Agile Coaching

How to Develop Mature Agile Teams

by Krishna Chodipilli | Sep 5, 2022 | Agile Coaching

Overwhelmingly those that claim to come from companies where they are ‘Agile’ or use ‘Scrum’ or call themselves Agile mature team don’t know  without knowing what ‘Agile Maturity’ looks like. These teams focus on practices without understanding the methodology and outcomes, those practices were supposed to drive and demonstrate. I would describe it as immature Agile adoption, sometimes just paying lip service to the concept. This applies to product teams, development teams, new teams and established teams. 

So many, and I mean many, seem to think that a daily stand-up for team members means they are Agile. I have had some teams describe how they are very Agile and follow Scrum closely but then tell me that the plan is made in advance, a lead engineer estimates in man-days (example 1 point = 2 days); the iteration manager individually tasks daily and that integration testing and releases occur in the following sprint. When I ask about retrospectives, I find that on average, 1 in 20 come from development teams that do not hold any retrospectives and those that do, describe quite varied experiences. Simply having a Scrum Master and Scrum Team does not mean being Agile.

Simply focusing and training on running agile practices, being measured by doing these practices will make great lip service teams for agile and this is a superficial agile marker. We should start with investigating and ask ourselves ‘what values are we missing from these teams?’ What would we want more of – Commitment, Respect, Openness, Focus and Courage? These are scrum values and scrum is a popular agile methodology and built on these 5 values. The beauty of working within Agile is that it is all based on values.

As a coach/leader one needs to learn from the teams, investigate what ‘values’ are missing, which values we want more of in every meeting/agile practise they run and find out what makes their heart sing as a team. Work with the leaders to ensure a Psychological safe environment is created where the teams/members taking risks should feel safe and not persecuted for doing so. This is the secret ingredient to nurture a mature agile team.

How mature is your Scrum Team?

To transition your team through the maturity stages, effective communication and collaboration are vital. A mature agile team will be good communicators and collaborators, as well as being confident to work autonomously and take ownership. They become high performing teams. At the other end of the scale, immature teams will work in silos, focussing on individual needs rather than group outcomes.

Communication isn’t confined to vocalising points in Scrum meetings. It can be articulation to stakeholders on platforms like Jira. It could be aiding decision-making with visual lean management systems like Kanban. This is a particularly popular tool for software devops and product management teams.

The cycle of continuous improvement

Teams using Agile practices, by its very nature, are on a constant journey of inspection and adaptation. It’s a lifecycle of product development. But there comes a time when it’s a good idea for an Agile team (mature or not) to take a step back to review and relearn the foundation principles and question why we do these project management practices (Stand-ups, sprint planning, retrospectives, writing stories, estimating etc.). In other words, have a team “reset”. Resetting teams, whilst emphasising the importance of values around these practices and everything we do brings rise to high-performance teams, outstanding outcomes and improved metrics.

Self-organising teams versus being organised by people’s roles or titles.

Empowered to make decisions and they do not wait around to figure out how to make decisions. They will just start making decisions and they will figure out the boundaries.

Believe by being together, that team can do anything and they want any new challenge thrown at them. This will be an outcome of teamwork and  success even more than individual success.

Motivated by trust versus by being motivated by anger or fear.

They own their decisions and commitment. They take ownership of the decisions and commitments they make.

Census driven – They listen to a wide divergence of all ideas from everyone within the team before they decide and act upon one.

There will be ‘Constant constructive disagreement‘ – Teams will constantly talk to one to another and they will argue. As long as it is constructive and striving for continuous improvement this is great.

We are going for mediocre results faster, even though Agile Methods are good for that, what we as Agile coaches need to aim, is better than these. When we focus on Agile Team on these values, these yields to better deliverables and success criteria.

These can be translated to:

Faster results

This sometimes translates into mediocre results faster. If this is better than where we are to start with, then this is okay. But is this enough?

Right results

As teams want to stop themselves from going down blind alleys, this will change mindset to focus on outcomes over outputs. We want to be delivering value and an optimal user experience to our clients and customers.

Astonishing results

This is what agile methodology is built for. When team members look at each other and say ‘Wow, where did that come from?’ or stakeholders say to one to another ‘We could never have thought of that’. Teams will be seen as a ‘hub for delivering organisational value’.

