Envisioning Success for Agile Coaching

Photo by Carol VanHook

What does it mean to be successful as an agile coach working within an organization? I don’t think the answer lies in how many people are trained or how many agile teams are operating. It’s not in the average maturity of the agile teams or in their velocities.

A colleague and I were talking about having an organization’s agile coaching group come together to brainstorm what success looks like and then create a strategy for how to achieve it. The idea of running a “remember the future” activity was floated—it’s a great activity that I’ve used in other scenarios. When a group taps into the energy of a desired future, new and vivid ideas can be produced. Yet I’m hesitant to say yes to it in this case.

My fear is that when agilists are asked to imagine what the future organization looks like after successfully adopting agile, they envision the same collaborative culture regardless of the company’s current state, its values, and its needs. Agile’s not a destination, but if we’re asked what the ideal looks like, I think we dream about the same place regardless of what company is our starting point. That feels weird. And while each person’s vision might differ slightly, I think it would be saying more about their personal values than the company itself.

We often get caught up in the culture we’d like to see and lose sight of the business results that make the coaching investment worthwhile.

I find myself wondering how else we can envision where the organizations can go with agile coaching support—to see beyond the culture or behaviors. Johanna Rothman’s question, “What business outcomes do you want to see, in 30, 60, 90 days?” is a fantastic one to me to accomplish that. The shorter time frames generate varied ideas of what might be possible and most beneficial. Focusing on smaller goals also feels more congruent with the agile and lean approaches we promote.

Ultimately, the answer of what success looks like connects back to what problems agile was meant to address for the company. And we need to spend more time having conversations with sponsors and stakeholders to understand success rather than hearing “agile” and saying, “I can do that.” I want to hear more success stories resulting from agile coaching in 2019, and it starts with a clearer vision of success.