Potential Topics

• Product Owner - Team Interactions
• Strategies to keep yourself motivated and focused when you know that it will be a long road ahead
• Taking Agile beyond a process - making it a way of life at R&D - Development methodology
• Understand how architecture and framework can be built incrementally. Principles and leaders in the thought behind this wave.
• Acceptance test automation practices
• Experiences from others about pair programming
• Being Agile in an distributed environment - Tricks and Tips
• Induction of waterfall guy to an agile environment.
• When to stop making a team agile/When to give up on a team?
• Approaches to reducing cycle time
• Challenges in multiple people work on the same story - developers end up changing the same file, and struggle to merge the changes
• Changing the styles of retrospectives
• Meeting business goals and the myth that Agile "means we don't have to commit to a delivery"
• How are other coaches working in large scale transitions.
• Scalability of small teams to bigger teams - for larger, complex products/projects
• Agile adoption in a distributed team setup
• More information on technical, engineering best practices
• The next step in Agile and Scrum
• Mindset change - If a fresher is to be coached for an Agile team, some quick fixes.
• I would like to learn how Agile can be practiced in services companies in its true spirit.
• How to be assertive and effective
• Manager mindset change
• Team building games and tricks
• Different approaches in facilitations/Coaching styles
• How to manage yourself as Coach when things are going wrong [Crisis Management]
• Practical insights to steer in Agile ways of working in a IT Services org heavily into CMMi/Traditional ways of working.
• Ability to influence or articulate the agile practice rational and lack of standards.
• The key events in the personal journey of the fellow participants that has led them to be a coach
• What can we do better in terms of the agile processes we are following within our own organization to improve productivity, quality of our software.
• What kind of challenges others are facing in implementing agile and trying to use that input in figuring out if we can do anything in our product to help them tackle such issues.
• Prioritizing techniques
• Backlog management for multi site teams
• How are people using agile project management tools like Rally / Serena / TFS / Mingle in reality, if they are?
• What are the coaching and training approaches followed by other coaches?
• How much time do coaches take to adopt agile? are they successful in making teams adopt agile? I mean trainings can be done...showing them the areas for improvement...but what all beyond that?
• I would like to see how people are documenting on agile projects?
• How do people structure contracts and make a bid for an agile project?
• Different strategies used during Agile Coaching.
• Product Owner role
• Kanban
• Lean
• How to promote test driven development culture?
• Agile for Senior management
• How Agile can be used to ensure that we follow continuous improvement paradigm.
• Hopefully to meet coaches from services companies and see how they are effecting change in the organization
• Agile coaching most part (IMO) is targeted at the floor level. What is being done to effect a change at the management level
• What are coaches prescribing for heavy weight CMMi driven organizations/teams
• Is it the same story that coach tell to developers, middle management and senior management? What do you coach and whom?
• Hear few failure stories (Heard enough self congratulatory, hysterical lectures making Agile a silver bullet)
• Understand how architecture and framework can be built incrementally. Principles and leaders in the thought behind this wave.
• Acceptance test automation practices
• Experiences from others about pair programming
• Being Agile in an distributed environment - Tricks and Tips
• Approaches to reducing cycle time
• How are other coaches working in large scale transitions.
• Scalability of small teams to bigger teams - for larger, complex products/projects
• Mindset change - If a fresher is to be coached for an Agile team, some quick fixes.
• I would like to learn how Agile can be practiced in services companies in its true spirit.
• Team building games and tricks
• How to manage yourself as Coach when things are going wrong [Crisis Management]
• What can we do better in terms of the agile processes we are following within our own organization to improve productivity, quality of our software.
• Backlog management for multi site teams
• How are people using agile project management tools like Rally / Serena / TFS / Mingle in reality, if they are?
• How do people structure contracts and make a bid for an agile project?
• Agile for Senior management
• How to promote Agile in a company in a sustained way
• How to use Agile in situations where project is not following agile but like to adopt some benefits of Agile / part of Agile
• What documentation can be done on agile projects?
