Chapter 4 - Hiring the Agile Coach(es)

Whatever it was, Sherri’s contact, Denise, had the magic touch. I don’t mean that figuratively - whatever she did during our conversation was legit magic. I left our short talk with more clarity about what I thought about the situation, what my options were, and what might be next.?

If every talk with her was that fruitful, even just one meeting a week would be worth having her here full-time. But she also does what I originally thought she was all about - helping the teams learn this new process and make sure they do it right. Helping me is like a sneaky bonus. There’s obviously more to this Agile Coach role than I realized.?

For example, she said she didn’t think she would need 40 hours a week, at least not at the beginning. What?? Every consultant we ever had was ALWAYS 40 hours a week. In fact, some of the larger firms would have people just on documentation 40 hours a week. It seemed there was always more they said needed to be done (or else that effort would be “at risk.”) A friend told me most consultant firms' strategy is “land and expand.” Well, Denise certainly wasn’t that.

The other interesting thing is that she said there were other parts of the Agile effort that she wouldn’t be the best for and she asked that I consider other coaches for those areas. Not as additional costs, but using the same budget for the effort that she was drawing from. Apparently, there is coaching for my developers. That made sense because it sounds like the way we will build the software will be very different now. But when she mentioned QA, I had to stop her and ask for some justification. Coaching the testers? Why?

“Automation” was her one-word answer.

“What?”

“Are the testers busy?”

“Yes, very. They are often overloaded and they can become a bottleneck just before big releases to production.”

“Well, let’s say they are maxed out testing what’s in the current sprint. When the next sprint comes, how do they test the current work as well as regression test the previous sprint?”

“Unless the tests are automated…” I finished the thought. “I get your point. So, there are two Agile coaches: you and the technical one.”

“And possibly split out the product areas for a Product Coach.”

“Why would we need a coach for the product? We have all the requirements already. We know what we’re doing.”

“What is the prioritization process here?”

I knew there was no good answer. It was “loudest voice wins” or HiPPO - Highest Paid Person’s Opinion. I didn’t answer. “I plead the fifth,” I said with a smirk.

She added, “Not to mention looking at what the teams are putting in each sprint to validate that we are all on track with what stakeholders REALLY want, and validating technical implementation, retiring risk early, and more.”

“Point made.”

Next: Chapter 5 - Our Company's Competing Values

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