How Does an Agile

Coaching Team Work?

A Case Study

Maria Paasivaara &

Casper Lassenius

Contents

1. Research Goals and Methods

2. Case Organization

3. How Does a Coaching Team Work?

4. How Do the Coaches Work with the Case Projects?

5. Lessons Learned

6. Benefits of Coaching

7. Challenges of Building Coaching

8. Future

Research Goals and Methods

How Does

an Agile

Coaching

Team Work? Interview study of a

coaching team:

• Semi-structured

interviews

• Coaches &

coached projects

Case Organization

Globally distributed

software projects

• Products & services

• Low cost countries

Large

Scandinavian

IT

Organization

Process change:

• RUP

• Agile

• Agile & Lean

Challenged projects

Coaching team

• Eastern

European site

• 2 -> 8 coaches

Global Coaching

Network?

How Does the Coaching Team Work?

Team Leader

Working in Pairs

Weekly Iterations

Iteration Planning

and Assessment

Retrospective

Meeting

Daily

Meetings

X 3

Quarterly

Retrospective

How Do the Coaches Work with the Case

Projects?

Receiving

Request

Mapping

Phase

Kaizen

Workshop

Set-up

Phase

Roadmap

Mentoring

Phase

Independent

Phase

”Deep and Narrow”

Approach

Lessons Learned

Coaching is a

long-term

relationship

Ensure

executive

support

Involve

everybody from

the team Unify

views in a

”Kaizen”

workshop

Find a

change

agent

Small

improvement

steps

Team owns

the change

”Don’t give them

a fish but teach

them to fish”

Attitude:

”Selling the

change”

Benefits of Coaching

“(…) at the very beginning,

it was that I had somebody I

could ask whether I was

doing things wrong or right.”

“I would say maybe it takes four, five times longer. (…),

because of the project size, because you have to learn

how to do it, but even then you are not sure if this is

correct way, then there are misunderstandings, then

you have to learn based on your failures, and it can be

even more than five times, so…”-

“I think it was this first Kaizen workshop.

It was the major benefit and also

contribution to the project (…) because they

really (…) inspired the customer about changes.”

“I think that without those coaches,

of course we would try to find a way

how to fix the things ourselves, but if

you don’t have experience from tens

of projects and you are not specialized

for the processes and so on, it’s hard

to see all the consequences of the

ideas you have.”

“(…) we where in red numbers (…)

and then it switched, and at the end the

project was very successful on all, (…)

he customer was very satisfied.”

Enabling process

improvements

”Selling” the change

Locating issues

Suggests solutions

”Saves” the project

Customer satisfaction

Coaching team:

more experience,

knowledge, skills,

resources

Avoid mistakes

Challenges of Building Coaching

”Deep and

Narrow” or

”Broad and

Shallow”?

How to

Choose

the Coaching

Cases?

Who Pays

for

Coaching?

Who is a

Good

Coach?

How to Build

a Successful

Coaching

Team?

Future: Global Coaching Network?

www.icgse.org

Questions?

Contact information: Maria.Paasivaara@tkk.fi

Casper.Lassenius@tkk.fi