If you want to make the biggest positive impact possible, even with limited resources, you’ll need to know how to create leverage as an Agile coach.
Harnessing your expertise can help you guide your organization through the complex process of getting your team to adopt Agile. It can also help ensure methodologies like Scrum and Kanban aren’t just implemented but are deeply ingrained into your team’s culture to promote greater growth, innovation, and efficiency.
Combining leadership with organizational understanding and a commitment to continuous improvement can create leverage as an Agile coach to steer your teams and projects toward remarkable achievements in line with the overarching goals of your organization.
Definitions:
Leverage: In the context of leveraging a role to make the greatest impact, the concept refers to strategically using one’s position, authority, or responsibilities within an organization or project to affect significant transformations. This involves maximizing the impact of the role by identifying and exploiting opportunities, resources, and networks available due to the position. By doing so, an individual can drive innovation, foster growth, or implement reforms that align with the organization’s goals or societal needs. Leveraging a role effectively requires a deep understanding of the organization’s dynamics, clear vision, influential leadership, and the ability to mobilize and inspire others toward achieving common objectives.
Agile Coach: An Agile coach is a professional who guides and mentors organizations through adopting and continuously improving Agile practices. They help teams and individuals effectively implement Agile methodologies, such as Scrum or Kanban, to enhance collaboration, efficiency, and adaptability in project management and product development processes.
Change Management: Change Management is the systematic approach to dealing with the transition or transformation of an organization’s goals, processes, or technologies. It involves managing the human side of change to achieve the desired business outcomes, ensuring new methods are effectively integrated and that employees are guided through the change to enhance acceptance and minimize resistance.
Going from Suck to Awesome
Sucks – Having to individually train each person and team on each topic without creating any way for knowledge to flow between individuals and teams.
Sucks a little less – Having a few people who can help facilitate rolling out of knowledge and process.
Awesome – Creating leverage as an Agile coach so individuals and teams cross-train each other, thus increasing the positive impact with little effort.
Creating Leverage as an Agile Coach
Unreasonable Expectations
It takes time to implement change. Change management is difficult. It is exhausting. It requires an extraordinary amount of effort to build momentum. Even for experienced professionals, it can take months or years for a company to make noticeable changes.
As an Agile Coach, you’ll likely need to create some organizational change. And while organizations have a certain degree of inertia, what is difficult is the expected rate of change.
To make meaningful change, you will have to find ways to create leverage within the organization. You need to find ways to multiply your efforts and work in such a way that when you positively impact one person, you have positively impacted ten people.
Where to Create Leverage as an Agile Coach
Product Owner – The Product Owner has a key role. And an effective Product Owner can have an outsized impact relative to their role. I see this when experienced Product Owners are incorporated into an existing inexperienced team. If the Product Owner is skilled in Agile, they will embody the process. By prioritizing and managing the backlog effectively, they will greatly influence what work gets done by helping the team focus.
Scrum Master – Similar to the Product Owner, the Scrum Master can greatly impact the team. Many teams and projects lack organization, so bringing order and process to a team should improve efficiency.
New Projects – Sometimes, a new project is a gift. Being able to start with an existing team on a large new project allows for the Agile ceremonies to be put in place. The team will be grateful because the ceremonies should help clarify the project. The management team will be grateful because they can have insights into what the team is doing.
Eager Employees – I remember working with a particular CEO, and he always said, “I will work with any employee who has a great attitude any day! Attitude goes a long way.” Employees who are seriously interested in learning about Agile can be leveraged. Such employees tend to be sponges and actively seek more training and knowledge. I have worked with many people like this and have found regardless of title or experience, they can be of great assistance. For example, I recently worked with a junior developer who, if only judged by his development skills, well, he would be junior. BUT, he helped me set up Agile across several teams. He set up the boards, trained the other teams, etc. Everything I worked with him on, he turned around and worked with four other teams. It was fantastic!
Stakeholders – Stakeholders are another place where you can make a big impact, but it tends to be more on the business side. The one exception with stakeholders is when a company is first adopting Agile or when a company is rebooting its Agile process. Working with stakeholders on specific topics, such as the virtues of NOT injecting work during a Sprint, tends to give teams the space they need to get through the first half dozen Sprints.
