The document outlines coaching techniques for achieving fluency in agile practices, emphasizing the importance of team culture, value delivery, and self-organization. Key elements include defining goals, driving working agreements, and fostering a learning organization through deliberate practice and peer learning. It also discusses the integration of measures to assess team performance and motivation in achieving agile objectives.

1. Attaining Fluency
Coaching Techniques - Focus on Goals OVER Processes
Ravi Kumar
ravi@agilefaqs.com
March 27 2015
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2. Setting the Stage
COACHING ? ROLE OF AN
AGILE COACH ?
1 Minute
“…helping to identify
the skills and
capabilities that are
within the person, and
enabling them to use
them to the best of
their ability”
— wikipedia
1 Minute
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3. Individuals and Interactions over Process and Tools
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4. Agile Fluency Model
Team
Culture Shift
Start:
Building Code
A Team’s Path Through Agile Fluency
Focus on Value
★
See progress from business perspective
Redirect teams when needed
Deliver Value
★★
Ship on market cadence
Capture value frequently
Reveal obstructions early
Optimize Value
★★★
Make excellent product decisions
Eliminate handoffs
Speed decision making
Optimize for Systems
★★★★
Cross-pollinate perspectives
Stimulate innovation
Optimize value stream
Team
Skills Shift
Organizational
Structure Shift
Organizational
Culture Shift
For more information, visit:
agilefluency.com
© 2012 James Shore and Diana Larsen.
You may reproduce this diagram in any form so long as this copyright notice is preserved.
Where do want the team to
BE?
What INVESTMENTS are
you ready to make?
What TIME FRAME are you
looking at?
http://martinfowler.com/articles/agileFluency.html
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5. Attaining Fluency
Key Necessities
Benefit Investment
Customer
Engagement
Business Impact
Greater visibility into
teams’ work; ability
to redirect.
Customers involved in
the review process
Value delivery
Low defects and high
productivity.
Understand realistic
market cadence
requirements.
Define IR that map to
market cadence
Higher value
deliveries and better
product decisions.
Validating market
fitment
Monitor ROI for
achieving business
success
Alignment with
organizational goals;
synergistic effects.
Synergy in laying out
future product
direction.
Strategize business
growth
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6. Team Norms &
Working Agreements
Driving Empowerment & Self Organization
makingadifference.typepad.com
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7. The 4 Ps
People
(Goals)
Product
(Outcomes)
Plan
(Success
Strategies)
Process
(Enablers)
Individual Behaviours, Goals and
Aspirations
Accountable: Agile Manager
Responsible: Team
Understand Customer
Expectations, Competition …
Accountable: Product Owner
Responsible: All
Understand current
constraints and
engineering needs.
Accountable: Agile
Manager
Responsible: Team
Execution mechanics
and measures
Accountable: Scrum
Master
Responsible: Team
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8. Distill Into Working
Agreements
People
Goals)
Working
Agreements
Team Goals Release Goals
Acceptance
Criteria
Sprints Sprints Sprints
…
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9. Key Considerations
WHY WE NEED? (OBJECTIVE)
WHAT SHOULD IT BE?
WHEN SHOULD WE ESTABLISH?
WHO CREATES?
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10. Driving Working Agreements
(As a Coach)
Team Retrospectives
Deliberate Practice
Observations from
Sprint Execution 1:1 Meetings
Product Quality
Business Objectives &
Customer Satisfaction
KEY INPUTS
WorkingAgreements
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11. Look Out For These !!!
Are these guidelines driving right BEHAVIOURS (Commitment,
Responsibility, Accountability…)
Are these guidelines consistently VIOLATED
What OBSERVATIONS you notice when the team or
individual violates.
It’s ok to call out but ensure this is done without
breaking SAFETY & TRUST
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12. Deliberate Practice
Practicing Software Craftsmanship
www.lifehack.org
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13. Mandatory Expectations: Self Motivated, Strong Desire to Hone the Skills,
Open Minded, Willingness to Fail Fast and Learn.
People with skills at all levels- testers, developers, leads and managers.
