Sometimes there are moment in life when like a bolt out of the sky you have a major self realisation. I had one of those moments recently when I realised that for a majority of my coaching life I have been pushed and prodded by my leaders/managers to behave as a Purpose Driven Agile Coach.
What is a Purpose Driven Agile Coach?
It is a coach that is asked/told that when they implement Agile that there needs to be a plan to improve capability. Targets are set and tracked weekly. An example could be, “Improve stand-ups within the month”, it is still very open ended but the practice it is linked to and the time frame is set.
I would imagine that this is quite common in organisations with low Agile maturity and very strong old school management mentality. In these cases, organisations want to predict and understand the value that Agile Coaching provides. Often this is linked to definable metrics, before and after of Agile capability in teams, but I often felt that this capability was shallow. I would be pulled and moved onto another team before I had a chance to really embed the change and ensure that behaviours didn’t regress. I was often only given the time to teach the ‘shu’ basics and never the time to allow for trancendence to ‘ha’ (and certainly not ‘ri’).
But lately I have been less pressure bound from a coaching perspective (I still have pressure, it is just different). This release of pressure to not plan has resulted in me using a different model – Opportunistic Agile Coaching.
What is an Opportunistic Agile Coach?
It is a coach that only course corrects or teaches based upon the moment, taking into account both team and individuals mental model readiness, change value and change fatigue. Let’s break this statement down some more.
Mental model readiness is about whether the team or individual is in an intellectual state of readiness to receive the coaching advise/support/inception reflection idea. For example, I might personally believe that the benefits of estimation are limited, but the team may have given the concept little thought. Mental model readiness is about whether they have been asking the same questions themselves or whether I have introduced the inception reflection idea. I say ‘inception reflection idea’ because it really is like the movie Inception – you want to seed the idea or consideration in the team as to whether the practice is worthwhile or not and give them time to reflect on it.
Change fatigue should be fairly simple – how much change is the team or individual currently dealing with? If they are completely new to Agile or are mentally still coming to grips with some concepts of Agile then I am less inclined to make drastic changes. For example, if they are familiar with Scrum terms such as PBI and Sprints, where as I am more comfortable with saying Stories and Iterations, I will just go with their flow and not introduce name conflicts for the sake of it.
Change value is about whether the team or individual will get much (if any) improvements from the change. By improvements I mean faster client feedback, improved customer value, improved personal engagement, etc.
Regardless of which Agile Coaching method, I have always started by mentally creating my own backlog. It is easy for me to see what practices need to be improved and where. Sometimes if there are a lot of issues or the complexity is significant I will write it down as a real backlog and estimate it. To some extent, I have always done coaching with opportunistic elements – ie I gauge priority by change value and do take into account mental model readiness, but when there is no set plan, then it is really very liberating.
As a problem or situation crops up I can assess it against where the item fits in my mental backlog. If it was bubbling up closer to the top then I will use the opportunity there and then to address it. I might let certain opportunities pass as they are still very low on the list, but what might have been tackled four weeks later in a planned approach is addressed on the spot, with immediate context and relevance.
Relevance to revolution vs evolution in Agile models
My realisation of the existance of two Agile Coaching approaches, purpose vs opportunistic, made me then immediately think of the revolution versus evolutionary debate in the Agile community. A purpose based approach is more closely aligned with a revolutionary approach where mass transformation is expected/desired and cookie cutter conformance is achievable due to standardised but complicated teams. A opportunistic approach is more closely aligned with a evolutionary approach where incremental change is made based on team readiness and self-realisation – there is no cookie cutter conformance and there is a realisation that there is no such thing as standard teams, or that teams that are dealing with complex problems.
Conclusion
I know we would all like to think of ourselves as opportunistic coaches, but how many of you are really doing purpose based Agile Coaching and is there a right/wrong way?
Agile Forest 
In my most recent role, I was able to achieve a good mix of the two approaches.
Working with the management team, we would identified a team or group or practice that needed my focused attention. This would receive most of my attention (Purpose Driven).
However I was never expected to put everything I had into the Purpose Driven item. This allowed me to observe other teams, people, etc and to spot issues that needed addressing. I could apply Opportunistic Coaching when the time was right.
Sometimes the items that I identified in an Opportunistic way, changed to be my main focus.
This approach, closely matches my preferred working style. Strong Focus in one area to deliver solid results. However keeping my eyes open to other opportunities. I suspect I would feel a bit constrained if I had to work purely in a Purpose Driven Approach.
Why does it have to be Purpose or Opportunistic coaching, couldn’t you do both? Many people advocate a Contingent Leadership style based upon flexing the appraoch to meet the needs of the monent but doing that within an overall guiding framework or direction. Moss Beth Kanter, the organisational academic talks about Teachable Moments as a way keeping Leaders open to opportunities to develop their staff that occur randomly. Its not that far from the appraoch Andrew mentions.