• Any case study / tips on implementing Agile as well as follow CMM Level processes ( Big companies

What are the responsibilities of an Agile Coach?

• Facilitate delivery that results in value (profit?)
• Train, handhold the team throughout the implementation
• Change the mindset of the team members from waterfall thinking to lean thinking
• Help the managers to make the team self organized
• Facilitate in such a way that the team is able to identify problems and then solve themselves
• Listen to the team
• Train the team
• Be pragmatic in what works for the team in being agile.
• Force true introspection
• Institute the behaviors of 'thinking agile' vs 'doing agile processes'
• Resolving communication bottlenecks and help create an environment/infrastructure that promotes faster and effective communication
• Helping team understand the importance of business value of the stories
• Removing bottlenecks
• Help the team continuously improve
• Helping team understand why things are necessary not what are necessary
• Make management aware about their role in Agile
• Create a sense of empowerment in the team so that they can make decisions
• Helping the team see the real problem
• Take offline inputs from all the team members to see what all improvement action can be recommended
• Review the retrospective
• Review the project offline and see what all agile practices are implemented and what not?
• Give recommendations
• Ensure that team is following agile principles and agile framework
• Listen to all varied opinion of all the team members
• Let the team members discover their own potential by giving them some challenging situations.
• Motivate the team to perform at their best
• Help the team in how to confront development issues
• Provide hands-on tutorial to the team
• Impart their knowledge with the team
• Train the team with activities
• Think in terms of making teams self sufficient in internalizing agile values.
• Let them figure out how they want apply agile in their activities/problems.
• Engage each member of the team to make them understand what are you doing and why are you doing.
• Understand the problem before jumping to provide a solution
• Living agile (basically internalizing agile values and principles)
• Knowing system thinking and applying the same while working.
• Help them run important meeting, making release and iteration plans and help them on the go
• Provide training to team on agile methodology
• Help in making a case so that they have buy-in of important stake-holders like customers/management for investment of time for adopting agile. The productivity can drop down initially and it may even look very chaotic with no value
• Identify top areas to work on and action points against them.
• Identify the new processes that would work in their environment
• Assessment of current team processes (if the project is running) and help the team to participate to find the gaps.
• Bring about ways to share the pain and the gain.
• Reduce the head gaps between individuals.
• Devise process that enhance the working of the team, also tune processes to reduce wastage.
• Ensure all processes running with the team are are made visible.
• Give each individual a sense of belonging to the product and the project.
• Process defined as a way to get things done. So, in someway, the coach will also play the role of scrum master.
• For internal implementation, also try to measure the benefits and share the team, to encourage the team and also validate being on the right track.
• Handhold the team during agile implementation for various process issues and provide the right solution for those.
• Ensure team is well trained on agile, they know the benefit they would see by doing a thing in a particular way. Obviously, first step is to be well trained/informed yourself.
• First and foremost is that the coach has to be an agile evangelist who'll try and convince management to take on the agile journey for better. Will sell the benefits it has to justify the agile implementation.
• Soft skills for the teams
• Getting the teams to think in Agile Values and Principles and not just follow it as a process.
• Getting the team and Management to understand Agile Values and Principles
• Simultaneously sensitize the management, to have rewarding system/personal development plan that enables team work
• Help team realize the importance of metrics to build sustainable trust with external world
• Help them to take owner ship of the problem, you see it, you own it.
• Help the team member see waste/bottle necks in the process
• Help them understand the difference between values, principles, practices
• Help the team member to acquire new mental model, that will make agile (and related concepts) intuitive.
• Emphasizing and facilitating teams to understand the critical engineering practices.
• Steering away from just preaching.
• Applying agile ways that is apt in the context of the project.
• Enable teams to understand the principles behind each of the practices.
