Is Agile Coaching Becoming a Commodity Profession?
Last week alone I received five requests to be an Agile Coach, or a Scrum Master if you prefer (these two terms seem so interchangeable nowadays). The requests are always generic and ever so bland; in fact, I'm deleting them now.
[Nostalgic moment] Oh I remember ever so fondly when Agile Coaching jobs were filled with people who actually knew how to coach teams. And even when they did not learn anything, at least they were actually interested in learning.
Not anymore. Those days are long gone.
Nowadays the entrance criteria to become an Agile Coach is whether or not you can facilitate a retrospective few different ways and are able to find your way around some Agile tracking tool... Oh yes, if you can pretend to listen while nodding your head every so often and saying "I hear you. What do YOU think you should do now?" then that is also a bonus.
It is evident to me that we have entered the industrial revolution phase of Agile adoption and the Agile coaching community is an all too willing victim of this.
You know that you are working in a commodity profession when:
- Run of the mill staff augmentation firms start their own Agile practice.
- You start receiving unsolicited e-mails from 3rd world country recruiters named Prince offering Agile ScrumMaster or Agile Coach opportunities.
- Agile coaching jobs command a whopping $60 an hour, and forget the travel expenses because they won't pay for that (get to California on your own dime!).
- Everyone who has taken a CSM class or read one of Esther Derby's posts is suddenly an expert on team dynamics.
- Yours is the first position the company downsizes when the going gets tough.
- Non-Agile companies start to sponsor Agile events.
In addition, all these certifications by PMI, Scrum Alliance, Scrum.org, ISQI (just to name few) are not making things any better. These days you can pay between 1K-3K, take some exam that has a +90% passing rate and become an official ScrumMaster, Agile Coach, Agile Developer, Agile Tester, Agile Project Manager or a Certified Expert in Agile scaling.
Right now we are at the convergence of two perfect storms: on the one hand we have an army of a bogus Agile experts, and on the other side we have an equally vast army of companies who could not spot a knowledgeable Agile tech if their life depended on it.
Okay, okay… so I am being a bit dramatic and negative. The Agile coaching world isn't all that bleak right?
Comments
I have written an article entitled "How to hire an Agile consultant". It may help clients in the Agile market for the first time.
"A good consultant will seek to understand."
Love it.
Someone can begin to be an agile coach today, but they will need to know quite a lot before they can be trusted by paying clients to coach their teams on production systems.
There really is a lot of personal learning and community learning necessary to become a good coach. The skills are personal, interpersonal, communal and span software development practices, project management, content planning, and human organizational psychology. You really need to be through a few experiences before you are going to be confident and competent to coach, let alone to teach others to coach.
or they just want to be Agile, and they need somebody to help them. While they're still looking through old channels (e.g. hiring websites, headhunters) for qualified Agile Coaches.
And there're some many people would count their Agile experience maybe since they read a book or article with "Agile" in it. Well, I also counted since I read through "Scrum" or "Agile" articles, but I also started practicing since that time.
I could call myself "coach", while I couldn't decide if I will be accepted as "coach".
IMHO, being an Agile Coach implies living some of the Agile roles, having experienced an Agile deployment, understanding what it takes to deploy Agile, having some level of coaching training, and more.
Cheers!
agilarium.wikispaces.com/Le+Coaching+Agile+est-il+en+train+de+devenir+une+profession+banalis%C3%A9e+%3F
In the first place, unless you have been there and done that a few times, and I do not mean success but have experienced failure, you have not earned the right to call yourself an Agile Coach. And that still does not qualify you as a Coach.
People look to you to provide answers and context to any challenge. They expect you to speak from your heart based upon your many and varied experiences, and not from a book or a reference to some expert. They look to you to provide various solutions and be able to justify which particular solution makes sense in the current context.
This can only happen if you have a close and constant interaction with people and teams that are learning, refining and practicing Agile. This interaction never ends as a good Coach learns something new every day. If and when it does, then write a book and stop calling yourself a Coach.
You must live and breathe Agile so that when you speak you are not enforcing but educating and opening people's minds.
