Professional Agile Coaching
Description
At scale, it is even more important that the Agile Coaches are professionally trained and competent in the various bodies of knowledge related. We expect Agile Coaches to be proficient in
- Agile, in general
- Scrum
- Kanban
- Lean, including the Toyota Production System and the Toyota Product Development System
- Project Management (while they might not use the ideas of classic project management, they still need to be able to recognise waterfall thinking)
- Management theories
- Leadership theories
- Coaching
- Facilitation, Visual Facilitation
- Negotiation
- Communication
- Psychological Safety
- Scale Principles
- introductory Psychology: motivation, collaboration, goals, ...
- ...
Each of these bodies of knowledge is a lifetime study by itself, so obviously, it will not be possible to be excellent in all of them. Still, it is important to stress how helping organisations to change is a long-term commitment to excellence, with a duty to learn continuously.
It is also important to note how there are two primary learning paths: the "technical" one (Agile, Scrum, Lean, ...) and the "human" one (coaching, facilitation, ...) and that a good Agile Coach should strive for a balanced growth between the two paths.
We also expect an Organisation to support the growth of their Agile Coaches, investing heavily in their growth!