• Set Knowledge Management practices
• Performance Coaching/Mentoring
• Facilitating culture & process which eventually generate high performance teams
• Establishing belief in the team about the process
• Help change the mindset of middle and senior management to more hands-off, more mentoring, more agile one
• Challenge the team to improve their visibility and practices regularly
• Reflect to the team to any shortcomings in their way of working and help them improve it
• Help the team find the right way to work e.g. Process definition workshops, help the team setup their work environment and rules
• Make the team aware of best practices in their area of work
• To be able to convince a team through experience and practice rather than spouting dogma.
• To be able to trash perceived best practices which may be irrelevant to a team
• To be able to pick and choose best practices for a situation, based on past experience and common sense.
• To drive the team towards self reliance and self sustenance
• To react to changing requirements
• Very important to gain the trust of the team. Someone whom they could look for.
• Establish the Agile practices in the team and also recognize if everything they do make sense and they don't do it just for the heck of it.
• Talk to different stakeholders on regular basis so that everybody is on the same page on how team is doing.
• Understand the pain area of team and work for it.
• Monitor and track the team's responses to coaching and training guidelines and modify/tweak as necessary when the team does not believe in any suggestion or proposed practices.
• Discipline the team into believing in the practices that have been identified as "best practices" for the team by the coach.
• Motivator- Learner- Helping the team- Reflecting the team's current status
• Facilitator- Coach- Team player
• Help the teams and organizations to realize the benefits of Agile
• Coach, observe, review and provide feedback on the transition progress.
• Help individuals, teams, organizations in understanding Agile values, principles and methodologies, towards adopting Agile methodologies.
• Help teams improve technical capabilities to get better code out.
• Help the team and organization set goals and define mechanisms to inspect and adapt to progress during transitions.
• Mentor the team in agile values, principles.
• The team members understand the need to inspect and adapt
• The team members understand how to think in terms of small releasable feature
• The needs of the business are met by the team, or at least highlight the areas where the improvements can be made.
• Each person on the team understands and practices the principles the underlie the Agile Manifesto
• Make sure that the team way of functioning are closely adhering to the spirit of the Agile Manifesto
• Transparency and visibility in what we do and how we do.
• A team that continuously improve on the way they deliver value.
• Build a culture which enables teams to bring value to stakeholders.
• Help the team continuously improve and innovate
• Be a friend, philosopher, guide to the teamEducate the team on principles and practices of agile
• Inspire responsibility
• Avoid application erosion
• Keep the big picture in mind
• Recommend or suggest changes
• Observe Agile Practices
• Understand that at the end of the day "Agile" is just one set of approaches
• Align business needs with process improvement - at each step, even define success in business terms
• Gain Trust of all stakeholders
• Successfully present Agile in a way that seems to be a way-of-life rather than just another process
• Leverage them from where they are to where they need to be
• Analyze the understanding/knowledge level of the team vis-a-vis Agile
• Facilitate environment for Adoption of this methodology in various projects
• Facilitate Trainings on this methodologies
• Facilitate project assessments on Agile
• Coach projects in initial part of the project and in case of any issues
• monitor the situation closely and take corrective action to increase the effectiveness of Agile Adoption Program
• Should keep business results in mind. Agile methods are just a mean to achieve them.
• Should hand-hold team on agile journey and trust the team
• Must have good rapport with the team (PO, SM, members) and management as relations drive the best behavior. Coach should command the respect, not demand the respect.
• Make team define clearly the objectives of why Agile (or whatever) is being considered and applied.
• Question team on any decision they are making against the objectives they have set for themselves.
• Present various options of practices that may help team meet the objectives. Only present. Which one to be picked up and run must be team’s decision.
• Works on the mind. Not on actions. Make team to find their own course
• Start with coaching values and principles. Never rituals. Any decision making, apply the values and principles.
• Coach team to break down the functionalities into smaller chunks. Doesn’t matter one calls them stories or not. The first thing in Agile to be coached is to be able to vertically slice the requirements into finer tasks at each level.
• Tell good success stories. Spread positive energy
• Set realistic expectations. Prepare team for initial frustrations, failures.