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Agile Coaching by Rachel Davies

Being a consultant and adding ‘Agile’ in front of the term doesn't magically make one a coach. No surprise that people do get confused about what agile coaching is because the term coaching is used widely in non-software contexts, both in sports and also self-help techniques.

The first value of the Agile Manifesto is “Individuals and interactions over processes and tools.” Skills from life-coaching can help you work with individual members of a team, to clarify personal goals and actions to achieve them. However, teamwork is at the heart of the agile development, we need more than a bunch of individuals following their own paths. As in sport, agile coaches work towards creating a focused team applying agile principles.

Techniques for building up physical sports skills don't really transfer into the world of software development. An agile coach's domain is team collaboration and how the work is organized to create a steady stream of valuable working software. You need experience in agile software development to do this well. Then you need to learn about how to coach teams.

Key skills for a coach are to be able to work with people to build rapport, listen effectively, ask powerful questions, and encourage reflection. I want to help a team become more aware of their behaviour and aspirations, to see the options open to them, and encourage them to make changes to achieve their goals. Liz Sedley and I got together to write a practical guide "Agile Coaching" to help aspiring agile coaches start off on the right foot.

Rachel Davies, Agile Experience Ltd, UK.

Agile Coaching is available from our webshop http://www.dsdm.org/webshop/details.asp?prodid=book08&cat=1