how does an agile coaching team work? a case study
TRANSCRIPT
How Does an Agile
Coaching Team Work?
A Case Study
Maria Paasivaara &
Casper Lassenius
Contents
1. Research Goals and Methods
2. Case Organization
3. How Does a Coaching Team Work?
4. How Do the Coaches Work with the Case Projects?
5. Lessons Learned
6. Benefits of Coaching
7. Challenges of Building Coaching
8. Future
Research Goals and Methods
How Does
an Agile
Coaching
Team Work? Interview study of a
coaching team:
• Semi-structured
interviews
• Coaches &
coached projects
Case Organization
Globally distributed
software projects
• Products & services
• Low cost countries
Large
Scandinavian
IT
Organization
Process change:
• RUP
• Agile
• Agile & Lean
Challenged projects
Coaching team
• Eastern
European site
• 2 -> 8 coaches
Global Coaching
Network?
How Does the Coaching Team Work?
Team Leader
Working in Pairs
Weekly Iterations
Iteration Planning
and Assessment
Retrospective
Meeting
Daily
Meetings
X 3
Quarterly
Retrospective
How Do the Coaches Work with the Case
Projects?
Receiving
Request
Mapping
Phase
Kaizen
Workshop
Set-up
Phase
Roadmap
Mentoring
Phase
Independent
Phase
”Deep and Narrow”
Approach
Lessons Learned
Coaching is a
long-term
relationship
Ensure
executive
support
Involve
everybody from
the team Unify
views in a
”Kaizen”
workshop
Find a
change
agent
Small
improvement
steps
Team owns
the change
”Don’t give them
a fish but teach
them to fish”
Attitude:
”Selling the
change”
Benefits of Coaching
“(…) at the very beginning,
it was that I had somebody I
could ask whether I was
doing things wrong or right.”
“I would say maybe it takes four, five times longer. (…),
because of the project size, because you have to learn
how to do it, but even then you are not sure if this is
correct way, then there are misunderstandings, then
you have to learn based on your failures, and it can be
even more than five times, so…”-
“I think it was this first Kaizen workshop.
It was the major benefit and also
contribution to the project (…) because they
really (…) inspired the customer about changes.”
“I think that without those coaches,
of course we would try to find a way
how to fix the things ourselves, but if
you don’t have experience from tens
of projects and you are not specialized
for the processes and so on, it’s hard
to see all the consequences of the
ideas you have.”
“(…) we where in red numbers (…)
and then it switched, and at the end the
project was very successful on all, (…)
he customer was very satisfied.”
Enabling process
improvements
”Selling” the change
Locating issues
Suggests solutions
”Saves” the project
Customer satisfaction
Coaching team:
more experience,
knowledge, skills,
resources
Avoid mistakes
Challenges of Building Coaching
”Deep and
Narrow” or
”Broad and
Shallow”?
How to
Choose
the Coaching
Cases?
Who Pays
for
Coaching?
Who is a
Good
Coach?
How to Build
a Successful
Coaching
Team?
Future: Global Coaching Network?
www.icgse.org