Agile Coaching

Learn via : Virtual Classroom / Online
Duration : 3 Days
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    Learn to teach, practice, and reinforce core coaching competencies of an Agile coach and be enabled to successfully reach agreed-upon team and organizational outcomes.

    A coach’s primary goal is to enhance their client’s awareness of practice and behavior — enabling and empowering the client to realize objectives which may be just outside of their reach. Through thoughtful and deliberate engagement, the coach strives to enhance, in a measurable and sustainable fashion, team practices in order to provide focus on the business goals and objectives of the team and organization. Whether the coach is internal or external to the organization, coaching covers a broad spectrum of teaching, mentoring, problem solving, planning, leadership, team-building and mastery of skills and knowledge.

    Coaches must challenge organizations to change culture — establishing new paradigms — which permit agile-lean thinking and quickly deliver value. A coach must be competent, professional and ethical — having business and technical knowledge and an understanding of change and the impact it has on individuals and organizations. This course is designed to teach, practice and reinforce the core coaching competencies of the Agile coach, enabling the Agile coach to succeed at reaching agreed-upon team and organizational outcomes.

     

    What You’ll Learn

    • The definition of Agile coaching and the set of competencies and practices associated with being a coach.
    • How to develop ethical and professional coaching standards and agreements and how to apply them in your coaching engagements with teams and organizations.
    • The various roles, skillsets and disciplines of an Agile coach – coaching, facilitating, mentoring, teaching and how to develop “your style,” moving in and out of those roles while remaining flexible, open and confident.
    • The philosophy behind servant leadership and practices and techniques to enable you to become a true servant leader; putting the needs of others first to facilitate the development of high performance teams.
    • Agile Coach thinking – the mindset shift necessary to help you, and others, focus on team improvement, value-driven delivery, and leveraging constraints while living in the present moment, staying curious, innovative and having fun.
    • Ways to establish mutual trust allowing you to create a safe, supportive environment in which your team can excel.
    • Active listening and powerful questioning techniques utilized to leverage your ability to focus on what is being said and maximizing communication and collaboration through seeking and receiving information.
    • Advanced techniques in planning and goal setting in order to help the team/organization achieve their goals and your agreed-upon coaching results.
    • Techniques in creating awareness and designing in actions and learning which will assist you in managing progress and accountability within the team.

     

    Audience

    • Project and Program Professionals who aspire to the role of Agile Coach.
    • Experienced Scrum Masters, Agile Project/Program Managers or Iteration Managers who want a more comprehensive understanding of the complete range of business and Agile coaching skills.
    • Agile coaches who want to enhance and improve their professional skills as Agilists and professional coaches.
    • Coaches who wish to increase the ability to break through seemingly insurmountable problems with their teams.
    • Agile managers, Product Owners and others wishing to access a broader range of skills in working with teams.
    • Skilled coaches who wishes to polish your skills and learn a few new tricks and techniques.
    • Someone trying to become a Certified Scrum Coach
    • Someone coaching or mentoring Agile teams, but you seem to be caught in a rut or just going through the motions and not making progress.

     

    Prerequisites

    This is an intermediate/advanced level workshop. Participants should have completed basic Agile training or a Certified Scrum Master course such as any of the following listed below, or an equivalent or have completed 6 to 12 months of working with Agile teams.


Description

The Agile Coach

  • “Your” definition of Agile coaching
  • The Agile coaching mindset
  • Defining Agile team facilitation
  • Agile team facilitator behaviors
  • Assessing one’s ability to serve the team
  • Responsibilities and skills of the coach
  • Achieving self-awareness/self-management in the coach
  • Developing more advanced Agile coaching skill
  • Setting boundaries for coaching
  • Internal vs. external coaches
  • Defining the coaching “contract”
  • Designing a coaching alliance

The Coach as Facilitator

  • Facilitation and the facilitator stance
  • Definition of facilitation
  • The facilitation of meetings
  • Designing meetings for collaboration
  • Facilitating full participation and engagement
  • Facilitating collaboration
  • Facilitating team decision-making

The Coach as Professional Coach

  • The coaching stance
  • Maintaining neutrality in coaching
  • Self-awareness and self-management
  • Holding the client’s agenda
  • Issue identification and exploration
  • Action commitment and achievement
  • Professional coaching skills

The Coach as Mentor

  • Mentoring and coaching the Agile roles
  • Mentoring and coaching transitions and practices
  • Understanding the individual change cycle
  • Identifying and handling resistance from individuals
  • Mentoring vs. coaching

The Coach as Teacher

  • Mentoring and coaching versus teaching
  • Teaching the Agile basics and mindset shift
  • Modes and methods of teaching
  • Distinguishing and articulating Agile frameworks

The Team Coach

  • Understanding team development
  • Understanding a model of team development
  • Detecting a team’s stage of development
  • Helping a team move up the development curve
  • Setting up the team environment
  • Creating team trust
  • Learning shared leadership and self-organization
  • Continuously seeking to improve
  • Defining and identifying high performance
  • Knowing and establishing team vs. group mindset/behaviors
  • Understanding strategies for dealing with different types of teams
  • Understanding your role in the self-organizing team
  • Handling conflict and dysfunction within the team
  • Identifying and managing ‘Group Think’
  • Handling organizational impediments
  • Promoting leadership engagement