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What are Agile Coach skills?

Agile Coach is a leadership role and it requires multiple skills however the skill and experience requirements differ from Organization to Organization.

Below is a list of skills required for an agile coach (The list is arrived at by analyzing 9 agile coach job descriptions across various industries. The skills are not in order and there are overlaps as the terms are used by various companies across organizations)

  • Agile Development
  • Continuous Improvement
  • Problem-Solving
  • Lean Portfolio Management (LPM)
  • Stakeholder Management
  • Conflict Resolution
  • Coaching ( Individual and Team Level)
  • Executive Coaching
  • KPI/Metric Monitoring
  • Organisational Transformation
  • Backlog Prioritisation
  • Decision Making
  • Software Development Lifecycle
  • Growth Mindset
  • Risk Management
  • Inclusive Leadership
  • Collaboration and leadership
  • Strong communication and facilitation
  • Proactively acts to address obstacles
  • Implement positive change
  • Focus on results – creatively solves problems to ensure goals and objectives are met or exceeded
  • Deep understanding of Agile principles, values, and methodologies, with expertise in Scrum and Kanban
  • Culture Transformation
  • Program Management
  • Lean Management
  • Inclusive Leadership
  • Previous experience as a collaborative leader
  • Must have excellent analytical, organizational, and interpersonal communication skills
  • Must be detail-oriented and results-oriented with strong problem solving and time management skills
  • Must have proven experience in working and communicating effectively in cross-functional teams
  • Must have strong teamwork qualities with the ability to establish and maintain solid working relationships with peers, vendors, senior management, and other departments 

What is Disciplined Agile Delivery (DAD)?

Definition – Disciplined Agile Delivery (DAD)

It is a toolkit that contains agile strategies that will guide you to the best way of working (WoW) based on your context. A team/organization is more aware of its context, hence choosing the agile strategies that best suit its context and fit for purpose for your organization. One of the important points to know about DAD is that it comes from the Project Management Institute (PMI). PMI acquired the DAD Agile Delivery in 2019 to get a foothold in the world of agility. Disciplined Agile Delivery: A Practitioner’s Guide to Agile Software Delivery in the Enterprise by IBM software engineers Scott Ambler and Mark Lines. This is NOT a framework, unlike other frameworks in agile like Scrum/Kanban.

Foundation of Disciplined Agile Delivery (DAD)

The Foundation is based on the following –

The mindset of Disciplined Agile Delivery –

The mindset is based on the freedom to choose practices suited for the team’s context as per PMI.org, Disciplined Agile Delivery (DAD) is based on three pillars (1) Principles (2) Promises and (3) Guidelines.

People – The way you collaborate and how you are organized in your teams or enterprises can impact your ability to deliver value. Disciplined Agile Delivery has two roles – Primary and Secondary. Primary roles are commonly found on DAD teams and supporting roles are there to help the primary role takers in delivery.

Agile – Agile is the way that you choose to think and act.

Lean – Lean is an approach that produces value for customers quickly through a focus on reducing delays and eliminating waste which results in increased quality and lower cost.

Serial – Serial captures the essence of the strategy, to work through a progression of phases or stages in a linear manner. DA principle Be Pragmatic supports using whatever approach or life cycle necessary to achieve the desired outcomes. For all life cycles, DA provides a robust set of choices and tools to help teams and organizations be more effective.

WoW ( Way of Working) – Every team is unique and the context is different. The Disciplined Agile® (DA™) tool kit enables teams to choose and later evolve a fit-for-purpose way of working (WoW).

Source – pmi.org

Adoption of Disciplined Agile Delivery (DAD)

Similar to Kanban, Disciplined Agile Delivery (DAD) recommends starting from the current state and then focusing on continuous improvement.

Conclusion –

Disciplined Agile Delivery (DAD) is a tool kit from the house of PMI. It is like a buffet lunch and PMI provides you with the buffet, it is up to the team to customize and decide what works for them. It is prescriptive in terms of the buffet provided by PMI and you have to select from the buffet menu on the other hand it gives the freedom to choose the item as per your interest.

Learn about agile scaling frameworks- What are the agile scaling frameworks?

What is LeSS ( Large Scale Scrum)?

