Why Flashlights Are An Essential Coaching Instrument!

For a while, Christiaan Verwijs and I considered changing the name of the Scrum Team Survey to “Lumos,” inspired by the Harry Potter series.

“Lumos is a charm that creates light by illuminating the tip of the spell caster’s wand. Lumos is used frequently to create light, and it’s helpful when navigating darker landscapes.”

For various reasons, we ended up with Columinity, which still includes the ‘Luminate” part. It touches on the essence of what Agile Coaches, Scrum Masters, and other Agile practitioners should do:

👉 Make the state of Agile transparent by shining light on problems, obstacles, and impediments. But also make successes visible; what’s going well and worth celebrating?

It touches on the essence of the Scrum framework, which is built on three pillars that allow empirical process control:

• Transparency: you gather data — like metrics, feedback, and other experiences — to find out what is going on;
• Inspection: you inspect the progress with everyone involved and decide what that means for your ambitions;
• Adaptation: you make changes that you hope will bring you closer to your ambitions;

This cycle repeats as often as necessary to catch deviations, unexpected discoveries, and potential opportunities that emerge as the work is done. It happens not once a year or when the project/product is completed but continuously on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis. Rather than making decisions based on assumptions about potential futures, you’re making decisions based on the data you’ve collected up to this point. This is empiricism.

In other words, transparency enables inspection, which triggers change and adaptation. However, this only works with complete transparency; otherwise, the inspection will be misleading and could be based on false assumptions. So, without transparency, empiricism can’t work.

It always surprises me that many coaches and consultants use various tools, but a professional flashlight isn’t one of them. They wander through organizations in the dark, trying to figure out what’s happening.

Our recommendation is to use a ‘flashlight.’ Something that helps you create transparency about what’s going on within the teams and the broader organization. Ideally, it is something agnostic and neutral, not limited to a specific method, framework, or process. In our biased opinion, Columinity is one of the most professional and scientifically validated “flashlights”! 😃

In the end, using a flashlight is about revealing the truth. What’s really going on in this organization? Revealing and telling the trust isn’t easy. As Mario Huard puts it: “Identifying an organization’s gray areas requires high psychological safety and emotional maturity for coaches and teams. Shedding light on the real problems, obstacles, and dysfunctions can be difficult and uncomfortable because it involves highlighting what is not working well and what can be perceived as criticism or a threat.”

Using a ‘flashlight’ as a Scrum Master or Agile Coach isn’t optional. You can’t be effective without it. Flashlights are available in various shapes and forms, from assessment tools to Obeya rooms. To help you get started, we’ll share some recommendations written by using the metaphorical flashlight :)

Tips to get started

✅ Get yourself a professional flashlight. Don’t go cheap; chances are they won’t illuminate what’s going on. 
✅ Buy multiple flashlights. This limits dependencies and makes creating full transparency easier. 
✅ Make using the flashlight a shared effort. Encourage team members, managers, and stakeholders to do the same. It prevents the coach from becoming the bottleneck, and especially in dark places, it’s comforting to have support. 
✅ Coach team members to use their own flashlights. Make this a natural next step after having done it together first.
✅ Share findings. Determine a basecamp and get together frequently to share findings, patterns, and trends. 
✅ Shine light on failures AND successes. Don’t only focus on the scary parts; also, go to the places where things are already bright.

How Columinity Can Help

Our product, Columinity, allows teams to improve the quality of their teamwork based on scientific insights. Evidence-based feedback will enable them to assess their situation and define the next steps. In addition, they can mark the areas where support is needed. This allows coaches to effectively bridge the gap between the team and themselves while respecting the team’s autonomy.

Interested in learning more? Check this 1-minute video.