How to Hire an Agile Coach from 2021

Agile, Agile, Agile !!

Just Agile !! Now every Organization has to be Agile to meet the demand of rapidly changing customer requirements. Agile was coined in 2001, since then within these 2 decades a lot of changes happened in the Processes, People and Organizations. We have to change our Mindset to meet the modern trends. One such change needed is Hiring the Modern Agile Coaches. This article provides a Strategic Approach to Hire an Agile Coach to meet modern Organizational Transformation Requirements !! This article is purely based on my view, sometimes I might be wrong but most of the times I am correct & good.. Welcome to my World !!

Agile is the Mantra that every Organization is using now to Transform their Traditional Project Management Methodologies. It has been 2 decades for the Agile manifesto where it was coined in Utah in 2001.

Reference: https://agilemanifesto.org/history.html

On February 11-13, 2001, at The Lodge at Snowbird ski resort in the Wasatch mountains of Utah, seventeen people met to talk, ski, relax, and try to find common ground—and of course, to eat. What emerged was the Agile ‘Software Development’ Manifesto. Representatives from Extreme Programming, SCRUM, DSDM, Adaptive Software Development, Crystal, Feature-Driven Development, Pragmatic Programming, and others sympathetic to the need for an alternative to documentation driven, heavyweight software development processes convened.

And within this 20 years so much Transformation happened in every organization to adopt the Great Agile Practices but the Success rate is not even 50% as per my knowledge. If we look at the number of open positions for Agile Coaches, Scrum Masters and Product Owners and Product Managers across the globe we can feel that Agile Transformation is just now Started Seriously. Till now many organizations tried to Transform their traditional practices but still not successful to reach the Matured Continuous Improvement State.

Agile Coaches play critical role in the Organization to Transform their conventional Practices. If we look at the past 2 decades mostly Agile Coaches are treated as Professional Trainers, where the Organization hires one Agile Coach and ask that coach to Train their 1000s of Employees on Agile practices. Trends have changed a lot in these 2 decades and most of the Professionals were already Trained on Agile Practices. Now Agile coaches have to play bigger role than the Trainer.

Traditional Requirements for an Agile Coach looks like :

• Candidate should have done N certifications on Agile
• Candidate should be able to provide Training to various Stakeholders from Engineer to CXOs.
• One Coach should be able to train 1000s of Employees
• One Coach is enough to guide 100 teams.
• Training and forming the Scrum Teams will complete the duty of an Agile coach.

If we look at these all requirements with the lens, all of them are becoming outdated now. Most of the Organizations have already trained their employees on Agile. Already they are hiring more Agile coaches for the organization. And though Agile Certifications are important it is much more critically important to understand and resolve the Ground Level problems of Agile/Scrum teams.

Organizations have to do Self Analysis why they were unable to implement and Practice Agile successfully and continuously. The simple Answer is that just Training Employees on Agile Practices is not enough. Unfortunately the mindset defined for Agile Transformation was to Train Employees and provide Agile Certifications. Agile coaches are hired based on the number of Certifications that they have achieved and number of people they trained.

Now almost every modern day professional is aware of Agile and many Certifications are accomplished by the professionals in the industry. So now Agile coaches cannot just be the Agile Trainers. And there are other more critical challenges exists in front of Agile Coaches because the employees are already Trained but why the Agile Implementation is not becoming Successful or Fruitful. What action should be taken by Organizations ?? It is not an easy Answer, it need Master Minds in Agile, here we need Modern Day Agile Coaches !!

Now !!

How a Modern Day Agile Coach can be Defined & Hired.

Here I am proposing Steps to Define & Hire a Modern Day Agile Coach.

It is a 2 Step approach;

STEP-I : To do Internal Organizational Analysis to define Purpose of Agile Coach.

STEP-II: To assess multi directional Agile Expertise of a Candidate for Agile Coach.

Let us discuss these steps with more details:

STEP-I : To do Internal Organizational Analysis to define purpose of Agile Coach.

