Coaching has some really important benefits in helping organizations adopt Agile methods, Lean, <insert process improvement of your choice here>.  This is especially true in large, complex organizations with deeply-traditional cultures that seem resistant to change.

Are you considering a coach?

If you aren’t, are your organization and projects at risk?

Fire! Ready, Aim…
Many organizations, thinking that they can’t afford or don’t want to invest in coaching or training, read a book and some articles, and tell their teams that they are now doing Agile.

I have never seen a team get great benefits from Agile in this way.  When I am coaching, and I hear other teams that aren’t being coached say “we’re doing Agile,” I raise an eyebrow (in my mind anyway), and find out if I can spend some time with them to see what they are doing.  Without fail, these teams are doing “Scrum but,” “CrAgile,” “Scrummerfall,” or some other thing that only resembles an Agile method minimal ways.   There are many articles on these topics.

How might coaches be engaged?
I’ve heard that some people use the analogy of a Soccer Team to make the point about what a coach is and how coaches might be engaged:

Wing It
Consider a soccer team.  You could read about soccer in various books and other references, and then attempt to play.  Chances are, though you may learn some of the basic rules, your team will not perform that well without great luck.

The Clinic
You could have this team go through a 1-week soccer clinic to improve their abilities.  They will probably learn some new tricks, maybe a bit of strategy if you’re lucky.  But rarely will such a brief improvement effort result in drastic, long-term improvement as a team.

The Ramp-Up and Check-In
Now consider the same team if they had involvement from the expert who held the clinic for 3-4 months.  The coach could provide the same techniques and training, and apply them to real situations as the teams go through them.  This is FAR more powerful learning – it is contextual, it is about the team and its real challenges.  They can follow guidance as they are working and incorporate it into the way they do things.  The coach can also keep an eye on things that are nearly impossible to observe in the clinic- team dynamics, organizational obstacles, and more – and help any time they find a need.  The team’s game can really improve.  If you have a good coach, the team actually may even get to the point where it is able to improve on its own- perhaps the team members have watched the coach and adopted his/her techniques to observe and question and find improvements.  After a few months of working together, the coach can scale down her/his involvement, perhaps to the point where she/he is called in as needed and to perform periodic check-ins and assessments.

Though this is a far more powerful model, it may not sufficient – for all large/complex/business-critical projects that cost lots of money.  These projects and programs are the “pro” league of the project portfolio, and any opportunity to mitigate risk should be considered.  There may be argument that it is not even sufficient for smaller projects and programs, because much of the value a coach could add happens real-time, as the project is going through its iterations, as challenges arise (unexpectedly).  Depending on how infrequently your teams have help available, they may not be getting the help when they need it most.

The Embedded (the “pro” league of product development?)
Sports teams expected to perform at any professional level follow a different model of coaching – they have coaches and experts that stay around all the time.  The level at which they are expected to perform  makes the cost of great coaches and trainers a good investment.  The risk of not having a coach far outweighs the cost.  How does this compare to your projects?

Do you have a project on which you are spending  millions each year?   That sounds like a risky endeavor, considering project success rates over time (See any popular project success rates research etc).  Having a coach on board or accessible at all times can help your team deal with the infinite number of challenges that it may run in to.   Are you an executive that has “shelved” a multi-year, multi-million dollar project?  This is about you.

The bulk of the coaching value-add is probably not in specific things like Agile practices and techniques, but in other, less concrete things – like dealing with situations that aren’t covered in the books, maintaining focus despite difficult situations, mentoring leaders in the team, facilitating brainstorming, guiding team members in problem analysis, and helping to identify goals for continuous improvement.  If your coach is effective, teams will make measurable improvements every iteration- much more consistently than without one.

Effective coaches are rare, and they don’t come cheap (if you find one that does, start asking around for references ).  But they are a force multiplier, and a massive risk mitigation technique.  The cost of this level of risk mitigation pales in comparison to the benefits  – in continuous team improvement, in mentoring of future leaders, and in the pursuit of organizational agility.

An example…(We have many…)
You may be doing a great job of allowing your teams to follow the guidance they’ve been given and execute Agile very well.  Great job!   Product owner (PO) of project X, one of the highest-budgeted projects in your organization, realizes that a feature set that was originally deemed extremely important has been exposed as a nice-to-have,  or maybe not really necessary at all (a very common situation on well-executed Agile projects).  What should the PO do?

Clearly, the PO should talk to the stakeholders and let them know that we could save $400k on the development of this feature set that we would have otherwise spent.  Is it that clear?  Is YOUR organization ready to handle this situation?  Would the project be deemed a success and the fact that it was ended early be treated as a win, or would the message be that it was ‘canceled’?  What would happen to the project team if they were done early?   Would your organization be able to get this high-performing team a new project that actually has critical importance, or would they be disbanded?  Would your organization be able to re-allocate those funds to the next most critical endeavor?  In many organizations I know of, there are many reasons why a PO in such a position might not choose to terminate the project early (would it be uncertain to the PO what they would move on to?).  These are organizations that have not taken Agile and Lean to the enterprise level.

A coach provides an objective, guiding voice.  Any coach worth his or her salt would help the PO and stakeholders realize the opportunity and the reasons why the opportunity might be tough to take advantage of.  They could then help the right decision to be made, and help the organization improve so that it will be better able to handle this situation in the future – by exposing this “organizational obstacle” to agility and helping the organization resolve it.  If there were a coach in the aforementioned situation, would that have saved the organization $400k in poorly-spent development costs and earned them $___ in benefits from the more important efforts that those funds could be devoted to (which otherwise would be opportunity costs)?

There are many things to consider when you are deciding about hiring a coach.  It’s not all about Agile, training, and practices.  It is about success and risk management, and about prevention of the common phenomenon of less-than-sucessful Agile implementations.