"The goal of coaching is the goal of good management: to make the most of an organization's valuable resources." -- Harvard Business Review

Agile coaching is a great way to develop a team's or an individual's potential. Agile coaching is an extremely effective method to achieve incredible results, grow capacity, and unleash the potential of an individual or an entire team.

Agile: getting the most out of it
The key to the success of agile methods rests in the hands of the people who are facilitating the process and encouraging self-organization at the level of the team. The “Process Facilitator” is a completely new job category for most organizations and people are often ill-prepared for this role. Providing strong, sustained and direct support for these people is a critical aspect of any implementation of agile methods, particularly in organizations with a history of heavy bureaucracy or in organizations which have no systematic processes at all.

How to determine if you need an Agile coach?
Q: Are you seeing modest results from your team without any growth?
Q: Does your team suffer from complacency - no drive to improve?
Q: Is cross-training among team members an afterthought?
Q: Are your team's stakeholders complaining of poor quality?
Q: Is there a lack of knowledge sharing among the team members?
Q: Do team members revert back to the "old ways" of doing things?
Q: Is your team unable to deliver on its goals?

If you answered yes to 1-2 of these questions, you could benefit from an Agile coach, and you might want to start with phone coaching.

If you answered yes to 3-5 of these questions, you could benefit greatly from an Agile coach, and you would gain the most benefit from a mix of on-site and phone coaching.

If you answered yes to 6-7 of these questions, you could double to quadruple your productivity with an Agile coach, and intensive on-site coaching is the best option.

How can Berteig Consulting help?
You are interested achieving your goals. So are we! Agile coaching in a business or organization setting is much like a personal trainer for your mind. The Agile coach will guide you through a few steps to get the most out of the effort.
(1) Assessment: The Agile coach will will examine the situation, ask many questions, and formulate an accurate picture of the current situation the individual or team is in. The coach will also determine through discussion and consultation with the client to determine the desired situation.
(2) Skills training: The Agile coach will then make a few straight-forward suggestions for the client to practice and become proficient to get closer to the desired situation.
(3) Personalized Coaching: The coach will then proceed with plenty of observation and feedback to be given to the client. This feedback will turn into a series of coaching practices, exercises, and methods to implement over many days and weeks.

Depending on the intensity of the coaching work, the assessment, skills training and personalized coaching will be more or less formal. Here is a little more information about Phone Coaching and On-Site Coaching:

Phone Coaching

Phone coaching is a cost-effective way of helping your teams gain key insights about how to apply Agile-Lean methods in your organization. The phone coaching model is simple to understand and leverage. For a single team, we usually recommend the following approach:

30 minute weekly call with your ScrumMaster/Process Facilitator(s)

30 minute weekly call with your Product Owner/Growth Facilitator(s)

Email support for all the other team members.

Each call is structured to produce the best results by reflecting on work to date, identifying key points of learning, providing targeted guidance on specific Agile-Lean practices, and deciding on an action to take before the next coaching session.

Email support is also structured with weekly reminders and a series of thought-provoking questions that help team members engage in a capacity-building process.

On-Site Coaching

On-site coaching is the most effective and most reliable way to help your team become hyper-productive with Agile-Lean methods. Like a top athlete, your coach will observe a team at work and provide in-the-moment assistance to understand, practice and execute Agile-Lean practices. This is the best way to remove bad habits and replace them with value-producing good habits. For a single team we usually recommend the following approach:

12 weeks of intensive coaching with a 3-day-per-week schedule, followed by

18 weeks of maintenance coaching with a 1-day-per-week schedule and a retainer for emergency support during this period, followed by

12 weeks of phone support coaching as above.

On-site coaching also often goes along with an Agile-Lean Transformation program and thus may have additional aspects to it determined by the transformation effort.

Contact us to find out how you and/or your team can get a great coach!