When an Organization want to hire an Agile Coach first it should do internal analysis to have clarity on exactly what it want to do with Agile Coach. This analysis comes from asking Powerful Question to the self.

Here are some of the Powerful Questions for Organizational Analysis:

• Does the Organization already following Agile or to Start from Zero?

First of all Organization should understand whether they are Starting Agile Journey from zero or with some experience & maturity. Because if they are starting from zero they need a professional Agile Trainer than coach so that first they can understand what is about Agile.

• How many scrum teams that the Organization have ?

In these modern days most of the Organizations have already have some Agile Experience and they want make to make it powerful and fruitful implementation. So organization should do analysis on their Scrum Teams, like how many teams they have and how many coaches already they have, do they want to create new Teams or do they want shuffle team members to experiment on Agile practices. Try to have more information on the Scrum Teams.

Note: I am using Scrum & Agile as interchangeable words here as Scrum is the most widely used Agile Framework by integrating with the other methodologies & Thought processes like Extreme Programming, Kanban, Lean, System Thinking & SAFe etc. So I feel comfortable to call Scrum Teams than Agile Teams.

• Do the Employees need Agile Training again ?

Though some organizations have some experience on Agile, still they want to retrain their employees on the Agile Practices. If it is the requirement they can hire an Agile Trainer than an Agile Coach because as the modern day Agile coaches are more than Trainers. It is strongly recommended to separate the Agile Training & Coaching jobs as the purpose is completely different. And if only Training is needed there are many sources available in the world including free courses. So we should mark a line between Agile Training and Coaching.

• Do the Scrum Teams have Dedicated Scrum Masters & Product Owners ?

If the existing Scrum Teams don't have proper roles like Scrum Master and Product Owner then the Agile Coach job will be more difficult. The coach cannot bring the results easily as there were no properly defined roles and mostly tech leads and managers are playing the roles of Scrum Master and Product Owners partially and it will make the Agile Transformation less robust. So Organizations should do analysis on the existing roles in their Scrum Teams.

• What are the Release Cycles & Customer Collaboration ?

Organizations have to check whether they are following any Release Cycle Calendar to deliver to Customer and whether they are having systematic and robust collaboration approach with the customer. If the organization do not have any proper idea on when/ what/ who of the Release cycles then it is a nightmare for Agile Coach to achieve the collaboration between business management and technology teams.

• How many Agile Coaches are needed for an Organization ?

This is another critical factor to discuss. Very bad thinking from Traditional approach is that hire ONE Agile coach for one entire organization and that coach will train everyone in the organization and hence Agile Transformation will be completed. This is completely wrong. Agile coaching is different than training. And multiple Agile coaches are needed in the organization. Here are my proposed numbers:

• Scrum Team size can be around 5 to 9 members includes Dev and QE.
• A full time Scrum Master Can handle 2 or 3 scrum Teams.
• One product Owner is needed for one Scrum Team or max a product owner can be shared by 2 scrum teams.
• Around 6 to 10 Scrum Teams can form one Release Train or Tribe.
• Release Train Engineer can act as an Agile Coach.
• Optimized size of a Release Train should be of 50 to 75 members.

One Agile Coach is needed for one Release Train/ Tribe i.e. for every 50 to 100 members

One Enterprise Agile Coach is needed for every 10 Release Trains i.e. for every 500 members.

So we are done with Internal Organizational Analysis for Hiring an Agile Coach. Now let us look at the Candidate Analysis.

Agile Coach and Enterprise Agile Coach roles are different and currently we are discussing about Agile Coaches who should be able to coach around 50 to 100 members team size.

STEP-II: To assess multi directional Agile Expertise of a Candidate for Agile Coach role.

So the second step in the proposed approach for hiring modern day Agile coach is about the Candidate Analysis. In this analysis Organization/HR/Leadership has to assess the candidate's Agile Experience in multi direction. Here I am proposing the few aspects for assessing the Candidate for modern day Agile Coach roles.

