How Agile Coach can help?

During my day to day interaction with and people around I observed that people are surprise that how can Agile Coach can add value to the team where everybody knows what agile is and they are already doing it. Why should I go to Agile Coach?

Let me tell you first thing that Agile Coach is not a designation like our typical designation in software industry say programmer, tester, project manger or developer. There are multiple thing and powers come from particular designation. Say project manager is taking care of cost, quality, timeline and scope. If there is any change is scope you can always go to Project manager and his decision will be final because he has that authority. If there is bug identified in the software you can ask developer to fix it and QA at test it. This thing particularly not hold true in case of Agile Coach. Agile Coach does not have any authority and no power come from his designation. Agile Coach is more like acting role. Let me clarify how.

Agile Coach is similar to any other coach in real life say Sports Coach, Tennis Coach, Cricket Coach or say life Coach. Let's understand why you need Cricket Coach at all? Now a days you have several videos available regarding how to play cricket and lot of knowledge base is already available in the market at affordable cost. By theory you can ready and study all this and become an champion in Cricket. But in practical life this is not happening. Why? Simple, having knowledge and information is something completely different from imparting it in yourself. And this is where coach plays important role. Say you decided that you want to be cricket champion. So your goal is clear. But you should also aware that where are you right now, in present. There may be many ways to reach to your goals and this ways take longer times and lot of energy. You may loose your focus during your journey as well. But coach with his experience can help you achieve your goal in shortest possible path.

How does he do it? Simple answer is by his experience he know how things works. First of he will do observation. He actually see the things as they are in present. He start understand you by engage you in meaningful conversation. He works with you hand in hand and find out where is gap. Once this things are clear he work out an action plan for you and help you follow your plan. He push you when required.

Agile coach is no different he also does exactly the same thing. He works with different stakeholders including Business teams like CEO, CTO, Directors, Manager of different departments like Product Development, Finance, HR, Quality to name a few and understand the motives for enterprise behind Agile Transformation. What is the business outcome that organization wanted to achieve. Say for example faster time to market for product, innovation, better quality and cost reduction. Might be few of them or all of them. He works product development team (agile team), Scrum Masters, Product Owners other departments as well who has stake in transformation including end users and clients of organization. Once the business goals are defined he identify the best way to achieve it in shortest time. He also understand the current strength and capabilities of team and other stakeholders by working with them and engaging them in meaningful conversation. Thus he clarify the current state of the organization with SWOT (strength, weakness, opportunity, threat). Provide everyone is clear about current state and target state and committed fully he draft out the action plan achieve business goals. His decades of experience in Technology and Organization Development and Behavior make a big different to select the right path with is tailored for the particular situation and particular set of stakeholders.

Once action plan is in place he work with each stakeholder like Business Team, Product Team, Product Owner, Scrum Masters and Other Stakeholders to make sure that action plans becomes reality and everybody actually able to follow it. Whenever there is the challenges he works hand in hand and sort it out. He actually help team by providing example by working with them. He not only solve the problem but also foster the thinking in stakeholder that how to solve the problem in his absence.