Room for individual and team growth

We should be seeing evidence of a team maturity model. Teams grow together and individual grows during the lifecycle of the project. Professional and personal growth, the whole nine yards. The aforementioned is the bottom-up flow. We will need top-down flow too, where the up-line managers, FLM’s, IM’s, BA’s form a chapter to discussing the challenges, share the blockers and issues and start working together as a chapter to solve them with teamwork. IM’s/anyone can be driving these management chapters where issue backlog can be discussed and hold each other accountable.

Finally, this creates a sense of a ‘Team who can do anything‘: Teams which have this agile mindset will learn entire new domains, skills set, tools and they will evolve into a new team. They’ll work through maturity stages and the product team evolves as does the product lifecycle.

Personally, I have seen organisations who have embraced Agile values, leaving teams in place over a longer period and pump the highest business value initiatives to these teams. Helping the teams to change their mindset is the key. One can be doing practices perfectly and not paying attention to the values, deliverables or outcomes & success criteria.

What Makes a Good Team Leader?

by Ming Wei | Sep 2, 2022 | Agile Coaching, Leadership And Management

What is a team leader — and what makes a great team leader?

Before asking these questions let’s take a look at the leadership skills employed by successful leaders who focus, motivate, and mentor team members working toward a targeted outcome:

• Qualities of a good team leader include emotional intelligence, effective communication and team management skills, a good understanding of team dynamics and team building, and fluency in the business language of the company culture. A great team leader will turn a group of people with talent and strong skill sets into a successful team.
• Responsible for team management and time management, the best leaders have an eye always on the team’s common goal. Their engaged style of leadership focuses on maintaining a positive working environment: It encourages constant communication and feedback that enable the team leader to manage performance effectively and solve problems quickly and decisively.

Now that many workplaces include remote development teams, especially in the healthcare and tech industries, effective project management favours evolving leadership techniques and tools that rely upon online communication. Remote or onsite, leadership skills hold it all together, often called upon to coordinate communication and teamwork on a multi-time zone schedule.

Respect starts at the top

Respect starts with the actions and example of a strong leader. Employee engagement — both with management and other team members —relies upon communication skill, a vital management skill rooted in active listening. Knowing the team and the quality of the strengths they bring to the table clarifies vision, focuses team commitment, and helps the team leader shape their management message with objectivity and integrity.

Great leaders:

Act objectively

A successful team leader is objective, able to understand various points of an argument or discussion, and open to goal-oriented solutions. Objective leaders weigh external factors in order to reach fair decisions that are clear to the team. Open leadership lets team members know that the decisions made are fair and just, and not based upon unclear preferences or presumptions.

Act with integrity

Leaders with integrity are clear about right and wrong, for a start. They communicate openly and directly, keep promises, and are consistent in their expectations and decisions. In return for this good leadership, team members will invest their own work with respect, confidence, and loyalty.

Make the hard decisions

When confronted with a difficult decision — often with limited information — an effective team leader first determines the common goal, the big picture. Effective problem-solving is the team leader’s expertise and responsibility. They weigh the possible consequences of their decision, consider any useful alternatives, evaluate opportunities that may be in play, then decide with the confidence that earns the respect of their team.

Lead by example

Great leaders demonstrate how to succeed, then establish that success as a benchmark for their team. The example of their own expertise earns respect and builds the team’s confidence. Great leaders inspire.

The best leaders are transparent about expectations and objectives, and they demonstrate how to achieve them. Their teams know what the team leader is doing, and how they’re doing it. These realtime learning opportunities often inspire team members to new levels of excellence.

Motivate and empower

Great leaders understand the key to successful teamwork: People give their best when they have a sense of ownership over their work and know that their work is meaningful. To guide this process successful leaders set clear goals and deadlines, then give their teams the autonomy and authority to decide how the work gets done. The best leaders set expectations high and encourage creativity and innovation, and include their teams in the decision-making process.

Embrace failure

Failure is an inevitable part of every success, and a great leader doesn’t shy away from it – they use failure as an opportunity for growth. As Robert Kiyasaki observed: “Winners are not afraid of losing. But losers are. Failure is part of the process of success. People who avoid failure also avoid success.” Point taken.

Leadership by example is a quality of the best leaders. They encourage team members to acknowledge and learn from failure, to acknowledge performance setbacks, and to share their solutions and improvements with the full team.

Whether they result from team leadership miscalculation or a disruption within a team, points of failure can also be points of clarification: Is the team’s skill set adequate to the tasks required? Might it be helpful to re-delegate tasks? To refine a job description? At pivot points like this an able team leader encourages and leads the team to challenge the status quo, to improve performance, and to innovate.