Though Agile Certifications are important I will also look for ground level (Gemba) experience while hiring an Agile Coach from Now.

And prior Scrum Master Experience is a Critical Factor for Agile coach because only Scrum Masters can see the ground level real world problems of Agile Transformation. It is not about just giving training, it is about to know what exactly blocking the AGILITY, this is very well known to Scrum Masters. So candidate who have STRONG Experience as a Scrum Master can do the better job as an Agile Coach in the modern days.

Here are some of the Important aspects of Agile for Candidate Analysis:

• Does the Candidate have Prior Experience as a Scrum Master.
• Number of Teams handled by the Candidate as a Scrum Master.
• Number of Years of Experience of the Candidate as a Scrum Master.
• Does the Candidate have Prior Experience as a Scrum Team Member.
• Does the Candidate have Prior Experience as a Product Owner or partial PO.
• Does the Candidate have Prior Experience in collaborating with Various Stakeholders like Architects, Engineering Managers, Directors, Product Managers, other Scrum Masters .
• Does the Candidate have Prior Experience in Release Cycle/Program Increment planning and implementation.
• Total Years of Experience (Agile + Non Agile)of the Candidate is also another important factor.

Modern Day Agile Coaches are more than Trainers, they have to be more collaborative in the Technical & Business Management Environment. So the above aspects help you to understand more about the candidate and to assess for requirements matching. Candidates who have the expertise in these multi directional aspects of Agile will definitely derive fruitful results in Agile Implementation. So here are the some guidelines for assessing the Candidates for modern Agile Coaching role.

• Give more priority to Scrum Master & Scrum Practitioner Experience
• Consider the Number of Teams worked with as a critical factor.
• Check about Product Management Knowledge/Experience.
• Check whether the candidate can collaborate with various stakeholders.
• Check whether the candidate seek Empowerment to derive the results.
• Check whether the candidate can understand the current context and can Design the Strategic solutions.
• Candidate should be able to handle the various forces that pull the organization in multi-direction. This comes with the Experience and hence it is suggested to hire candidates with more experience (about 15 years) in total with Agile+Non-Agile.

Scrum Master who worked with around 10 Scrum Teams and collaborated with 50+ Stakeholders and possess 5+ Years of Experience as an Agile Practitioner and have total 15 years of Experience in Agile+Non Agile will be a Good Fit for Modern Agile Coach to coach a Release Trains or Tribes of 50 - 100 members

If we give a pictorial representation of the Skill set of an Agile Coach, it will be like

If the Agile Coaches/Scrum Masters have Experience in these multiple of Aspects of Agile then obviously they will be the Great Agile Change Agents

To conclude the Candidate's Qualities of a modern Agile Coach following are critical factors.

• Number of Years of Scrum Master Experience
• Number of Scrum Teams worked with.
• Number of Years of Agile Practitioner Experience
• Total number of Years of Experience: Agile + Non Agile
• Ability to formulate and implement the Agile Transformation Strategies.
• Should be able to communicate clearly with the Leadership on the loopholes /drawbacks /Challenges of their existing System.
• And should not be confused with the differentiated responsibilities of Agile Coach/ Trainer/ Enterprise Agile coach.

Till now we have discussed about the role of an Agile Coach but not about the Enterprise Agile Coach and Agile Trainer. And a Trainer may not be a great Strategist or Leader. So modern Agile Coach role is completely beyond the Training and need experience in solving the Ground Level Challenges of Agile Transformation.

We may not be able to consider and implement all these points accurately and these are not any strict rules. But this Article helps Agile World to move a Step forward. I request many more Agile Practitioners to Review and provide feedback and that is the way in which we can build better Agile World.

I am very passionate and happy to contribute in the areas of Agile Program & Product Management. If you like the article and want to help the professionals on Agile Practices please re-share this. I am contributing to the Industry for free of cost because I am just Passionate !!

Thank you everyone for being valuable audience for my publications.

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Wish You a Very Happy New Year 2021

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Thank you.

Kalyan Katuru

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