When you do agile coaching you need to take into account the technical side as well. We don't do just organizational improvements, but they are closely related to the technicians who do the work. This applies to software development, marketing, sales, or whatever other knowledge work area where you can implement agile frameworks and methods.

1. Agile Coaching is incomplete
without Technical Coaching
Adrian Bolboacă

2. What Agile Coaching is NOT
● “Agile is a project management methodology” from here
● “Agile coaches train corporate teams on agile methodologies” as here
● “An Agile coach is a person who is responsible for creating and improving Agile
processes within a team or a company’ as here

3. Not surprising that people
get Agile Coaching Wrong!

4. What Agile Coaching is
● “Coaches open people’s minds to new possibilities, which changes the way they
make decisions and interact with each other.” from here
● “Agile Coaching is a collaboration with people in a thought provoking and
creative journey using coaching approaches with an agile mindset and
principles to help individuals, teams and organizations be the best they can be.”
from here

5. Coaching is a form of development in
which an experienced person, called a
coach, supports a learner or client in
achieving a specific personal or
professional goal by providing
training and guidance.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coaching

6. Coaching vs Agile Coaching?
● Coaches are certified by reputable organizations, after thorough training
vs
● Agile coaches become agile coaches just by stating they know what to do

7. Agile Coaching Responsibilities
● People
○ Work with management to empower people and teams
○ Personal Responsibility
● Teams
○ Continuous Improvement mindset
○ Help the teams structure to achieve self-organization
● Way of working
○ Help choose the framework appropriate for the context
○ Adapt the framework to the teams’ needs
● System Thinking

8. Agile Coaching Tools
An agile coach needs to be a:
● Example by their own behavior
● Agile / Lean Practitioner
● Coach
● Teacher
● Mentor
● Facilitator
● Change Agent

9. I prefer to say Organizational
Coaching and not Agile Coaching

10. Coach - essential skills
● Instill trust
● Observe fast and well the environment
● People, “soft”
● Psychology of change
● Public speaking
● Product Development (from idea, to backlog, refinement and user experience)
● Technical, “hard” (about coding, testing, architecture, etc)
● Hands-on, not just consulting (eg consulting: I tell you what to do, but I don’t
know how)

11. A coach does not have all the answers,
but often more questions for guiding
the person / group find their answers.

12. Technical coaching
● “Soft” skills: communication,
● Teacher, Mentor, Coach, Facilitator
● Help choose the best tools for the organisation
● Technical Practices: understand and constantly help the teams improve
(Continuous Integration / Delivery, Testing, Coding, Minimize defects, etc)
● Knowledgeable in Software Architecture and Software Design
● Team / group work (eg workshops, coding dojos, support in implementing tools)
● Pairing (programmers, testers, architects, analysts, security, operations, etc)

13. Concerns
“I fear that for many large companies the generic “Agile Coach,” and the Scrum
specific “Scrum Master,” has become a term for a person who neither programs
nor tests software, who is added to a development team to make it Agile. It’s as
if you could sprinkle some pixie dust on your development teams to make them
more productive, or whatever advantage they can see in the adoption of Agile.”
from here

14. More concerns
● Organizations start adopting a new way of working (maybe agile, maybe not),
only starting from management without understanding the needs of the
technical people the technical improvements (tools, practices) they need
● Often after a few months “Agile Doesn’t Work”. The main reason is that you need
changes on all the stream: business, product, middle management, team,
infrastructure, etc, but mostly on the mindset
● The changes are considered as being easy to do, without understanding the
whole system.

15. Advice
1. Always have organizational and technical coaching
2. Focus on the whole Systems when starting a change
3. Care about the people involved
4. The change instilled by the agile coaches does not work without support from
key roles
5. Careful: specialists, technical people will know how to sabotage the change if
they are not on board, simply because they don’t think it’s better
6. Don’t blame: everybody has a good reason for what they do. Be empathetic.
Find the reason. Change the system.

16. Adrian Bolboacă Blog https://blog.adrianbolboaca.ro
YouTube Channel on technical topics
https://youtube.com/adibolboaca
Digital Anthropos YouTube Channel
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC51Ig1EMjseofmr820PF
CBg
Think. Design. Work Smart.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSEkgmzFb4PnaGAVXt
K8dGA
Works at https://mozaicworks.com
Follow-up adrian.bolboaca@mozaicworks.com
Follow-up https://twitter.com/adibolb
VP of Innovation in Education and Technology@Mozaic Works

17. Thank you