Leadership development and the big picture

Leadership skills are learned most effectively — let’s say only — when combined with experience. Being part of a development team, honing new skills and putting what you already know and have learned into your best work, makes the progress to a common goal vital to leadership development.

When the job description is Team Leader, it’s time to draw upon the active listening skills, project management expertise, and team member retention awareness learned from experience and training. The great team leader respects and encourages every individual team member’s career ambitions and knows how to channel them with initiative clarity and achievable team goals.

When looking at leadership, there are many ways to approach it. If you would like to practice your leadership and coaching skills with someone, you can contact Leadership Tribe and we are happy to get on call with you and discuss the best way to join our high performing Agile Training & Coaching Practice sessions.

The Power of Questions – Facilitation Vs Coaching

by Krishna Chodipilli | Aug 31, 2022 | Agile Coaching, Leadership Tribe

Real learning is bequeathed from seeking, and seeking is brought forth from asking questions, not giving answers. When you ask a question, you are opening up to a realm of infinite possibilities. But when you are only giving answers, you are trapped in the confines of your understanding. Answers are inhibitors; they restrict the possibilities to the solution offered. Questions, on the other hand, are powerful creators and powerful questions are the harbingers of discovery.

If you’re considering individual or team coaching, read on. The process of team coaching or team facilitation can improve team-building, encourage individual and team creative thinking and improved decision-making and output. Whether it’s executive coaching, agile team facilitation or individual coaching – results can be tangible and so positive.

The coach and the facilitator explained

A coach has mastered the art of asking the right powerful questions. Their competence lies in eliciting the coachee into new design thinking by a process of enquiry. The outcome of such a process is a refined realisation that can be transmuted into ready action. It can have a positive effect on mental health as well as professional performance.

A facilitator’s role, on the other hand, is to create a psychological space that encourages thinking. They influence the group to seek and debate on issues concerning beliefs, values and culture. They encourage doubt. They facilitate a healthy environment and group process wherein members can freely ideate, express and question on predetermined agendas without barriers of guilt, shame or prejudice. Hence, while a coach helps you on a journey of discovery, a facilitator creates visibility of such journeys.

The fundamental distinctions of coaching vs facilitation: common questions answered

• Coaching is effective with individuals, dyads or very small groups (not more than 10)

• Facilitation is best complimented for groups, teams, task forces or organisations

• Coaching focuses primarily on an individual’s ecology and world view

• Facilitation is focused on the community

• Coaching services are transactional, usually by one on one meetings or phone calls

• Facilitation services are issue-based, conducted through group sessions, virtual meetings, webinars or workshops

• Coaching sessions are more intimate and best-done face to face

• Facilitation sessions are more dispassionate and best delivered in a ‘one to many forums’.

In agile, coaching and facilitation meet the common ground. Hence the impact is more powerful and sustainable. From the perspective of coaching and facilitation, agile practices enable commonality of function and purpose, as under:

• Agile presumes the client(s) / participant(s) are creative, resourceful and whole such that they can find their solutions

• Agile uses various methods to draw or pull information out of the participant(s) / client(s)

• Agile adopts fundamental coaching and facilitation skills and methods such as Appreciative Inquiry, setting safe environments and relationship guidelines

• Agile advocates neutrality without taking sides on issues

• Agile mandates allowing flexibility and adaptability in using different techniques or methods to meet clients’ or stakeholders’ needs

• Agile facilitation promotes active listening to client needs, to what is being said and more often than not, what is not being said

• Agile promotes delving deeper into strengths, possibilities, change management and transformation through a journey of realisation and discovery.

The significant advantage of the Agile methodology is that it enables you to master both these roles through an experiential process. Agile is a world where the phenomena of seeking a quest and finding numerous possibilities from it are an everyday occurrence. Being Agile is not about giving solutions, it is about seeking the right, most powerful questions and discovering new ways of doing things and decision-making. In the process, finding powerful and path-breaking personal and professional results.

Asking Powerful Questions instead of Giving the answer away!

by Aarti Bhatt | Aug 9, 2022 | Agile Coaching

Most articles that you come across about Agile Coaching say, as an Agile Coach one must ask “POWERFUL QUESTIONS”. Let’s look at what exactly are powerful questions and dive deeper into how and when to use them. Most Coaches and Facilitators ask powerful questions when engaging with team members or larger groups. Powerful questions are not just “good questions” but an overall simple and easy to use an empowering technique to use.

