Agile Coaching Competencies

This whitepaper, written in 2011 by Michael K. Spayd and myself, begins as so:

“Getting good results with Agile is relatively easy: form a cross-functional team, prioritize backlog items, create shippable product each iteration. Basically, follow the process and your team is likely to deliver value. No surprise here. Getting truly great results, especially consistently, is a bit more rare.

Great results require a great team. And great teams rarely just happen. A team aspiring towards greatness often needs a coach: trained, experienced, competent in her craft.

Ah, there’s the rub! How do we create good (even great) Agile Coaches? We maintain that, as an industry we do not know how.”

Since it was written in 2011, we have certainly learned a lot more about the “how” that was just coming into focus then. And still, this seminal work remains one of the primary sources of the profession of agile coaching.

ps. We never wrote the “part 2” that is referenced.