How to Create Leverage as an Agile Coach
Working with Team Members
o Clearing the path – Removing impediments, such as management approvals, can allow the team to stay focused. When working with individuals or teams, addressing any perceived or real blocks is important. For example, maybe a team member is trying to fulfill the Product Owner role, but the organization keeps pulling them back to do their previous job. Impediments don’t have to be real to stop a team in their tracks. Initially, I will work to remove all the impediments. Over time, I have the team figure out what is a true impediment and what isn’t.
o Education – I prefer to combine structured education, such as books and training, with unstructured education. I like to use real problems the team is struggling with to introduce concepts.
For example, if a team is struggling to figure out what to work on, I would review the concept of identifying stakeholders and backlog grooming. This way, the education is very relevant.
o Shortening the learning curve – I firmly believe in letting the team figure things out, but there is a balance that should be maintained. Especially for more complex concepts, I like to start the team out with a basic predefined approach. It is important to let the team know what you are doing and give them the freedom to modify the approach. An example would be to set up the initial “lanes” of to-do, in progress, and done for story status. I start all my teams this way, and over time, they add and remove lanes depending on where they are in their learning.
Working with New Projects
o Start right away – If possible, start before the project even begins. Set up your tools, process, team, etc. Don’t wait until the official start of the project. It will take some time to get approval and spin up tools, people, and processes.
o Define what the end, or at least the first milestone, looks like – Establish a broad overview of what success looks like. Many companies that lack process just start projects without really defining the objective.
o Define the team – Go through the work to create an explicit team. Find out the members’ commitments outside the team. The less shared resources, the better. [See Small Team Agile Best Practices blog.]
o Put basic processes in place – Determine which ceremonies and at what cadence they will be held. Everything doesn’t have to be perfect at this point, but a shell should be put in place.
Working with Stakeholders
o Education – Management and executives also need education. The process and terms can be presented at a higher level. Focus on the value that will be received vs. the details of the process.
o Integrate into their processes – Even if processes aren’t written down, most companies operate by some sort of official or unofficial process. If they don’t have processes, then help them create them. More importantly, integrate the team’s processes with the management’s processes where possible. For example, management may have some sort of planning meetings. Those meetings may be a good place to gather requirements that can be fed into the team’s backlog.
Continuous Improvement
Continuous Improvement is your friend. Small changes can create a much larger positive impact over time, especially if the team continuously improves.
Start simple; you have a path – Reason number one I like Continuous Improvement is that it allows the team to modify processes. This might not sound like a big deal, but having permission and a forum to improve creates the opportunity for changes to be made. Given that changes can be made, 100% of the process doesn’t have to be perfect. (Hint - there may not be a perfect state.) So, just start. Then, optimize every Sprint. This lifts some of the burden of trying to get all the processes perfect before starting anything. However, it isn’t an excuse to be sloppy.
Don’t overwhelm – Any framework or process designed to run several teams and multiple projects is going to take some time to learn. Each person or team is going to have a rate at which they can absorb new knowledge and processes. External impacts may increase or reduce the ability of what the team can take on. A recent client of mind was going through major organizational change and shock, so the teams could only take on so much. When there are a large number of hires or terminations, or when management changes or a company pivots the business model, a team’s ability will be negatively impacted.
Slowly introduce more sophisticated topics – When I work with teams, I constantly monitor them to see when they are ready to take on more sophisticated topics. I may bring up a topic several times and several weeks before I spend time with the team on that topic. I will usually send them a link to another website with information on the topic. Then, I’ll start working with the team. For example, most teams take a while to figure out how to write a good user story. Instead of grinding the whole team to a halt to train them on writing user stories, I slowly introduce techniques and have the team bring their own circumstances to the process for refinement. This allows the whole team to absorb the concepts and participate in the design. With this approach, I find the team then “owns” the process and will ensure it continues vs. me always ensuring that user stories are written well. [See WTF Is a Point?]
Conclusion
Creating leverage as an Agile Coach is about using your role strategically to foster significant organizational changes with limited resources. This involves identifying key opportunities and resources to drive innovation and growth, focusing on roles like Product Owners and Scrum Masters, as well as leveraging new projects and eager employees.
The approach emphasizes the importance of facilitating knowledge flow between teams, simplifying learning curves, and promoting continuous improvement. By starting with basic processes and gradually introducing more complex concepts, Agile Coaches can prevent overwhelm and encourage sustainable growth.
In essence, the strategy is to build an ecosystem of collaboration and adaptability, turning every project and learner into a catalyst for improvement. This not only maximizes the impact of Agile practices but also cultivates a culture ready to adapt and thrive in an evolving business landscape.
In summary, by strategically leveraging key points and fostering a culture of continuous improvement, Agile Coaches can navigate change management effectively, laying the foundation for a resilient and Agile organizational culture.
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