Course Overview
TOPThis course is designed to teach, practice, and reinforce the core coaching competencies of the Agile coach, enabling the Agile coach to succeed at reaching agreed-upon team and organizational outcomes.
A coach's primary goal is to enhance their client's awareness of practice and behavior — enabling and empowering the client to realize objectives which may be just outside of their reach. Through thoughtful and deliberate engagement, the coach strives to enhance, in a measurable and sustainable fashion, team practices in order to provide focus on the business goals and objectives of the team and organization. Whether the coach is internal or external to the organization, coaching covers a broad spectrum of teaching, mentoring, problem solving, planning, leadership, team-building and mastery of skills and knowledge.
This course has been approved by ICAgile to award students the Certified Professional in Agile Coaching (ICP-ACC) upon successful completion. The ICP-ACC is also a prerequisite to earning the ICAgile Expert in Agile Coaching certification (ICE-AC).
Scheduled Classes
TOPWhat You'll Learn
TOP- The definition of Agile coaching and the set of competencies and practices associated with being a coach.
- How to develop ethical and professional coaching standards and agreements and how to apply them in your coaching engagements with teams and organizations.
- The various roles, skillsets and disciplines of an Agile coach – coaching, facilitating, mentoring, teaching and how to develop "your style," moving in and out of those roles while remaining flexible, open and confident.
- The philosophy behind servant leadership and practices and techniques to enable you to become a true servant leader; putting the needs of others first to facilitate the development of high performance teams.
- Agile Coach thinking – the mindset shift necessary to help you, and others, focus on team improvement, value-driven delivery, and leveraging constraints while living in the present moment, staying curious, innovative and having fun.
- Ways to establish mutual trust allowing you to create a safe, supportive environment in which your team can excel.
- Active listening and powerful questioning techniques utilized to leverage your ability to focus on what is being said and maximizing communication and collaboration through seeking and receiving information.
- Advanced techniques in planning and goal setting in order to help the team/organization achieve their goals and your agreed-upon coaching results.
- Techniques in creating awareness and designing in actions and learning which will assist you in managing progress and accountability within the team.
- The use of ASPE's Agile Coaching Competencies & Practices Framework — a framework for understanding and incorporating Purpose, Proficiency and Practices into your coaching engagements.
Outline
TOP- The Agile Coach
- "Your" definition of Agile coaching
- The Agile coaching mindset
- Defining Agile team facilitation
- Agile team facilitator behaviors
- Assessing one's ability to serve the team
- Responsibilities and skills of the coach
- Achieving self-awareness/self-management in the coach
- Developing more advanced Agile coaching skill
- Setting boundaries for coaching
- Internal vs. external coaches
- Defining the coaching "contract"
- Designing a coaching alliance
- The Coach as Facilitator
A facilitator is someone who helps a group identify common objectives and then offers group processes to achieve the defined outcomes while maintaining neutrality. An Agile Coach facilitates participation, collaboration and engagement from the team and organization. We will discuss and practice:
- Facilitation and the facilitator stance
- Definition of facilitation
- The facilitation of meetings
- Designing meetings for collaboration
- Facilitating full participation and engagement
- Facilitating collaboration
- Facilitating team decision-making
- The Coach as Professional Coach
- The coaching stance
- Maintaining neutrality in coaching
- Self-awareness and self-management
- Holding the client's agenda
- Issue identification and exploration
- Action commitment and achievement
- Professional coaching skills
- The Coach as Mentor
- Mentoring and coaching the Agile roles
- Mentoring and coaching transitions and practices
- Understanding the individual change cycle
- Identifying and handling resistance from individuals
- Mentoring vs. coaching
- The Coach as Teacher
We will explore the differences between mentoring and coaching versus teaching. We will explore different modes and methods of teaching and when one should switch "modes." We will cover:
- Mentoring and coaching versus teaching
- Teaching the Agile basics and mindset shift
- Modes and methods of teaching
- Distinguishing and articulating Agile frameworks
- The Team Coach
We will learn practices and techniques to coach the team through their learning curves toward steadily improved performance. You will learn to coach performance by:
- Understanding team development
- Understanding a model of team development
- Detecting a team's stage of development
- Helping a team move up the development curve
- Setting up the team environment
- Creating team trust
- Learning shared leadership and self-organization
- Continuously seeking to improve
- Defining and identifying high performance
- Knowing and establishing team vs. group mindset/behaviors
- Understanding strategies for dealing with different types of teams
- Understanding your role in the self-organizing team
- Handling conflict and dysfunction within the team
- Identifying and managing 'Group Think'
- Handling organizational impediments
- Promoting leadership engagement
Prerequisites
TOPThis is an intermediate/advanced level workshop. Participants should have completed basic Agile training - such as an ICAgile accredited Agile Fundamentals course, a Certified Scrum Master course, or an equivalent or have completed 6 to 12 months of working with Agile teams. If you are unsure if you meet this prerequisite, you should give us a call and ask.
For all online Agile Coaching Workshop classes, attendees are required to have a webcam with video capability throughout the class.
Who Should Attend
TOP- Project and Program Professionals who aspire to the role of Agile Coach.
- Experienced Scrum Masters, Agile Project/Program Managers or Iteration Managers who want a more comprehensive understanding of the complete range of business and Agile coaching skills.
- Agile coaches who want to enhance and improve their professional skills as Agilists and professional coaches.
- Agile managers, Product Owners and others wishing to access a broader range of skills in working with teams.
- Functional managers or Scrum Masters with some experience as an Agile coach, but Agile seems like it is not working for your teams.
- Someone trying to become a Certified Scrum Coach or ICAgile Certified Expert in Agile Coaching.
- Someone coaching or mentoring Agile teams, but you seem to be caught in a rut or just going through the motions and not making progress.
