What I learned after a year as Agile Coach
Tags: agile, softwaredevelopment, people, teamwork
Published: 2018-04-29 20:04:25

---
title: "What I learned after a year as Agile Coach"
published: true
description: "After one year as Agile Coach I already learn a lot. Here are my best learnings"
tags: agile, software development, people, teamwork
canonical_url: https://medium.com/@agarcao/what-i-learned-after-a-year-as-agile-coach-108a479d4420
---
Almost at the same time I started working full-time the opportunity to become Agile Coach arose. Since then, has already passed 1 year, and I wanted to share with you some of the learnings that helped me to be a competent Agile Coach:

* __Don’t be afraid to change__
I never saw the change as something negative. It is therefore not surprising that we have already changed several times our processes. We begin by practicing pure SCRUM, change our development process for Kanban and at the moment we try to take the best of both approaches with ScrumBan. We already had a very short periods of development and now plan our work for 3 weeks. I have lost count of how many times have changed the flow of development of JIRA.

These changes, that were choice of all the team, have made us without doubt a better team, which manages to produce more in a shorter period of time, but above all, makes us a happier team.

* __Talk often with your Product Manager/Owner__
Since early that I saw the work as AC profoundly linked to the work of the Product Manager. While I’m more concerned with what the team wants, the Product Manager gives us what the customer wants. Therefore, it was perfectly natural for me that the relationship between PM and AC had to be the best possible.

For that reason, every week, I and the PM have a 30 minute meeting where we align the team priorities and talk about our concerns in relation to the team so that the problems that now exist do not grow and become impossible to solve.

* __Make it happen__
As I was gaining more experience as AC, I realized that it wasn’t necessary that i did all the tasks and was present at all the meetings. Only needed to make it happen. So, I have learned that scheduling meetings where I will not be present and delegate tasks so insistently to the point of being annoying are two of the tasks that bring greater benefit to the team.

* __Follow Ups__
If I were to suggest a task where the gain that it would bring to the team versus the time it took to do was the greatest would without doubt the follow ups at the various team meetings. It is of the greatest interest to the team, realize what was discussed in the meeting and feel that there wasn’t just wasting time with one more long meeting.

Perhaps one of the things that brought more gains to the team was the todo list that is construct based in our daily stand up meeting. Normally, at that meeting, there are a wide variety of topics that are not urgent but are important and have a centralized space where these tasks are, is a great asset to the team

* __Be available__
One of the things that don’t give up while AC are the one-on-one meetings with the various elements of the team. Despite all of them knowing that it is ok to speak at any moment to me about anything, I feel that this is the place where I get more feedback about what they feel in relation to the team, project and the organization. This has a value almost invaluable because besides this feedback it allow to realize what we have to improve in the our team processes.

And you? What help you to be a better Agile Coaches?



_Original: [Medium](https://medium.com/@agarcao/what-i-learned-after-a-year-as-agile-coach-108a479d4420)_