We are in lockdown at the moment and I am eves dropping on my daughter’s (online) class while I work beside her. The teacher is explaining a new activity to a group of 9 and 10 year-olds. It is a complex new topic (It sounds like graphic design and history of Sydney combined but I am not sure). They haven’t done before and they are trying new technology to help learn it because they are not in the same location (Google Slides with shared comments). It sounds like a challenge to me – they need to learn a new way … Continue reading 3 step agile as defined by school kids

I am gradually reading through a great book called “The power of making thinking visible.” It is meant to be a guide for teachers who want to improve thinking in the classroom, but it is also a great guide for structures that coaches can use for the same purpose at work. What follows is me making my own thinking about some concepts in the book – so flaws in the thinking probably represent the maturity of my thinking here rather than a flaw in the content of the book 🙂 One of the ideas hidden in some of the techniques … Continue reading Are tough questions good questions?

I sometimes question whether I should focus more on coaching the team or changing the environment to unleash the team. Choosing between the two can be a real dilemma for me. However, there are some coaching tools that are useful in both helping the team grow AND creating space to support that growth in the organisation. A “forcing function” is one of those things. The name is bit obscure and like all good ideas in agile coaching, they are used to mean different things to different people at different times, to ensure that any smart curious person can remain confused … Continue reading Forcing functions for good and evil

A while ago now, I was listening to a great presentation by Pat Reed, who is an excellent agile coach. (Editor’s note – if you are interested, you can learn more about Pat by watching this video, which is one of a series of interviews with women who have had a big impact on the agile world). Anyway, back to my story. The presentation was going very well until Pat said “I think one of the greatest challenges for this organization will be to convince our teams to be willing to do less.” People nodded, but Pat paused for effect. … Continue reading I did not say slow down to speed up later

In agile teams, people give each other feedback all the time. Sometimes it is feedback about things that can be done better and often it is about expressing gratitude or pointing out something that was done well. In fact I would say that good feedback is one of the things that drives agile teams forward. Without it, teams can get burnt out, burning through an endless backlog without seeing the progress they have been making. Sometimes though, agile teams can also start suffering from group think, talkfests and unhealthy conversations. This is where a technique called the broken record technique … Continue reading The broken record technique

Here is a conversation that I claim I was once in. I will let you determine whether this is a real thing or just made up. Apprentice coach We keep telling the teams that they should measure and learn from their work so they keep learning. Should we also measure the impact of our coaching? James It is surprising how rarely people ask that question, Grasshopper. Apprentice Coach When you call me grasshopper it makes me feel as though you are getting old and quoting ancient tv shows that don’t even exist anymore. Or are you just evading my question? How … Continue reading How do you measure agile coaching?

When coaching teams, I find that I have a natural bias for teaching them to take charge of the world and apply better techniques to getting their work done. I find, however, that teaching the team is often not enough. As much as they are empowered and keen to improve, they are always part of a larger system. The team members might all want to stop working on pointless features and focus on value, or they might want to get rid of long business cases and piles of unproductive meetings. This would be great if they operated on their own, … Continue reading Quick question – should you coach the team or change the environment?