Here is a scenario:

Your team has come across a blocker / impediment, and they go to the SM or Team lead and ask “What should they do?”

Here are few scenarios of how the conversation can go:

a)      The SM/TL says” go ask XYZ person (SE) to help you”

b)      I’ll take care of it and fix it

c)      I don’t know, why are you coming to me?

d)      What do you think you should do next?

In many cases, a lot of leaders go down the path of saying either a, b or c. However many with leadership skills might look at option d and the process of question-asking overall.

As leaders what we don’t realize is that when we are giving out the answers/ solutions, we are hampering the team from learning and working as a team to fix the hurdles. At the same time, we are also reducing the ability of theirs to take ownership, learn from the wisdom of the team and self-confidence.

Powerful questions are open ended and allow individuals to respond to the direction they choose to take, Asking powerful questions allows new possibilities and encourage the individual to dive deeper and discover newer insights and options. It helps everyday leadership to empower teams, unlock their potential, uplift team performance and business results.

Examples of some powerful questions which you can use at any given point are:

• What do you mean?
• Can you tell me more?
• What have you tried so far?
• What are your other options?
• What are the possibilities
• What are your next steps?

These focus on getting various points of view and new learnings from all parties involved. Whether with co-workers or clients, the level of self-awareness increases here with the right questions and reframe objectives accordingly.

There are different models which one can use whilst having a conversation and using powerful questions. The GROW model is one which is simple to use when thinking of how to ask questions.

• G: Goal (What do you want)
• R: Reality (Where are you now?)
• O: Options (What could you do?)
• W: Will/ way forward (What will you do?)

Let’s dive a little deeper into the GROW Model with examples of few questions:

Goal:

The GOAL is addressed at the beginning of the coaching conversation and can be referred to time and again to keep focus moving forward particularly if the coachee is stuck. Identifying the Goal of the conversation sets a path to the conversation and provides clarity on what the coachee wants to achieve since last time.  Some of the questions to use here are:

• What do you want to achieve from this coaching session?
• What goal do you want to achieve?
• What do you want to change?
• What would you like to happen with ______?
• What do you really want?
• What would you like to accomplish?
• What result are you trying to achieve?

Reality:

In this area, it is the exploration of what the coachee experience is. It is advisable to spend more time exploring the reality phase as it gives more clarity about what is happening and how it affects the coachee and the people around the coachee. It also allows them to look at it in a different perspective. Some questions that can be used are:

• What is happening now? What is the effect or result of this?
• What steps have you already taken towards your goal?
• Where are you now in relation to your goal?
• What is working well right now?
• What is required of you?
• What do you think is stopping you?
• What did you learn from _____?
• What have you already tried?
• How could you turn this around?

High angle view of businesswomen discussing in office

Options:

As the reality becomes clearer, you move towards the options. Explore what are the different options they can try. This allows them to think deeper and out of the box and explore ideas they might have not thought of or were hesitant to even think about. Some simple questions that can be asked here are:

• What are your options?
• What do you think you need to do next?
• Who else might be able to help?
• What would happen if you did nothing?
• What has worked for you? How could you do more of that?
• What would happen if you did that?
• What would you gain/lose by doing/saying that?
• What’s the best/worst thing about that option?
• What could you do differently?
• If anything was possible, what would you do?

Will / Way forward

Once you have explored the various options, look at what is the way forward to reducing biases, hesitance and competencies overall. Encourage the coachee to come up with some actions that they can take and can commit to. It is important for them to come up with the actions as ultimately it is them who have to implement / action it. Even if it is one action, that’s alright. Ultimately this conversation is all about the coachee’s agenda and not yours as a coach. Some questions that you can ask in this area are:

• How are you going to go about it?
• What do you think you need to do right now?
• What will one small step you take now?
• What are three actions you can take that would make sense this week?
• When are you going to start?
• What support do you need to get that done?
• What obstacles are getting in the way of success?
• What will happen (or, what is the cost) of you NOT doing this?

It is important to remember that using this model does not mean you have to follow the order to the T. An effective conversation starts with the Goal and Reality and then moves between all 4 elements. It can explore practical tools and open-ended questions as not everything can be answered immediately.

