(This post is by guest blogger, Kenny Barnes.)
For our latest retrospective, I created a jeopardy board using JeopardyLabs – Online Jeopardy Template. I used a mix of Agile related categories (Scrum, Agile), items related to the team [Working Agreements, Sprint (more details below)] and something the team is really passionate about (Star Wars). It took about an hour and a half to come up with the questions/answers and setup the board.
While attending the Agile Coaching Institute’s Coaching Agile Teams class a while back the instructors read this poem to the class. It served as a powerful reminder that as an agile coach, or a scrum master/team coach, we must see people and teams as naturally creative, resourceful, and whole if we want to empower them to grow and move forward. As a coach I must be a servant to those I coach. I’m not here to be better than them or to have all the answers. I’m here to serve them in their quest for greatness.
I spent some time coaching one of my clients* recently who was planning an event and needed to enlist the help of others in order to be successful. The problem she was facing involved feeling overwhelmed.
“If you want to be a CST, do something about it. Get out there. Join the Agile community. Go to user groups. Go to conferences. Speak at conferences. I want to see you and know who you are. And you can never stop coaching. You can’t be a good CST if you aren’t coaching. That’s where everything you know comes from. That’s where you gain your credibility and true expertise that can help people.”
A Few weeks ago while attending a Coaching Agile Teams class I heard one of the instructors (Lyssa Adkins) make a reference in passing to “signal to noise” ratio in reference to our ability to communicate with others. Her comment intrigued me because I’d never heard that phrase before, so I started to do some investigation.
Signal-to-noise ratio (abbreviated SNR or S/N) is a measure used in science and engineering that compares the level of a desired signal to the level of background noise.
Signal-to-noise ratio is sometimes used informally to refer to the ratio of useful information to false or irrelevant information in a conversation or exchange. For example, in online communities, off-topic posts and spam are regarded as “noise” that interferes with the “signal” of appropriate discussion.
Today, one of our team members taught me about rubber duck productivity.
This was an experiment where people found that they were more productive when they kept a rubber duck on their desk. When they encountered a problem they were having trouble solving they would talk to the duck and tell the duck the problem.
A common belief is that the difference between coaching and managing is simply asking questions rather than giving orders. I used to believe this. Instead of making decisions for my teams and telling them what to do I would ask them questions and get them to derive their own solutions. I thought that meant I was coaching. But the more I got into coaching the more I really wanted to make sure I was doing it right and being effective. So, over the past two years I have invested in myself and in my craft. I have learned everything I can about professional coaching and gotten mentoring by master coaches.
This week I was walking past a conference room where a Scrum Master was preparing for the team’s retrospective. I had to stop and take a picture because I really loved what I saw. Here are a few of the things that really impressed me.
Sunday, as I got on a flight and headed to Washington, DC for Agile Alliance’s Agile 2015 conference, I was looking forward to spending a week with other like-minded people who believe in living the agile values and principles and who are investing in themselves and in others to grow in their craft. I anticipate this conference all year because I love the full saturation of agile. I love the networking and new ideas. I love the opportunity to see what others in the industry are up to and to learn from them. And I love meeting new people who teach me great things!
Allison Pollard and I were given the opportunity to present a coaching topic called “Change Your Questions ~ Change Your World” this year. It was exciting to see Allison again and partner with her on this great topic and it was an honor to invest in the agile community at large.
This is me. I’m an agile coach and I love being a scrum master whenever my path allows me to step into that role for a few months in order to start up new teams and develop scrum masters. I’ve been scrum mastering a few teams for the past couple of months and having the time of my life! But now comes the real test – mentoring a few brand new scrum masters.
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