Agile Coaching

Agile coaching and mentoring is provided through on-site engagements where teams are coached on worked examples of items they are actively working on. The team coaching involves educational (~1hr "Lean-coffee" ) sessions on techniques pertinent to their current activities. This is often combined with the coach facilitating Agile events (e.g. JAD sessions, Sprint Planning, Daily stand-ups, Sprint Reviews, Reflections/Retrospectives, etc) for at least the first 2 or 3 iterations as a means to learn by example.

The 1-on-1 mentoring uses a "pairing" strategy where key team members (typically in the Scrum Master or Product Owner roles) are assisted and guided in applying applicable Agile practices within their daily context. This helps to clarify their role and expected interactions with other team members.

The overall aim is to transfer the skills and knowledge of key Agile techniques to the team, on-site and as part of their development activities. This is a very concrete way of learning (by doing) and is the logical extension from the Agile training workshops.

Agile Knowledge Base

To sustain a repeatable development process that continues to improve the team needs to have a clear set of practices defined, with domain specific examples and relevant guides, templates and tool customisations. However, this needs to be light weight and easy to adapt.

The Agile coaching service brings with it a suite of material (1 page Cheat Sheets, templates, real-world examples) that give clear guidance on the Agile principles and practices. The Agile experience gained by working with key techniques from XP, Scrum, FDD, Crystal, DSDM, Nexus, SAFe and other agile methodologies has been captured to provide a starting point for a team's Agile knowledge base. All of this material is able to be tailored for both the adaptations of techniques to the organisational context as well as to have the real-world examples from your own domain (easier to relate to).

Mentoring of these techniques through the initial/pilot projects/developments and assistance with the tailoring of these techniques to better suite the tools and environment that you operate with is also provided.

JAD Session Facilitation

Joint Application Development (JAD) is a highly acclaimed technique for capturing the capabilities, Epics, User Stories and Technical Stories of the product. With approximately 75% of all software development efforts failing to meet the customers' requirements, this technique will put your project on the right track from day one.

An independent facilitation services is available to ensure that your customers, domain experts and developers/testers (the "joint" participants) establish, understand and prioritise the scope of the product/system. This is the primary input into an effective Product Backlog.

Agile Assessments

How do you know how Agile you are and where you can improve? As they say "if it's not being measured then assume it's not being done". An unbiased assessment of how your team(s) are applying Agile practices and related tools can be undertaken using over 30 of the key Agile practices and events. This provides a clear "red-green" indicator of where you're at and the "hot-spots" that need to be improved.

The approach is to run a joint/collaborative assessment session with key staff to get a cross-section of perspectives on the applied use and effectiveness of the target Agile practices. This is often an educational exercise in its own right that provides a better understanding of the intent behind key Agile practices as well as a clear appreciation and consensus of any "gaps".

These assignments typically range from two to ten days and an "Agile Improvement Roadmap" identifying the key areas/practices/roles to improve, potential consequences and recommended actions. You can also opt for an ongoing assessment (typically every 6 months) to provide an independent view on the status/progress.