There are many more questions that you can explore and use. If you would like to practice your coaching skills with someone, you can write to Leadership Tribe and we are happy to get on call with you and discuss the best way to join our high performing Coaching Practice sessions.

Virtual Agile Teams

by Krishna Chodipilli | Jul 29, 2022 | Agile Coaching

As we know, productive collaboration between and among agile teams is a fundamental tenet of agile practice. Face-to-face communication in daily meetings forges a shared team dynamic at once attentive and responsive. But the coronavirus has made remote work a reality that’s here to stay; face-to-face meetings now rely on a high bandwidth connection and a well-crafted response to the challenges of the time zones. Demands change and agile adapts.

Virtual team

Remote work by virtual agile squads has its skeptics. Not unreasonably, some think that because online collaboration lacks the immediacy of face-to-face meetings, outcomes may be less productive. But online collaboration is thriving in the workplace and shaping the future of software development. Put skepticism to the side and recognise that globally distributed teams bring powerful advantages to project management and stakeholders alike.

Online, talent and skills from every time zone enter your hiring pool. Businesses may seek the most able employees, and those employees are free to seek the best opportunities. Distributed teams worldwide open possibilities for fresh insights and innovative ideas. Complex agile projects can meet ambitious deadlines as team members working in different time zones hand off assignments to the next waking time zone, achieving in effect a 24 hour / 7 day work week.

But a virtual team needs nurturing, and working in isolation can impact team integration and opportunities for collaboration. There are times when some team members will work without access to stakeholders or even to their team’s scrum master, and their own work and progress may suffer.

Daily stand-up meetings and what are called iteration team syncs make sure that remote team members have all the resources they need. The scrum master can continue to conference with all team members so that goals are on target and methods remain agile.

Whether teams collaborate in person or remotely, agile practices still apply, including the commitment to goals set during Iteration planning, the daily stand-up, and the power of user stories to shape the iterations.

There are powerful collaboration tools to support efficient remote work and project management.

Remote teams

Remote agile teams are committed to agile principles, but there are challenges that must be addressed and tools designed to meet them.

Time zones may be the least agile aspect of remote work. They are immutable. Working with a team in multiple time zones requires thorough planning and support. The first step is to see that distributed teams have the technology they need to work well both separately and within their team. Online meetings, including scrums, standup meetings, retrospectives, and all other events included in iteration execution, depend on technology, a word we use all the time; for distributed teams, it grounds every success.

Remote work is asynchronous

Working together in multiple time zones every team member and every stakeholder participates in an asynchronous product development experience. Focus and flexibility, the same qualities that distinguish face-to-face stand-up meetings and the on-site daily scrum, inform the work in team video conferencing.

Tech tools to span time zones

Online tools that span time zones enable targeted, creative, collaborative, and professional human connection.

• Instant messaging is less time-consuming than email and it lets teams connect and discuss in real-time meetings, webinars, phone systems, and business-based IM platforms.
• Zoom is perfect for small agile teams. With voice and video calls, it can accommodate 1,000 meeting participants or 10,000 webinar viewers.
• WhatsApp is another good choice for remote work. No matter the time zone, this chat tool provides instant messaging, voice calling and video conferencing — and it’s free.
• Slack has earned respect among many agile teams. An instant messaging tool, Trello allows teams to silo conversations in topic or team channels, focusing conversation and helping streamline and clarify the work environment.
• Trello keeps all the integrations, the power-ups, connected in one place. It allows remote teams to break down projects into manageable steps, mark deadlines, and assign task ownership, while preserving at all times a detailed overview of the process.
• Whiteboarding gives quick attention to spontaneous ideas and brainstorming, allowing software development teams to capture, organise, and prioritise them all.

Visual management and virtual tools like these can benefit a remote team in immediate and far-reaching ways. establish virtual routines and restructure the ground rules for collaboration.

PMI and PMP certification

The experience you gain working directly with agile processes is essential to your professional development, and there’s more:

• Agile PMI and PMT certifications will sharpen your agile project management skills for success in every time zone.
• Project Management Institute (PMI®) Project Management Professional (PMP)® Certification
• PMI Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI-ACP)
• Project Management Professional (PMP)® Certification

Leadership Tribe is a globally trusted Agile Training Partner. Our mission is to help you to implement a pragmatic and sustainable business transformation with maximum innovation and minimal disruption. Learn more about virtual agile teams and remote agile planning via our Agile Training courses from Leadership Tribe today.