LeSS framework was created by Bas Vodde and Craig Larman. LeSS or Large-Scale Scrum is about taking Scrum and applying the Scrum concepts across multiple teams. LeSS is relatively small and simple. LeSS focuses on the root causes of organizational weaknesses when scaling. In short, LeSS is a scaled-up version of one-team Scrum.

Why did LeSS start?

As per Craig Larman, Frameworks with a lot of definitions and “prescriptiveness” don’t work in terms of large-scale adoption. They aren’t contextual enough. They inhibit empirical process control (a key Scrum principle) and the unique learning and exploration that must take place. Development groups (and the work of development) are just too varied for anything like a detailed highly-defined framework or process, or much of a standard recipe. 

LeSS Structure

LeSS recommends that organizations focus on structures first before rolling out LeSS. LeSS consists of set of principles and experiments. It also provides a framework with rules.

Types of LeSS Frameworks

There are two types of LeSS Frameworks – LeSS and LeSS huge. LeSS can be applied to up to eight teams whereas LeSS huge is applicable for more than 8 teams.

Components of LeSS

  • A Single Product backlogs
  • One Definition of Done for All Teams
  • One Potentially Shippable Product Increment
  • One Product Owner
  • Multiple Cross-Functional Teams (With Single no specialist team)
  • One Sprint

Conclusion

LeSS like Scrum is a framework suited for Product development. If there is no Product, there is no Scrum similarly if there is no product there is no LeSS. There will be a school of thought of applying LeSS to a Non-Product team, however, the results will not be great.

Source –

Learn about agile scaling frameworks- What are the agile scaling frameworks?

What is Extreme Programming?

Extreme Programming popularly called XP is based on a set of engineering practices. XP focuses on technical aspects of software development. The 1st extreme programming project happened in 1996 before the Agile Manifesto was created.

The core of Extreme Programming

  • Customer Satisfaction – Empower developers to confidently respond to changing customer requirements, even late in the life cycle.
  • Teamwork – Managers, customers, and developers are all equal partners in a collaborative team. 
  • Self-organizing team – Focus on the problem and solve it as efficiently as possible as a team.
  • Communication – Extreme Programmers constantly communicate with their customers and fellow programmers.
  • Simplicity – Keep the design simple and clean
  • Feedback – Extreme Programmers get feedback by testing their software starting on day one. They deliver the system to the customers as early as possible and implement changes as suggested.
  • Respect and Courage – Every small success deepens their respect for the unique contributions of each team member. 

Extreme Programming Practices

  • Test Driven Development
  • Customer with the team
  • Pair Programming
  • Code Refactoring
  • Continuous Integration
  • Small Releases
  • Simple Design
  • Coding Standards
  • Collective Code Ownership

Summary

Extreme Programming (XP’s) primary focus is on the technical aspects of development and it puts great emphasis on software engineering practices. XP is all about programming, hence it is fair to say that XP is a set of practices and not a framework. Irrespective of the framework, a team can follow XP practices.

Source – Extreme Programming: A Gentle Introduction.

Scrum Master interview – Technical Questions

Here are technical questions you may encounter as part of the Scrum Master Interview. The intent is to understand your knowledge of Scrum, your experience as a Scrum Master, and your knowledge of Agile.

Refer to this article for a complete set of questions for a Scrum Master interview – https://www.lighttangent.com/how-to-prepare-for-a-scrum-master-interview/

Technical Questions (TQ) – Scrum Master Interview Questions

TQ1 – What is Scrum? https://www.lighttangent.com/what-is-scrum/

TQ2 -What is Agile Manifesto? https://www.lighttangent.com/agile-manifesto/

TQ3 -Was Agile created for Software Development? (Yes, agile methodology was primarily created for software development)

TQ4 – What is Kanban https://www.lighttangent.com/kanban-on-a-page/

TQ5 – What is SAFe? https://www.lighttangent.com/what-is-safe/

TQ6 – What is the Definition of Done (DoD)? https://www.lighttangent.com/definition-of-done/

TQ7 – What is Definition of Ready (DoR)? https://www.lighttangent.com/definition-of-ready/

TQ8What are the scaling agile frameworks? https://www.lighttangent.com/what-are-the-scaling-agile-frameworks/

TQ9 – Which framework is the best in agile?

TQ10 – What is the difference between Scrum and Kanban?

TQ12 – What is the difference between a Scrum Master and Agile Coach? https://www.lighttangent.com/scrum-master-vs-agile-coach/