Coaching Agile Teams

A Companion for ScrumMasters, Agile Coaches, and Project Managers in Transition

By: Lyssa Adkins

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Paperback | 18 May 2010 | Edition Number 1

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352 Pages

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22 x 16.5 x 2

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The Provocative and Practical Guide to Coaching Agile Teams

As an agile coach, you can help project teams become outstanding at agile, creating products that make them proud and helping organizations reap the powerful benefits of teams that deliver both innovation and excellence. More and more frequently, ScrumMasters and project managers are being asked to coach agile teams. But it's a challenging role. It requires new skills-as well as a subtle understanding of when to step in and when to step back.

Migrating from "command and control" to agile coaching requires a whole new mind-set. In Coaching Agile Teams, Lyssa Adkins gives agile coaches the insights they need to adopt this new mind-set and to guide teams to extraordinary performance in a re-energized work environment. You'll gain a deep view into the role of the agile coach, discover what works and what doesn't, and learn how to adapt powerful skills from many allied disciplines, including the fields of professional coaching and mentoring.

Coverage includes:

Understanding what it takes to be a great agile coach
Mastering all of the agile coach's roles: teacher, mentor, problem solver, conflict navigator, and performance coach
Creating an environment where self-organized, high-performance teams can emerge
Coaching teams past cooperation and into full collaboration
Evolving your leadership style as your team grows and changes
Staying actively engaged without dominating your team and stunting its growth
Recognizing failure, recovery, and success modes in your coaching
Getting the most out of your own personal agile coaching journey

Whether you're an agile coach, leader, trainer, mentor, facilitator, ScrumMaster, project manager, product owner, or team member, this book will help you become skilled at helping others become truly great. What could possibly be more rewarding?

About the Author

Lyssa Adkins has taught Scrum to hundreds of students, coached many agile teams, and served as master coach to many apprentice coaches since 2004. Coaching coaches one-on-one and in small groups, she enjoys a front-row seat as remarkable agile coaches emerge and go on to entice the very best from the teams they coach. Prior to agile, Adkins had more than fifteen years of expertise leading project teams and groups of project managers in large and small consulting firms, commercial software companies, and the Fortune 500, yet nothing prepared her for the power of agile done simply and well. She teaches the “Coaching Agile Teams” training course, which allows agile coaches to learn, practice, and deepen the skills and mind-sets offered in the book.

Industry Reviews

" The subtitle of this book says it is for 'ScrumMasters, Agile Coaches, and Project Managers,' however, its guidance and advice extend to anyone associated with an agile (Scrum) team. It will also certainly help team members better understand their relationship to the work ScrumMasters, agile coaches, and project managers do for the team. And, beyond this, the book can be valuable to anyone working in a coaching capacity with any group of people, expanding the book's application beyond agile-based efforts."

-Scott Duncan, Agile Coach

" Lyssa explains brilliantly how skills from professional coaching can be applied to coaching agile software development teams. What I love about this book is how Lyssa brings practical advice to life by relating it to everyday experiences we all recognize. An essential guide for every agile manager's bookshelf."

-Rachel Davies, author of Agile Coaching

" As I read this book I could actually hear Lyssa's voice, guiding me and sparking precious 'a-ha moments.' This truly is the next best thing to having an experienced and wise coach sitting by your side, helping you be the best coach you can be for your team."

-Kris Blake, agile coach

" Lyssa Adkins presents agile coaching in a gentle style with firm underpinnings. She resolves the paradox of how coaching can help a team to self-organize, and shows how a nurturing environment can push teams to perform better than ever."

-Bill Wake, Industrial Logic, Inc.

" I love Lyssa's three qualities of an agile coach-loving, compassionate, uncompromising-sweet. Every chapter offers a compelling blend of philosophy and action, framework and freedom, approach and avoidance, as any agile book should. Coaching Agile Teams is a good candidate to become dog-eared on my desktop rather than looking good on my bookshelf. The depth and quality of expertise that Lyssa sought, sampled, and sounded out along her own coaching journey have been synthesized in her own voice of experience."

-Christopher Avery, Responsibility Process mentor, www.LeadershipGift.com

" In my experience with agile projects, the agile coach is one of the most important roles to get right. Coaching Agile Teams by Lyssa Adkins gives the details and practical insights for what it takes to be a great agile coach."

-Dave Hendricksen, software architect, Thomson-Reuters

" I remember the first time I met Lyssa at a Scrum gathering in Orlando, and realized very quickly how inspirational she would become in the agile community. This book encapsulates her thoughts and ideas into a fantastic literary work that, I believe, fills a void in our community. We knew the role of a coach was needed, but for a long time we were not sure what that role actually was. We struggled as a community to explain what to do, when to do it, and what to do next. Lyssa not only collates all of the things we as coaches aspire to be, but has provided some great advice with realistic direction on how to be the best coach you can be for your team."

-Martin Kearns, CSC + CST, Principal Consultant, Renewtek ply. Ltd.

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