we also collaborated with our stakeholders on what to do next to reach our goals. They could bring in important developments and issues we could then work on next.
The regular reflection moments helped us to stay on the right track towards our goals.
8. Pivot if needed
Avoid the mistake of thinking that once you choose a certain path, you will stick to it for the months to come regardless. The trick is to have the broad strokes of what you wish to accomplish, but also the opportunity to fill in the details at the latest moments. On top of that, you should also be willing to throw the broad strokes to the side and start anew if the initial idea didn’t work at all.
It is about finding the best way towards the goal of creating value. This path is different for every organization, department and team.
9. Don’t burn yourself out
Agile Coaches typically advocate a sustainable pace. At the same time, they may work long hours and hop from one meeting to another. But what applies to the people you coach is also applicable to yourself. So, don’t burn yourself out and embrace that saying ‘No’ can be the best answer at a certain moment.
10. Don’t burn the organization out
The introduction of a new or changed way of working can have all kinds of negative consequences. People may feel anxiety, may be overwhelmed, or perhaps feel left out. On top of that, your ideas may be too much for the organization, the teams or the people at a certain point.
Meet them where they are. Understand what drives them and what scares them. And collaborate to find the best pace for them.
11. Reflect on your effectiveness to improve
Your coaching actions may not have the impact you expect or desire. After all, every situation is unique. This is why you should have regular moments of reflection with your team to assess what works and what doesn’t, ensuring they act upon the things that they can improve.
