I am an agile coach, How my day looks like?
My primary task is to entail implementing the Agile process, principles, and practices across all levels and departments in an organization.
As an Agile Coach, I must apply techniques that enhance collaboration, predictability, transparency and improve a culture of experimentation and innovation.
In order to accomplish this, the Agile Coach must also incorporate the Agile principles and lead by example.
Wait, I have been an agile coach for the last 7 years, and there are a plenty of developments in my days during my years and type of engagement. Most of the days are more or less the same with variation, with engagement.
The tasks are distributed and deliberately plan to accomplish the overall objective.
Always there is a time crunch!!
When I was a Team level Agile coach:
- When I was a team level coach, I had 3-4 teams to coach for Agile Transformation. My day used to spread with numerous activities like below.
- What I used to coach, I used to ensure, Agile mindset and agile ways of being embraced by the team members.
- What was the typical engagement cycle time? it was for 7-9 members scrum teams; it was 6-9 months engagement.
What did I use to do?
Since morning, I would be in discussion with all the 4-5 teams.
- I used to prepare a plan on which team to approach, on which day in a week and how long(1-2 hrs max).
- I used to coach on all aspects of Scrum, Lean, and Kanban practices.
- I used to engage in all their events ( In rotation to deal with all the team members)
- I used to take based on the need for numerous training for the team.
- I used to speak one to one with SM or PO or Leaders.
- I used to work with SM on Tools they were using to mentor them on tool usages and how to interpret the data for advancement.
- I used to facilitate initially many scrum events and ensure, I let them drive those after a particular month.
- I used to connect team members among these 4-5 teams where I was engaged for lesson learned sharing
- Most of my days I used to figure out about these teams( Coaching journal preparation for reflection), each individual, their behavior exchange, etc.
- I used to present team progress in numerous executive meetings and report about the hurdles and requests for aid.
- I used to connect with the business for the Business team members coaching.
- I used to Assess the Scrum Maturity of the team and organization and coaching to higher levels of maturity.
More or less every day, this is the routine for several months for an Team coach.
Challenges:
- Devoting time to all the teams.
- The numerous types of individuals and various levels of maturity to handle at the same time.
- Leaders expect the miracle to appear at the fastest timeline
When I was an enterprise coach my days looks a bit different.
When I was a more on enterprise coach, I managed to have only 1-2 teams to coach.
How was the routine day looks like?
- Team coaching was like a usual mentioned above, around 20-30% of the time in a day based on the other engagement.
- The nature of the teams was unique, we used to pick up most of the teams where teams are dealing with high ambiguity and complication.
- 40-60% of the time, I used to look beyond team coaching in a day for diverse organizational agile transformation activities.
What are those?
- I used to engage for report preparation for Agile transformation for the business line/department, which I was answerable for. We used to prepare and present the Agile transformation progress report to senior executives. Define, publish and educate the organization on key metrics that show the progress of the transformation effort.
- I used to attend weekly stand-ups with business leaders for the business line where I was answerable for the business line agile transformation and communicate to the other team level coaches about the development and challenges.
- I used to work for Scaling agile if there are any needs. This calls for an abundance of time for conversation, collaboration for multiple teams. If such an obligation appears, most of the time of the days work there.
- I used to participate in several Training curriculum preparations. We used to prepare the game for the workshop. We used to strengthen the training agenda for 1 day or 2 days’ duration. With other coaches, we used to dry run that curriculum and execute those training.
- I used to engage for Community contribution example scrum master community and PO community. We used to design and examined with the community members what should be the theme and conversation topics.
- I used to arrange for a coaching clinic and coaching dojo for mid-managers. We used to reviewed and chalk out a plan for how the drive will be and what will be the outcome.
- I was a coaching community member, debate about the organizational impediments and what can be worked out to eliminate those. Each business line coaches used to serve each other by contributing to each other’s area.
- If there is a foreign visit, we used to prepare the agenda and present the topics and learn from each other. Every quarter there is a coach exchange from each alternative location to understand cultural exchange and learning.
- We used to spend some time for ourselves as a coach in the book club, coaching kata session.
- Organizational assets creation e.g checklist,template,models etc
- We used to prepare for Agile day in the organization; it takes several months of preparation to drive for the agile day.
We were invariably busy all the time!
More or less every day, these are the routine tasks for every year for an Enterprise Agile coach. Once I look at my Monday to Friday calendar, one of the other tasks from the above will reflect.
Challenges:
- Making time for all these organization initiatives.
- Managing ad-hoc request for help from strangers!
- Department level hurdles removal which appeals for structural modifications, silos ways of functioning, dealing with org resistance.
- Collaboration with numerous stakeholders and escalations.
- Our own motivation!
