My Lessons Learned as an Agile Coach

After working a couple of years as a Scrum Master for the web agency Enrise I made the switch to Prowareness at the beginning of 2014. At Prowareness, a company that helps organizations meet their challenges in the field of software development, I fulfill the role of Agile Coach / Trainer. In this role, I help individuals create great teams by applying host leadership, and learning organizations to adapt and respond to a constantly evolving world.

This is quite a challenge. Not only because working in the field of software development means working with complex products in complex environments. But mostly because creating a truly lasting change is difficult. Not only implement some best practices but really build awesome teams and create responsive organizations.

The toolkit of an Agile Coach should, therefore, contain more than a few skills, competencies, and best practices. Gathering them will require training, hands-on experience, and most important: the willingness to constantly improve yourself. For me personally, it helps to continuously reflect on my daily practices and translate them into a list of ‘lessons learned’. This list grows on a weekly basis, with this blog I want to share the most important ones I’ve learned since I started working for Prowareness. And for sure, there might be some very obvious lessons, but often these are the ones you’re not always aware of. Note: not all of these lessons are related to the role of an Agile Coach. But fulfilling this role, they’ve proven to be valuable for me.

1. Be brave — dare to disrupt
 As an Agile Coach, you’re hired by organizations that want something changed. The type of change can vary a lot, from implementing technical practices in a specific team to changing the type of collaboration or culture in an organization. Whatever the change, maintaining the status quo isn’t an option. Considering that on average people want change, but don’t want to be changed; it takes guts and bravery to ‘fight’ the status quo. You need to dare to cause disruption in an organization when you feel this is necessary for a successful transition. Causing this disruption felt uncomfortable at first, but seeing the importance of it and taking into account that disruption doesn’t have to be negative, I haven’t got any problems with it anymore.

2. Be part of the community
 This isn’t really a new lesson I’ve learned, but more a confirmation of something I was already aware of. No matter what role you have or the company you work for, chances are high that it’s involved in some sort of community. I’m participating in the Agile community by attending seminars, being in contact with lots of interesting people on Twitter, writing and sharing blog posts, attending workshops, and joining discussions via relevant LinkedIn groups. This has offered me a tremendous amount of new ideas and insights, and most important: it brought me in contact with people that share the same passion.

3. Focus, but prevent a tunnel vision
 The problem with being passionate about your job is that the number of ideas and possibilities is endless. Every day I think of new topics to write a blog about or do some research for. The pitfall is that you become average in everything. Gaining a broad knowledge is crucial, but ensure you get really good in a few things. In the upcoming time, my focus is on becoming a Professional Scrum Trainer and doing some research on ‘host leadership’. Writing blogs is something that has become a habit; therefore I don’t have to focus on it anymore.

4. Be aware of the influence you have
 Something I have learned in my first week as an Agile Coach is the influence you have. I think this concerns everyone that is hired for a specific task. You are THE expert! I’ve experienced that a discussion in a team ended immediately after I gave my opinion. This meant they just heard The Truth so why bother continuing the discussion? Another example is the energy you can bring into sessions/workshops. If you enter a session with low energy, for sure the session won’t be a success. But otherwise, if you enter a session with lots of energy, chances are high it will be a great session!

5. Try to do the least as possible
 I am in the lucky position of having a colleague that really excels in doing almost nothing. But at the same time, I think he’s the one achieving the most! Most Agile Coaches have been part of a Scrum team before. They were doing hands-on activities e.g. a Product Owner, Scrum Master, or Developer. Seeing a team struggle with activities you’re experienced in, it’s tempting to jump in and help them. The trick is to not really help them with the activities they struggle with but to ensure they won’t struggle again with them in the future. It’s ‘fire prevention’ instead of ‘firefighting’. Although firefighting might give a better feeling at first, you’re not really helping anyone in the long term. Therefore I try to do as least as possible, keep a good overview, and establish some fire prevention whenever necessary.

6. When doing an Agile transition, use a structured approach
 An Agile transition is a complex change process that will disrupt an organization. This is all for a legitimately good cause, but the change will be difficult to cope with for most people. The people affected by the transition often will get new roles they need to understand. Sometimes they haven’t fulfilled a different role for years than Scrum is introduced and everything is completely different. If they notice the Agile Coach is also insecure about the approach, the implementation is doomed to fail. Therefore it’s crucial to have a structured approach for the Agile transition. This doesn’t only help the Agile Coach as a backbone for the transition. But it also offers some peace of mind to everyone involved. “No matter how difficult the changes might be, at least (s)he gave it some thought and has a professional approach”

7. Repeat! Repeat! Repeat!
 A pitfall of mastering certain areas of study is when you explain it to someone, you assume they will understand it immediately afterward. Take for example the Daily Scrum. This is a very straightforward Scrum session with a clear purpose. After explaining it once, teams should be able to do it properly right? Well, you’re wrong. Even the approach and purpose of the Daily Scrum should be repeated quite often. Only after repeating it multiple times teams will get it and does it actually ‘stick’. And of course, sometimes explaining it once is sufficient, but in my experience, it takes some more effort.

8. Question everything
 This is related to the famous ‘well, this is the way we do stuff around here’. Never accept this as an answer. If you’re hired as an Agile Coach, organizations want to change. Maintaining the status quo is out of the question. Often organizations have already started using some Agile/Scrum practices but have soon deviated from the original theory. As an Agile Coach, you should question every change they have made. Sure, sometimes they have legitimate reasons, but often they just were not capable of doing the difficult organizational changes themselves and therefore chose the easy way: deviate from the theory. To me, this is a red flag that must be challenged.

9. Lead by example
 “If you are not doing it, why the heck should we?” This is probably the most important lesson I’ve learned. With everything you do, give a good example. So far, I often gave the wrong example, e.g.:

• Ask teams to create a physical and transparent sprint backlog but hide your own transition backlog in a tool
• Demand teams to really deliver ‘done’ sprints but never finish a complete transition sprint yourself
• Ask teams to define clear sprint goals but be fuzzy about your own transition sprint goals These are just some examples of mistakes I’ve made me. Be king in the behavior you expect from the team. Why else should they do it? Or why else should you want them to do it?

10. Build habits
 When studying best practices in productivity building habits is one of the most important lessons. A habit is something you do almost automatically. Periodically I try to learn a new habit. Some that I’ve already mastered are getting up early, writing one blog every week, and doing a weekly review. When you have a busy job/life, and who hasn’t nowadays, it’s comfortable to have some habits you can rely on.

11. Have fun
 Not really a lesson I’ve learned but one I’ve become to appreciate more and more is: have fun! Don’t take it all too seriously. The more difficult a situation, the more need there is to smile and have some fun. Having fun helps to cope with difficult changes, strengthens collaboration, and clears the mind. Therefore ensure having fun is part of your daily routine!

What are the lessons you have learned this year? I’d like to hear them; maybe they offer me some new inspiration!

Originally published at www.barryovereem.com on December 1, 2014.