Book Notes from 'Coaching Agile Teams' By Lyssa Adkins
Let Your Style Change
- How long has it taken you to
master tai chi? -
- I don’t know yet, im still
practicing.
- How did it take you to become
a master coach?
- I don’t know yet, im still
practicing.
Agile Team Stages
- One good model for mastering
anything comes from martial arts.
- Three stages of proficiency
- Shu
- Shu: student copies the
techniques as taught without modification and without yet attempting to
understand rationale.
- Follow the rule, again,
again and again.
- Shu stresses the basics in
an uncompromising fashion so the student has a solid foundation for
future learning.
- Shu - follow the rule
- Ha
- Having reached Ha - one has
attained the basics and now spends time 'reflecting on the truth of
everything'
- The student comes to a
deeper understanding of the art than the pure repetitive practice can
allow.
- The student now instructs
others as an additional way to advance their own practices.
- Carefully upholds the
principles underlying the practice.
- Ha - break the rule
- Ri
- Ri moves become part of the
student.
- There are no techniques,
all moves are natural
- The student is now learning
and progressing more through self-discovery than by instruction.
- Ri - be the rule
- A team can be in one or all
of these stages simultaneously.
- If the team holds the
fundamentals constant even as they experiment with new ways of doing
things, they will progress through the stages safely.
- The model really gets the
conversation about improvement going.
Agile Coach Styles
- I have noticed three agile
coaching styles
- Teaching
- Coaching
- Advising
- Attention for modeling and
reaching as well.
- Modeling allows you to get
to the core of each person on the team to help them become the best
agilist they can be.
- Coaching Styles
- Teaching:
- When you teach, you lay
down the law and teach the rules.
- You know a better way to
work - so feel the steel rod as you teach agile.
- Convey the rules strongly,
along with your belief that agile gives us a better way to work.
- Back this up with
experiences.
- Ask them to follow you and
get agile practices working well
- Coaching
- The coaching style requires
the foundation laid by the teaching style.
- Help the team out by asking
questions like
- Why does this way of
working work?
- What kills it? What renews
it? What feeds it?
- Team members minds open to
multiple ways of accomplishing the same thing while still upholding the values and principles.
- They need direct
experiences and feedback to be able to truly inspect what happened so
they can assess whether the change was helpful or hurtful.
- Advising
- The advising style comes
when the team has fully internalized the practices, values, and
principles of agile.
- Your responses
- I don’t know, what do you
think.
- May I offer you an
observation.
- That could work - try it.
- As you move through these
styles - ensure that you also pay attention to modeling and reaching.
- Be actively modeling -
constantly model the behaviors that lead to success.
- Reaching means reaching out
to each team member and the team as a whole to help them achieve the best
expression of agile possible.
Feel Free to Let your Style
Change
- In the beginning, with a new
team, the choice of style is easy - its teaching.
- Your style flows naturally
from teaching to coaching as the team moves.
- Move to next step when their
conversations about changing practices keep the underlying principle
whole.
- They must face dysfunction,
at least long enough to name it and decide whether to pursue changing it.
- Change your style from
teaching to coaching.
- Teaching has its place - but
it has an unintended consequences - it creates a reliance on you.
- Changing from Coaching to
Advising
- Advise them and notice your
impact.
- You will likely find yourself
interacting with them using all three styles for various topics or skills
at various times.
- Honor your current level of
skill and stay there to master it.
A Refresher
- Teams master agile through
stages called Shu, Ha, Ri -
- Let your style flow from
teaching to coaching to advising.
- Always model successful team
behaviors - reach a person on the team.
- Let it be fluid.
Coach as Coach-Mentor
- My practice of agile coaching
up to that point was useful for starting up teams and getting the basics
working.
- It stopped well short of
tapping into each person's potential to improve the team's overall
performance.
- Went to school for coaching -
and found that professional work/life coaching applies 100% to agile
coaching.
- Applying coaching skills to
agile context. We start by defining agile coaching more clearly.
What is Agile Coaching
- In the context of agile teams
- coaching takes on the dual flavor of coaching and mentoring.
- You are also sharing your
agile experiences and ideas as you mentor them.
- Mentoring transfers your
agile knowledge and experiences to the team as that specific
knowledge becomes relevant to whats
happening with them.
- The context of agile makes
you a mentor; the focus on team performance makes you a coach.
- We are using skills from the
world of professional coaching.
What are we Coaching For?
- Agile coaches champion the
brilliant use of agile so that businesses achieve their goals faster and
better.
- To these end - you coach for
- Help the organization
achieve astonishing results - the kind that will matter in business and
the team in a fundamental way.
- Help the team develop and
get healthier together.
- Help each person take the
next step on their agile journey so they can be more successful agilists
- People should be fulfilled in
their work - where they spend most of their waking hours.
Coaching at Two Levels
- When you coach an agile team
- you simultaneously coach them at two levels
- An individual level
- A whole team level
- You though you channel your
coaching intentions at the beginning and end, coaching doesn’t go on
vacation in the middle of a sprint.
- When in midsprint - you
should think long and hard before bringing a major observation or
improvement opportunity to the whole team.
- Midsprint - switch from team
to individual
Coach at the Beginning
- As on sprint ends - another
begins - the time for coaching the whole team is ripe.
- Keep your eye on the goal -
to help the whole team see how agile works when simply done.