A true Coach is able to intuitively provide solutions. Authors, books and experts no longer drive your thought processes or answers as the principles have been internalized and common sense prevails.
True Agile Coaches are few and a fake can be spotted a mile away. The challenge is that most people are unable to discern a true Coach from a book-guru. This is a real world challenge. People are not willing to pay for a real Coach. If they do, most times its because they learnt the hard way how damaging a bad Coach can be.
And then there are the purists... the other side of the coin... they look down on anyone who speaks Agile from their heart. These purists remind me of the my born again Christian friends. They were so filled with the spirit that they took every rule literally and made us 'regular' Christians cringe. These purists are equally damaging to the Agile community as pragmatism has been replaced by rigid religious adherence.
That said, I would agree that the term "agile coach" has become over-loaded and commoditized; the skills, abilities, and competencies to guide an organization through Agile adoption have not. A true "Agile Coach" is able to determine through the discovery process what the client's agenda is and can see through the bogus requests. Many of us actually decline work because it doesn't align with our values or we see a mismatch in expectations. I have fired clients because they have asked me to do things that are not within the realm of what I consider responsible. It's akin to a doctor firing a patient who after years of treatment, counseling, etc. refuses to quit smoking, lose weight, etc. "I am sorry but this relationship can serve neither of us well any longer."
BTW, there is no such certification as "Agile Coach" and certainly, no coach-level certifications where a hopeful can "take some exam that has a +90% passing rate" to become certified. The CSC is a highly-selectiv e, peer reviewed certification that only has about a 30% pass rate. The ICF certifications also have a significant amount of rigor built-in.
Ganbarimasu-
Daniel
I second that. Hard to have a serious and meaningful conversation with an anonymous figure... or a url!
In my opinion while there is also some issue with lot of people pretending to be coaches but at the same time there is also a reality where people have experienced Agile first hand, failed in some and succeeded in some implementations and now are really ready to help others out if someone needs help.
So when we say what we have said above, we should also take a step back and think are we really trying to make this a closely guarded sacrosanct profession just because it is convenient and suits the "Agile Coaching / Consulting" model we are in or is it really only the bad guys out there? In my opinion it is both and we should recognize the other side of the "coaching" problem as well.
I have been into Agile deliveries now for about 7 years now and generally see around me more aware and knowledgeable people around me who have better appreciation of various practices and frameworks which Scrum, XP, Lean and even Kanban have to offer now then what they ( or rather we) knew 7 years back. So there is definitely a portion of natural evolution in this. We should see more coaches and lesser demand as we go forward as people have tried, learnt and improvised. Also I completely agree with what Brian says above about Agile purists, it is really about common sense, being observant, good listening skills and flexibility then academic rigor. Certification or no certification a good program manager or technologists should be able to pick that basic traits up? If they can't then they wouldn't be able to deliver, Agile or no Agile ...
My 2c.
"The ScrumMaster makes sure everyone (including the Product Owner, and those in management) understands and follows the practices of Scrum, and they help lead the organization through the often difficult change required to achieve success with agile development."
- The Scrum Primer
"Scrum Master Service to the Organization
The Scrum Master serves the organization in several ways, including:
- Leading and coaching the organization in its Scrum adoption;
- Planning Scrum implementations within the organization;
- Helping employees and stakeholders understand and enact Scrum and empirical product development;
- Causing change that increases the productivity of the Scrum Team; and,
- Working with other Scrum Masters to increase the effectiveness of the application of Scrum in the organization."
- The Scrum Guide
The message in these two fundamental texts is that a Scrum Master is also an organizational level coach. Theoretically, a "good" Scrum Master will have qualities and skills that enable them to understand the organization as a system. However, in practice, this isn't 100% necessary to act as Scrum Master for a team.
An Agile Coach must understand how organizations work, how people learn, what enhances innovation and what kills it, and many other competencies that transcend team dynamics.
Thus, it might be time to revisit these baseline texts and include the notion of an Agile Coach who is an experienced guide to at the organization level, not just a "team coach".
Ganbarimasu-
Daniel
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