Day of An Agile Coach

For a long time, my colleagues were asking if I could articulate my days when I was engaged in coaching for transformation. How other coaches could prepare for my life.

I am an agile coach, what does my day look like?

My primary task is to entail implementing the Agile process, principles, and practices across all levels and departments in an organization.

As an Agile Coach, I must apply techniques that enhance collaboration, predictability, transparency, and promote a culture of experimentation and innovation.

In order to accomplish this, the Agile Coach must also incorporate the Agile principles and led by example.

Wait, I have been an agile coach for the last 7 years, and there is a plethora of developments in my days during my years and type of engagement. Most of the periods are more or less the same with variation, with engagement.

The tasks are distributed and deliberately plan to accomplish the overall objective.

There is always a time crunch!!

When I was a Team Level Agile coach:

• When I was a team level coach, I had 4–5 teams to coach for Agile Transformation. My day used to spread with numerous activities like below.
• What did I use to coach? I used to ensure Agile mind-set and agile ways of being are embraced by the Agile team members.
• What was the typical engagement cycle time? It was for 7–9 members scrum teams; it was 6–9 months’ engagement.

What did I use to work out?

• Since morning, I would be in conversation with all the 4–5 teams.
• I used to prepare a plan on which team to approach, on which day in a week, and how long (1–2 hrs max).
• I used to coach on all aspects of Scrum, Lean, Kanban, Flow practices.
• I used to engage in all their events (In rotation to accord with all the team members)
• I used to take the engagement based on the need for numerous training for the team.
• I used to speak one to one with SM or PO or Leaders.
• I used to work with Scrum Masters on Tools they were using to mentor them on tool usages and how to decipher the data for advancement.
• I used to facilitate initially many scrum events and ensure everything is running smoothly and team members are learning from me; I let them drive those after a particular month.
• I used to connect team members among these 4–5 teams where I was engaged for lessons learned to share.
• Most of my days I used to figure out about these teams (Coaching journal preparation for reflection), each individual, their behaviour exchange, etc.
• I used to present team progress in numerous executive meetings and comment about the hurdles and requests for aid.
• I used to associate with the business for the Business team members coaching esp Product Owners and their associates.
• I used to Assess the Scrum Team’s Maturity and organization and coaching to higher levels of maturity.

More or less every day, this is the routine for several months for a Team coach.

Challenges:

• Devoting time to all the teams.
• The numerous types of individuals and various levels of maturity to handle at the same time.
• Leaders expect the miracle to appear at the fastest timeline
• Leaders pursue if the progress is not at the expected level

When I was an enterprise coach, my days looked a bit different.

When I was a more on enterprise coach, I managed to have only 1–2 teams to coach.

What did the routine day look like?

• Team coaching was like usual mentioned above, around 20–30% of the time in a day based on the other engagement.
• The nature of the teams was unique, we used to pick up most of the teams where teams are dealing with high ambiguity and complication.
• 40–60% of the time, I used to look beyond team coaching in a day for diverse organizational agile transformation activities.

What are those?

• I used to engage in report preparation for Agile transformation for the business line/department, which I was accountable for. We used to prepare and present the Agile transformation progress report to senior executives. Define, publish, and educate the organization on key metrics that show the progress of the transformation effort.
• I used to attend weekly stand-ups with business leaders for the business line where I was answerable for the business line agile transformation and communication to the other team level coaches about the development and challenges.
• I used to work for Scaling agile if there are any needs. This calls for an abundance of time for conversation, collaboration for multiple teams. If such an obligation appears, most of the time is gone!
• I used to participate in several Training curriculum preparations. We used to prepare the game for the workshop. We used to strengthen the training agenda for 1 day or 2 days’ duration. With other coaches, we used to dry run that curriculum and execute those training.
• I used to engage for Community contribution example scrum master community and PO community. We used to design and examine with the community members what should be the theme and conversation topics.
• I used to arrange for a coaching clinic and coaching dojo for mid-managers. We used to review and chalk out a plan for how the drive will be and what will be the outcome.
• I was a coaching community member, debating about the organizational impediments, and what can be worked out to eliminate those. Each business line coaches used to serve each other by contributing to each other’s area.
• If there is a foreign visit, we used to prepare the agenda and present the topics and learn from each other. Every quarter there is a coach exchange from each alternative location to understand cultural exchange and learning.
• We used to spend some time for ourselves as a coach in the book club, coaching kata session.
• Organizational assets creation e.g. checklist, template, models etc.
• We used to prepare for Agile day in the organization; it takes several months of preparation to drive for the agile day.

We were invariably busy all the time!

More or less every day, these are the routine tasks for every year for an Enterprise Agile coach. Once I look at my Monday to Friday calendar, one of the other tasks from the above will reflect.

Challenges:

• Making time for all these organization initiatives.
• Managing ad-hoc requests for help from strangers!
• Department level hurdles removal which appeals for structural modifications, silos ways of functioning, dealing with org resistance.
• Collaboration with numerous stakeholders and escalations.
• Our own motivation!

Most of the activities are emergent and many parts are experimental in nature. It was a huge learning opportunity for all of us as a coach! Like this way 5 years passed and the journey is ongoing with new discoveries.