Agile Coaching

Every time I get involved as an Agile Coach in an organization, I notice that marvelous things start happening. Not only for the organization itself, but also for me as a person. I dare say I love this profession and I enjoy very much what I'm doing.

But not everything is a rosy picture. As a Coach, more than agility, I have learnt how to identify my personal issues, in order to be able to accept them or deal with them through my actions. Today I'm facing one of my biggest issue with regard to this marvelous profession, which to me is Agile Coaching.

There are three reasons that made me write this article:

1. People who are new to the Agile world frequently ask me the same question about what I believe are the important steps to follow in order to become a professional in the field.
2. Also, and that happens frequently as well, I come across professional Agile Coaches with whom I don't share common views on concepts, possibilities, skills, tools and opinions when it comes to certain cases, situations or, which to me is the most important, when it comes to providing Agile Coaching services to teams or organizations.
3. Additionally, as a member of the community of Certified Scrum Coaches (CSCs) from the Scrum Alliance, one of my continued responsibilities is to frequently examine applications from candidates for CSCs. In recent years, only 40% of candidates for CSCs managed to obtain the certificate¹.

The reason for the above mentioned, from my point of view, is the lack of profound understanding between professionals dedicated to the Agile environment on responsibilities, skills and education that one requires to take a role of an Agile Coach. The purpose of this new series of articles about Agile Coaching which I proposed to publish is:

• to help professionals who are interested in developing as Agile Coaches find the effective way to combine knowledge and skills required in this beautiful profession.
• to contribute at a much higher level to the creation and development of the profession of Agile Coaching.

This is the way I have found to deal with this weakness in particular.

But before we immerse ourselves in the study of Agile Coaching as a profession, I would like to tell you what to me Agile Coaching is not, and that will be the topic of my next article.

Thank you for these few minutes you have dedicated to read until this point.

Martín

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References

^{1. Pete Behrens, Applying to Become a CSC, Scrum Alliance, Sep. 2011 ↩}