We are not worried on the completion of task but more focused on the best
approach we can take to solve the problem.
Problem to Solve: Conway's Game of Life
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway's_Game_of_Life
A Complete Day of Deliberate Practice!!!
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14. Key Objectives
(As A Participant)
Honing technical development skills.
Writing Self Documenting and Expressive Code.
Explore alternative ideas and design techniques in a ‘safe fail’ environment.
Importance of unit tests.
Test driven development basics.
Improving self-organising capability
Better collaboration and communication across team.
Ability to solve problems by slicing work.
Eliminating key-man dependency.
Embracing uncertainty.
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15. Key Objectives
(As A Coach)
Understand team dynamics and self organising capabilities.
Observe key behaviours of individuals
Open minded and strong influencers
Passive aggressive
Fence sitters
Understand cross functional abilities of individuals.
Understand communication and problem solving abilities of people.
Understand the depth of skills on agile development practices such as TDD,
Refactoring, Expressive Code etc.
WHY DO I NEED TO
UNDERSTAND?
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16. Observations
Participation
People are skeptical
initially
Unlike code retreat people
are subjected to a day long
exercise
Lack of inclination to
learn and experiment.
Individual Influencers
( specially the tech leads and
architects )
Passive pairing
Uncomfortable in
pairing(with certain
individuals) and dropping
code
Similar design and
approach
Lack of understanding and
capability on unit testing.
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17. Experiences
Skill set gap was one of the factors which was lagging for us is what I believe and due
to this kind of sessions we can assess how much we have to improve and the manner
in which we have to think - Developer
I was amazed by the number of solutions we could think off in the little time we had. It
was possible because we paired with different people - Scrum Master
Importance of having Test Driven Development and unit tests in place. The session
helped me in learning a technique to fail fast and learn to become successful. - QA
For any team being introduced to pairing, deliberate practice exercise is a pre-requisite
- Scrum Master
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18. Scaling Agile
Creating a Learning Organization
dartington.org.uk
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19. Learning Organisation
1 Minute
Learning in organizations means the
continuous testing of experience, and the
transformation of that experience into
knowledge - accessible to the whole
organization, and relevant to its core purpose.
- The Fifth Discipline - Fieldbook
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20. Brown Bag Sessions
Create community of practitioners.
Enable peer learning
Role specific communities to learn and share harnessing
mutual interests.
Forum to discuss issues and challenges
Informal sessions that need very little organisation support
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21. Brown Bag Sessions
Weekly or Bi-weekly
Role Specific (Scrum Master, Product Owners & Functional
Managers)
Cross Pollination
Experience sharing of Team Coaching outcomes
New techniques
Team Improvements
Presentations, Talks & Small Workshops
Lightening Talks / Open Space
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22. Beware - Things go wrong
Sacrificing lunch time is a big ask.
Weekly sessions may be overwhelming.
Throwing FREE LUCNH as bait to learning
may not yield right behaviours and results.
Sessions are often thought of as training/
workshops
Lack of motivation
Challenging to commit over and beyond
work responsibilities.
Answers to specific questions
Varying customer contexts and
challenges
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23. Key Measures
Motivators Ensuring Self Organisation
www.epa.gov
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24. Accomplishment & Fun
How are teams doing?
Work PROGRESSION increases
motivation
Team A Team B
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25. Accomplishment & Fun
How are teams doing?
FUN @ Work equally important !!!
Team A Team B
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26. Accomplishment & Fun
How we measure?
No Fun
It’s OK
Good
Loving it !!
None
Something
Useful Totally
Useful
Awesome !!
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27. There’s no ONE
W A Y … . i t ’ s
important for a
coach to have
few techniques
and understand
context.
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28. Thank you
?
Ravi Kumar
ravi@agilefaqs.com
We explored the following
techniques…
Using Agile Fluency @ High Level to Set
Expectations
Setting Team Norms & Working
Agreements
Deliberate Practice
Creating Enablers for a Learning
Organisation
Simple Measures
Hope this was useful…
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