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situational coaching

The Agile Coaching Dilemma

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The Agile Coaching Dilemma

Renee Troughton is someone that I don’t follow nearly enough. But when one of her articles crosses my path, it nearly always resonates nicely with my own experience or helps define a concept or notion that I’ve been struggling with.

Renee published - What do people want agile coaches to do? on May 7th.  

I’ve found that striking the right balance (or stance) in my own agile coaching journey is a constant exercise of self-awareness, situational-awareness, and leveraging all my years of experience. It’s really, really hard.

Here’s a snippet from Renee’s article that explains the dilemma from her perspective –

I have had a lot of feedback in the past that I tend to be different from other coaches. I’ve even seen people refer to coaches as two different types, often not in good terms. One commentator referred to the schism as “fluffy agile sprinkles coaches” who are all oriented around mindset and “delivery coaches” who are all oriented around practices and techniques. To this commentator, the middle ground of coaches who are both and have the expertise to know when to use one approach over the other is a dark art that few know well.

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Situational Coaching – Models

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Situational Coaching – Models

I was running one of my coaching circles the other day and someone brought up the X-wing Coaching Model. To be honest, I had to admit that I didn’t know what that was. 

Then they sent me a link, http://agilecoachinginstitute.com/agile-coaching-resources/

and I realized it was the Agile Coaching Competency framework put forth by the Agile Coaching Institute. It’s a model (picture) that speaks to the various capabilities that one should have when approaching agile coaching.

I wanted to share a couple of reactions to the model.

First, Can I Really DO It All?

One of the problems I have with the model, and it’s one of the few, is the implication that a coach needs to have competency/skill in all of the areas. Or to be growing their skills broadly across all of them. And my issue is, I don’t think that’s possible.

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Is Agile in Late Adoption Stage?

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Is Agile in Late Adoption Stage?

I wrote a coaching article a while ago that illustrated an agile coaching anti-pattern. It was quite well-read and I received quite a bit of feedback on it.

One of the folks who responded was Mick Maguire.

https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6345281715686166528
A great article by Bob Galen, he shines a light on an all too common pattern, especially among the late adopter market that we are in these days... My advice... If you are about to engage agile coaching, and you don't want to waste (a very big pile of) your money, make sure the first conversations are "what does success look like?" and "How will we know if we are getting there?...”

I’m not focusing on the coaching part of his reply, but more so reacting to this entry level statement:

“Especially among the late adopter market that we are in these days…”

Mick’s comment has stuck with me since I read his reply. Making me think about Geoffrey Moore’s, Crossing the Chasm and where the agile (movement, methods, frameworks, etc.) might be on that scale.

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Is “It Depends” an Acceptable Answer?

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Is “It Depends” an Acceptable Answer?

As the instructor walked us through the exercise, he made it clear that “it depends” was not an acceptable answer. I asked if we could say “I don’t know”. And that was unacceptable as well. 

It seemed that his only view of a viable answer to leadership was to provide a historical, trended data forecast. To give them as specific a timeframe as possible and lightly couch the risks associated with the estimate.

 His primary driver for this position seemed to be that:

If we didn’t give them a specific forecast, they would go to someone (another team, another organization, offshore firm, nearshore firm, outsourced, etc.) that would make a more specific commitment.

I.e., that because we’re afraid of losing the “bid”, we have to provide something to win their confidence and win the work. No matter the level of confidence or runway we have in our historical “velocity-based” data.

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What the World Needs is MORE Prescriptive Agile Coaches

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What the World Needs is MORE Prescriptive Agile Coaches

I was once working with a peer agile coach and we were discussing the role of the coach within agile teams. His view was that it was as a “soft, encouraging, influencing” role. That at its core agility is about the team. And the team in this sense is…self-directed.

He also emphasized that taking a more direct or prescriptive approach in our coaching would be anathema to good agile practices. That it was draconian and dogmatic.

He was actually a leader of this firms coaching team, so he had tremendous influence over a team of ten or so agile coaches. I was one of them and I sometimes struggled with his view and approach.

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