I have heard many coaches provide various descriptions and metaphors in answering the question: “What is the Role of the Agile Coach?”. Shepard. Guide. Facilitator. Expediter. Sounding-board. Change-agent. Illuminator? Mostly I tend to agree with how coaches view themselves and their role. Sometimes, however, I hear things that trouble me. One view that has grown in popularity — but one I simply cannot get behind — is the notion that the role of the coach is to “…help organizations discover new questions to ask”. So is the role of the Agile Coach truly to help identify questions?
Sorry — I’m just not buying it.
Organizations are up to their necks in questions. They have their fill of questions. If they are shelling out the big bucks to bring in a coach — you better have some answers. There is nothing more annoying than a coach who answers any question with yet another question. Just recently I had a conversation with a coach who adamantly believes it is not a coach’s role to “tell” a new Agile team how to do it — the team should figure it out for themselves. This cannot be right. If the idea is for a company or a team to simply “figure it out” then who needs the coach?
Sorry — I’m just not buying it.
Here is what I think: The coach’s job is to provide answers!
The value of the coach lies in his or her ability to assess an environment, leverage current expertize and past experience, and begin contributing instant value by answering the difficult questions (I beg you, please never answer a question with “…it depends”. Everything always “depends”.) I cannot help but believe that the value of the coach lies in the ability to provide the answers – not just questions.
Think about it. Which would you rather pay for?
I agree. I do think it’s of value also for the coach to be able to teach the team how to identify exactly what the “problem” is and to learn new ways to solve problems.
I guess it’s facilitation and teaching advanced problem solving.. and being available to given them multiple answers. Jerry Weinberg always advises the following, come up with 3 possible answers to everything, or solutions. It’s easy to come up with 2, but that third one usually takes some time.
I’d pay for a coach to ask the RIGHT leading questions because they know the answers, so does the team. They just don’t know how to get it out on the table assemble it correctly and make a plan. Possibly. Or possibly, they have absolutely no clue at all. Maybe there is some form of team dysfunction going on or management stuff.. Who knows until you’re in there.
Ask the right questions
Get enough information
Lead the team through problem solving simulations where they actually identify what THEY think the problem is and adjust where needed if they are way off
Help them solve it…
Just some thoughts….
-Marjie
I’m all for coaches asking the right questions. Without the right questions a knowledgeable assessment of a problem or situation could not be well-assessed. However all too often I see coaches asking questions for the sake of asking questions – like a psychologist perpetually asking “how does that make you feel?”. In my opinion being a good guide means showing the team where the loose rocks are and how to best get across the ravine (or some other climbing metaphor). As a coach it is not enough to just provide general guidance or chest-pounding — that’s just not what customers are paying for. Customers are paying top prices for expediters, risk-reducers and leaders to help get them from where they are, to where they’re going.
Completely agree. I think I’d go crazy if someone was constantly asking me questions and providing no direction.
What about the dilemma when an organization is determined to have self-managed teams however does not provide and guidance, direction or instruction for those teams.
I’ve found they spend much time in chaos and thrash which leads to loss of morale among other things.
I’m all for cross-functional/multi-disciplinary teams but there has got to be some guidance, direction by experienced people who’ve done it over and over and over again…
Amen! I’ve recently finished a 4 day long Agile Coach directed engagement where we flew in people and all we got was an intro into Agile. When questions were or discussions began about how a concept may apply or already applied the coach directed us to move to the next topic. When asked for case studies of real life implementations the coach said there were plenty and stated an agile2010 site and went on to say that he could not tell us anything about how the companies he coached implemented Agile because he was under NDA’s but that if he could he would be a multi-millionaire. LOL!
The last day he said he was done with his material and that we all looked tired. This was at 2:30pm. What a rip off! He’s coming back for 3 and knows nothing about our current process. This for ~$50K.