Agile Coaching Workshop - Become a better Scrum Master and Agile Coach

2 Days Classroom Session

Friday, February 23rd & Saturday, February 24th 

8:30am to 4:30pm

Overview

The Agile Coaching Workshop is classroom training program that is unique and one-of-a-kind training that focuses on both the areas of “being agile” and “doing agile” of Agile Coaching. This is a highly interactive workshop that makes ample use of discussions and exercises to help participants hone essential coaching skills like self-awareness, coaching stance, mentoring, facilitation, active listening, powerful questioning and coaching for action. The course explores real world scenarios/situations and challenges, and help you devise powerful solutions to them. It will help the learner differentiate between and among teaching, mentoring, facilitating, consulting, and coaching, and will help gain the skills needed to create a safe environment for meaningful collaboration and healthy conflict resolution within an agile team.

Whether the coach is internal or external to the organization, agile coaching covers a broad spectrum of teaching, mentoring, problem solving, leadership, team-building and mastery of skills and knowledge.

Agile Coaches must challenge organizations to change culture — establishing new paradigms — which permit agile-lean thinking and quickly deliver value. A coach must be competent, professional and ethical — having business and technical knowledge and an understanding of change and the impact it has on individuals and organizations. Few of the elements participants would learn during the workshop:

• The various roles, skillsets and disciplines of an Agile coach – coaching, facilitating, mentoring, teaching and how to develop "your style," moving in and out of those roles while remaining flexible, open and confident.
• The philosophy behind servant leadership and practices and techniques to enable you to become a true servant leader; putting the needs of others first to facilitate the development of high performance teams.
• Agile Coach thinking – the mindset shift necessary to help you, and others, focus on team improvement, value-driven delivery, and leveraging constraints while living in the present moment, staying curious, innovative and having fun.
• Ways to establish mutual trust allowing you to create a safe, supportive environment in which your team can excel.
• Active listening and powerful questioning techniques utilized to leverage your ability to focus on what is being said and maximizing communication and collaboration through seeking and receiving information.

This 2.5-days course takes place over 2 days, including 4-6 hours of preparation work by course participants prior to start of the workshop. 

Who should attend? Who will benefit from the workshop?
This course is designed for:

• Project, Program, and Portfolio Professionals who aspire to the role of Agile Coach.
• Experienced Scrum Masters, Agile Project/Program Managers or Iteration Managers who want a more comprehensive understanding of the complete range of business and Agile coaching skills.
• Agile coaches who want to enhance and improve their professional skills as Agilists and professional coaches.
• Coaches who wish to increase the ability to break through seemingly insurmountable problems with their teams.
• Agile managers, Product Owners and others wishing to access a broader range of skills in working with teams.
• Skilled coaches who wishes to polish your skills and learn a few new tricks and techniques.
• Functional managers or Scrum Masters with some experience as an Agile coach, but Agile seems like it is not working for your teams.
• Someone trying to become a Certified Scrum Coach or ICAgile Certified Expert in Agile Coaching.
• Someone coaching or mentoring Agile teams, but you seem to be caught in a rut or just going through the motions and not making progress.

Pre-Requisites

This is an intermediate level workshop. Participants should have completed basic Agile training - such as Intro to Agile course, a Certified Scrum Master course, or an equivalent (such as organization’s Internal Training program or have completed 6 to 12 months of working with Agile teams. The class prepares you to act as a leader on agile teams and leave with ideas for helping them as soon as you get back. If you are unsure if you meet this prerequisite, you should give me a call and ask.

Course Outline

1. The Agile Coach and Agile Coaching

2. The Coach as Professional Coach

3. The Coach as Facilitator 

4. The Coach as Mentor 

5. The Coach as Teacher

Outcomes this workshop will produce

Mastering agile coaching skills will require both time and practice, this workshop will allow you to:

• Understand and utilize the key skill areas and knowledge areas applied by the best agile coaches.
• Create healthy teams that are resilient, creative, resourceful and resonant.
• Listen fully and ask essential, powerful questions that open up new possibilities and propel people into action.
• Clearly ascertain the distinction between coaching and mentoring and know when to apply each most successfully in any given situation.
• Understand how to address the dysfunctional approaches to conflict teams often develop.
• Coach and mentor people through all kinds of change, especially the change required to occupy agile roles fully.
• See the broader organizational context more clearly and determine the best interventions, and your best actions, to positively affect it.
• You’ll walk away from the course with your personal coaching improvement backlog – a tangible plan you can use to thoughtfully improve your coaching when you’re back on the job.
• You’ll have many new things to try with your teams and you will probably depart with a few provocative ideas to chew on (in fact, maybe wrangle with for a while). All of these outcomes add up to your ability to become the excellent agile coach your teams and organization needs.

Continue Education Credits

Participants of this workshop is eligible to claim Continue Education Credits towards one or more of the following Institutions:

• PMI (PDU): This workshop meets the criteria of PMI’s Leadership PDUs (PDU-L), Strategic PDUs (PDU-S), and Technical PDUs (PDU-T) for various PMI credentials. Technical PDUs are available for the following PMI credentials: ACP, PBA, PfMP, PMP, PgMP, RMP, and SP. Total of 15 PDUs are eligible.

PMI

ACP

PMP/PgMP

L

S

12

12

2

1

T-PDUs

T-PDUs

L-PDUs

S-PDUs

• Scrum Alliance (SEU): This workshop meets the criteria towards SEU requirements for Scrum Alliance’s CSP (Certified Scrum Professional) continued education requirements. Total of 15 SEUs are eligible. 
  


• IIBA (CDU): This workshop meets the criteria towards CDU requirements for CCBA and CBAP certifications. Total of 15 CDUs are eligible.