Agile Coach Academy

The Agile Coach Academy program is a unique course designed to support the growth of Agile Coaches from good to great. The focus is on building knowledge and growing skills around facilitation and coaching. This program is a delicate and structured blend of theory and practice. There are four distinct modules with a month between each, during which time you will be expected to practice the skills and knowledge learned. This overview outlines the content for each of the 3 day modules.

The program includes:

• 4 modules led by experienced coaches and trainers
• 4 group webinars, 2 weeks after each module to reflect on your practice
• Team community project
• Learning Group for deeper self directed learning
• Learning Journal to learn through your personal reflections
• Course workbook
• Practice, practice, practice

It is important that those who attend are practicing coaches or will be practicing coaches because the learning will be driven and consolidated by your practice. The program assumes a good level of Agile understanding. An ideal candidate will have served for a number of years as a team coach/manager in an Agile environment; and is now looking to operate as an Agile Coach supporting other team coaches (ScrumMasters), Product Owners, teams and Managers on their Agile journey.

The course provides all of the Scrum Education Units (SEU’s) to become a Certified Scrum Professional with the Scrum Alliance. It also provides the knowledge and skills for those working towards the Certified Team Coach accreditation.

Each 3-day module has a theme, which focuses the coach on a different aspect of their role.

This module goes deep into understanding the Agile coach role, the mindset of a coach and extends your toolset as a facilitator of Agile practices.

In this module you will:

• Understand what coaching is and its importance in an Agile context..
• Be able to articulate the difference between coaching, mentoring, teaching and consulting.
• Better know yourself as a coach and understand where you are on your coaching journey.
• What is important to you and crafting your role.
• Learn how to foster an inspect and adapt mindset for yourself and within your team.
• Explore techniques for teaching a Product Owner their role and facilitate them through some of their key responsibilities.
• Learn facilitation techniques to enhance the Scrum Meetings.
• Outline a large group facilitation workshop.
• Be able to present Agile concepts to others.
• Kick-off the community project and establish learning teams.
• Understand and enhance your emotional intelligence.

In module 2 the focus will switch to coaching. This module lays down some of the key skills and practices of coaching, and focuses primarily on the coaching of individuals.

In this module you will:

Reflect on your practice since Module 1.
Progress your community project.
Learn and practice models for holding coaching conversations.
Demonstrate powerful questioning and active listening skills.
Learn and practice models for facilitating difficult conversations.
Describe some fundamental approaches of psychology that can influence a coaching approach
Understand and enhance your emotional social intelligence.

Module 3 continues your coaching journey by focusing on your coaching relationship at the team level.

In this module you will:

• Reflect on your practice since Module 2.
• Progress your community project.
• Develop strategies for dealing with team dysfunctions.
• Learn how to foster creative problem solving and conflict resolution.
• Understand how to set teams up for success, plan a team kick-off
• Learn techniques for fostering greater self-organisation in teams.
• Plan training for Agile Teams
• Explore the process of working across multiple teams.
• Understand and enhance your relationship systems intelligence

For the final module the context shifts to an organizational context and the role of the Agile Coach as an organizational change agent.

In this module you will:

• Review and retrospect on the community project.
• Develop strategies for driving organizational change as a coach.
• Understand and affect organizational cultures.
• Describe the fundamental concepts of Systems Thinking.
• Understand Complex Adaptive Systems and strategies for disturbing the equilibrium.
• Leading in an Agile organisation.
• Describe 2 models for large scale Agile development with 5plus teams
• Reflect on the Academy program and build a personalised development plan.
• Celebrate your learning journey.

• Can demonstrate contributions to significant improvements in self-managed Agile Teams through coaching techniques.
• Demonstrate ability to help individuals and teams to understand and apply Agile and Lean values, principles, and practices effectively.
• Apply facilitation techniques in events for groups larger than a single Scrum Team.
• Deliver basic training on an Agile topic.
• Apply coaching skills through a coaching relationship with at least 2 coaching clients and be able to reflect and critique on execution.
• Apply organisational change patterns to resolve complex issues with teams that you work with

• Participated in at least 2 private or public Agile-related events and have contributed to one of these as an organizer, presenter, collaborator or facilitator.
• Have a mentoring relationship outside of your work environment and describe the benefits this has made.