I recently attended the Scrum Coaching Retreat in Copenhagen. This event is attended by Agile Coaches/Professionals who work together in Scrum Teams; they address problems and opportunities that they care about. The teams work and play together over three days. It is a real shared learning experience.
This time I worked as Product Owner for a team that was addressing the following problem: Misconceptions exist with clients and coachees, in regards to what Agile Coaching is. This confusion has resulted in unqualified people presenting themselves as Agile Coaches who may end up hurting clients and coachees, if not themselves, and ultimately the profession of Agile Coaching.
Unfortunately the world of Agile Coaching is something of a minefield; there are a lot of people who call themselves Agile Coaches. So if I want to hire one, how do I know I am getting somebody with the experience and skills that I need, in both Agile and Coaching?
Our team believed that the first step was to create a definition of what Agile Coaching is, so we created http://whatisagilecoaching.org. As well as a definition it also includes pages around traits, competencies and skills, we also included a code of ethics. This was only four Sprints worth of work, which at the retreat is only 8 hours of actual development time. We are now engaging with the community at user groups and other events to get feedback and refine. You can also provide your feedback on the site.
What is Agile Coaching?
Well our team’s efforts came up with the following definition, which will be refined based on feedback:
“Agile Coaching is a collaboration with people in a thought provoking and creative journey using coaching approaches with an agile mind-set and principles to help individuals, teams and organizations be the best they can be.”
We got Agile Coaches at the event to sign this definition if they thought it was good enough.
Thanks to the rest of the team who worked on whatisagilecoaching.org
- Neal Horner
- Ute Schoeder
- Javier Pérez Fernández
- Rickard Jones
- John Barratt
- Silvana Wasitova
- Daniel Hommel
- Dino Zafirakos
Defining Agile Coaching is merely the first step, we strive to continuously work to professionalise the world of Agile Coaching. The next Scrum Coaching Retreat in Europe will be London 2018. For a full list visit the Scrum Alliance site.
Author: Mark Summers
