I see so many Agile transformations go like this.
“We want to be Agile. Put out an ad for Scrum coaches (or XP coaches)!”
The next thing is that a bunch of coaches are brought in from many different places, each with their own ideas, and they start working with teams. The result is generally chaos, confusion, fear, uncertainty, and doubt.
As time goes on, issues get worked out, teams show they are doing Scrum (or XP), and the coaches move on to the next engagement. Then the teams start backsliding, returning to how they worked before the Agile coaches arrived.
Why?
To bring about lasting change in an organization requires far more than coaching individuals and teams. While needing to know a new skill is important, it is only one factor in bringing about change, and it is the weakest way to influence change. This is not where a business transformation should start.
To enact real change requires you to start with a clear, measurable, compelling goal. Without this, there is no purpose to coaching since we do not know what we are coaching toward. Note that “We are implementing Agile” is not clear, measurable, or compelling.
Consider WHY you want to make a change. What do you expect becoming Agile will do for your company? How will employees’ lives be better after the change? Why will this be better for your customers? Good marketers know that the most powerful question to answer is WIIFM (What’s In It For Me). Everyone impacted by your change needs to know what is in it for them personally. This is how you make your goal compelling.
Now that you have your goal, what are the things today that are preventing you from being where you want to be? To answer this question, it can be helpful to consider an influencer framework.
There are many influencers of behavior at any company. The team at VitalSmarts described 6 categories of influencers in their book “Influencer” by Grenny, Patterson, Maxfield, McMillan, and Switzler. Start with the 6 categories and find what things in each category are preventing you from achieving your goal.
These categories are:
- Personal motivation – what is motivating individuals to not make change.
- Personal ability – what skills are they lacking that they need in order to make change
- Social motivation – what is their community saying that opposes the change
- Social ability – what assistance is lacking in the community that someone needs in order to change
- Structural motivation – how are we rewarding people for staying with the old way of doing things (metrics, money, praise, promotions)
- Structural ability – how are the physical space, business structures, and business processes preventing people from making change
I think there is another category to consider as well, and that is what behaviors are the managers and executives modeling? People watch successful people and copy them. If the managers and executives are acting opposite to the new way of being, it will be hard to get anyone to change. People will do what you do much more than they will do what you say. Actions do speak louder than words.
Social influence is by far the strongest influencer and should be addressed long before coaching of individuals and teams is considered. Who are the people that others look up to? How can you convince them to champion the change to Agile? Besides talking, what programs can you set up, set as peer mentoring, an Agile community, or a Scrum Master guild that will show people that their social community supports the change?
Structural influence is also much stronger than individual skill or motivation. Many in the Agile community are aware of the importance of physical space to Agile adoption. But if the business processes, metrics, and rewards are for behavior counter to Agile, then coaching individuals and teams in Scrum and XP practices is a waste of time and money. Change of the cultural and physical environment must come before considering bringing in coaches for the teams.
Executives have tremendous power to influence change and so helping executives model the desired behavioral changes will have a strong impact on an individual’s willingness to change.
Now executives are not going to be doing XP practices, and probably not most of the Scrum practices. But what they can do is model fundamental behaviors that Agile depends on such as honest and transparent communication, using failure to learn (instead of punish), working collaboratively with their peers, and recognizing that they do not have to be right all the time, they need to know how to quickly correct their course when wrong.
Modeling these behaviors sends a powerful message to the organization that everyone should behave the same. While training is good, reinforcement with executive coaching on these leadership skills will help executives maintain the new behaviors.
With all that in place, most individuals and teams will quickly pick up the basics of Scrum, XP, or other Agile practices. You can send them to outside classes or offer training inside your company. There will likely be a need for some team coaching for a month or so to support the team as they begin applying the new practices.
As more teams take the training and adopt the practices, the need for Scrum or XP coaches goes away. What you need after that are not generic Scrum or XP coaches but rather experts in the specific areas where teams are struggling.
Are teams having trouble forming? You need an expert on team formation to come in for a short engagement to find out what they are missing and point them on the right path. Teams do not understand pairing? Find someone with extensive experience using pairing in their work and bring them in for a short engagement to find out the problem and help the teams overcome it. Having trouble with retrospectives (this is common over time)? Bring in someone who has many years experience perfecting the art of the retrospective to help the teams learn new and better ways to conduct them.
You do not need long term “Agile” coaches. You need to use the 6+1 areas of influence to create a culture where behaving in an Agile manner is the most natural thing to do. You need people to be good at coaching each other. Then, as teams grow in knowledge and experience with Agile, you may need targeted coaching by experts to help teams with specific issues.
If you are finding a need for a lot of Scrum or XP coaches over many years, look at the 6+1 areas of influence and find out what you are putting in the way that is preventing your teams from maintaining the Agile practices they learned.