October Meeting: Five Agile Coaching Techniques for Agile Change Agents

When: Wednesday October 22, 2014

Where: Burlington MA (Nuance Communications)

Who: Damon Poole

Description

Five Agile Coaching Techniques for Agile Change Agents

If you are one of the people in your organization that is helping to increase the Agility of people, teams, or the organization overall, then you are an Agile change agent. You don’t have to be an Agile Coach to be an Agile change agent. This session will interactively introduce five Agile Coaching techniques that anybody can apply to help teach and sustain Agility.
Agile Self-Diagnostic. What is Agile? This exercise helps participants quickly and visually understand their level of alignment with the Agile Manifesto. Good for self-discovery and uncovering Agile misunderstandings. Individual activity.
Process Agreement. When individuals, teams, and organizations say they are “doing Agile” or “doing Scrum” or “doing SAFe”, they often mean different things. Rather than using a one-size-fits-all label, consider creating a process agreement. A process agreement lays out exactly what is meant and extends the concept of a working agreement. Group activity.
Sustainable Pace Agreement. The Agile Manifesto refers to a “Sustainable Pace,” but what does that really mean? Is it 35 hours per week? But what if it is 35 hours of nail-biting stress every week? Is that truly sustainable? Group activity.
The “Locked Room”. This is a thought experiment which gives participants an opportunity to see their organization’s culture in a new light, imagine a more Agile culture, and consider the changes required to move to that more Agile culture. Group activity.
Agile Transformation Backlog. When going Agile, there is always a long list of objections, perceived risks, obstacles, and ways in which Agile must be adapted within an organization. Many of these are seen as “the way things are and will always be.” This exercise helps to show that this list is actually the real work of going Agile and serves as the initial material for your Agile Transformation Backlog. Whole room activity.

About Damon Poole

DamonPoole-small[1]Damon Poole  is Chief Agilist in Eliassen Group’s Agile practice. His 24 years of software experience spans from small co-located teams all the way up to global development organizations with hundreds of teams. Damon is a past President and Vice President of Agile New England. He writes frequently on the topic of Agile development, is the author of the web book “Do It Yourself Agile,” and a pioneer in the area of Multistage Continuous Integration and mixing Scrum and Kanban. Damon has spoken at numerous conferences including Agile and Beyond 2010-2012, Agile DC 2012-2013, Q-Con, Agile 2008-2013, and Agile Development Practices and has trained thousands of people on Agile techniques. He is also a founder and past CEO and CTO of AccuRev where he created multiple Jolt Award winning products including AccuRev and AccuWorkflow.