Scrum Master Training Experts, Zen Ex Machina, Explains What Makes A Good Agile Coach
BRISBANE, Australia, Aug. 8, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Agile Coaching is an experienced agile specialist who helps organisations navigate the ambitious process of becoming an Agile organisation to transform their world of work. Sustainable organisational change doesn't happen by "just doing it", it requires executive commitment and a shift in perspective about how contemporary ways of working are more effective at delivering value and pivoting when change is needed. Agile Coaches help leadership and teams understand the benefits of good agile practice and supports them to remove the barriers and embrace transformation by helping each organisation find its own path, approach, and solutions to becoming Agile.
Scrum Master Training Experts, Zen Ex Machina, help explain what goes into making a good Agile Coach.
Adjust your style to the needs of the context. What works for one person in one context does not necessarily work for another. This is why it is important for Agile Coaches to understand how to read the context and choose a pattern of support and engagement for that occasion. Observation before action is key, as is understanding what behaviours you're observing and what are the triggers and motivation. Only based on an understanding of the context will the right pattern – coaching, mentoring, teaching, facilitating, etc – emerge.
Choose encouragement over criticism. It is important for Agile Coaches to not be overly critical of their team – this can be perceived as punishment. In behavioural change, punishment is only an effective tool when the threat of punishment is present. It also only serves to decrease a behaviour occurring and isn't effective in reinforcing good agile practices. First, understand what behaviours you're seeking and when you see them occur, reinforce them with encouragement and praise.
Continuous improvement is key. As an Agile Coach it is important to promote that improvement is at the heart of agile, and that it's iterative, not linear. Support teams, leadership and the entire organisation to set goals that are achievable with short term objectives that, while a stretch, are realistic.
Don't ignore underperformers. A system of work is only as strong as its weakest member. This is why it is important not to sideline members of the team who may not be meeting expectations. A good Agile Coach should instead strive to elevate these individuals and improve their performance.
About Zen Ex Machina:
Zen Ex Machina is a leading global agile transformation company. Our entire purpose is to help executives transform the way their entire organisation operates, so they become more productive, and more responsive to changing market, customer and stakeholder needs though smarter ways of working. Combining unmatched practical agile experience that spans almost two decades, Zen Ex Machina's consultants work as catalysts to the cultural change that agile demands, combining executive mentoring, change leadership, and agile coaching and training, to embed helps teams, complex programs, and whole organisations, to nimbly adjust to and take advantage of emerging opportunities.
SOURCE Zen Ex Machina
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