I was employed a few years ago at a wonderful company. I first joined them as an agile coach and Scrum Master. I had been spending an inordinate amount of time on the road teaching, so this local opportunity to coach a set of agile teams was timely and incredibly welcome by my family and I.

After joining, I was soon promoted to a Director of Software Development role and became a member of the senior leadership team. That was my title and my primary role, but I continued to coach and champion agility across the organization.

I used to joke about arguing with myself because I had two halves. I had the dark-side responsibility of “management” (Darth Vader) and the light-side responsibility of coaching our self-directed agile teams (Luke Skywalker). Although I felt I achieved a reasonably good balance, it certainly was challenging at times to keep my heavy breathing to a minimum.