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Coaching @ Scale�

May 2020

USA@Agilesparks.com

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About AgileSparks

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AgileSparks helps organizations increase their efficiency and effectiveness while creating a healthier and happier workplace.
Founded in 2008, worked with >400 organizations worldwide.
AgileSparks offers global solutions with offices in Israel, India and the USA.
AgileSparks is a Scrum.org partner and is a Scaled Agile Gold Partner with experienced SAFe Program Consultants (SPCs/SPCTs) on staff and a several Scrum.org PSTs on staff.
AgileSparks' experts have proven experience in transforming over 300 companies worldwide, from small companies/startups all the way to some of the largest Fortune500 companies.
Delivering public courses around the world, on an ongoing-basis.

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Coaching @ Scale

The Importance of Coaching the Agile Release Train

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Dwayne Stroman

SPCT

Enterprise Transformation Coach

My other ‘office’

20+ years as a Software Engineer, Architect

and Product Developer

The last 18 years learning, implementing and coaching agile and lean principles and practices. used his SAFe Program Consultant Trainer (SPCT) role to help several Fortune 100 companies as well as many growing companies in finance, retail, and logistics realize the benefits of a Lean-Agile Mindset

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Internal Coaching is Critical @ Scale

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The RTE is a Coaching Role

“(RTE)… is a servant leader and coach for the Agile Release Train (ART). The RTE’s major responsibilities are to facilitate the ART events and processes and assist the teams in delivering value. RTEs communicate with stakeholders, escalate impediments, help manage risk, and drive relentless improvement.”

Note: highlights are the authors and not from Scaled Agile, Inc.

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The Scrum Master is a Coaching Role

“Scrum Masters are servant leaders and coaches for an Agile Team. They help educate the team in Scrum, Extreme Programming (XP), Kanban, and SAFe, ensuring that the agreed Agile process is being followed. They also help remove impediments and foster an environment for high-performing team dynamics, continuous flow, and relentless improvement.”

Note: highlights are the authors and not from Scaled Agile, Inc.

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Coach to the Core Competencies

All 7 competencies are critical to Business Agility
Mission critical to have ‘On Board’ coaches teaching and exemplifying these competencies

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Coaching Influence

Team Coaching

Team and Technical Agility

Program Coaching

Agile Product Delivery

Leadership Coaching

Lean Agile Leadership

Enterprise

Enterprise Solution Delivery
Continuous Learning Culture
Organizational Agility
Lean Portfolio Management

SAFe® Core Values

SAFe® Principles

Agile Manifesto/Lean Principles

Program

Enterprise

Leadership

Teams

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Allocate at least 25% capacity to coaching

If you don't have time to be on the field with the players, how can you coach?

Empathy - understanding where they are coming from and their perspective
Servant Leadership
Ability to find the WIIFM
Reserving time for the Teams
Analogies/metaphors that matter
Exemplifying Lifelong Learning
Meet them close to where they are at
Facilitate removal of impediments, don’t remove them yourself

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Team Coaching

Coaching where value is delivered

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The Big Picture Supports the Teams

All of this…

…is to support these.

https://www.scaledagileframework.com/

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Coaching Teams at Scale

Team Agility

You need to be the coach, not the expert
Coach team through the Tuckman model
Flow
PDCA Cycles

Technical Agility

Tools are not the answer
You can't scale crappy code/product/value/etc.
Learn the concepts of the technical side
Learn and coach DevOps mindset
T shaped skills
Support time to Build In Quality
Technical Practices

https://www.scaledagileframework.com /team-and-technical-agility/

Forming

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Storming

2

Norming

3

Performing

4

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Coaching Measurements

Scaled Agile provides several excellent measurements, such as the Team and Technical Agility Self-Assessment
Measure what hurts, not what feels good (avoid vanity metrics)
Measurements are always positive; they simply provide us with areas to improve
SAFe Measure and Grow Workshop Toolkit

https://community.scaledagile.com/s/measure-and-grow

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Program Coaching

Coaching the Strategy and Execution of value delivery

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Focus on the Process

The RTE and Scrum Master should focus on how value flows, not what value is delivered. Without this focus on Principles, Process and Practices, continuous improvement will suffer

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RTE

Scrum Master

Principles Process Practices

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Are you Coaching the Program?

Both the RTE and the Scrum Master influence and support the Lean-Agile growth of the Program Team

Coaching the Product Management Team

Techniques, such as WSJF and Design Thinking
Collaboration upstream and downstream
Features and Stories are opportunities, not buckets of work

Coaching the System Architect(s) and System Engineer(s)

Architectural Runway
Intentional Architecture and Emergent Design

System Team

Kanban coaching
Supporting the teams

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Coaching Tips for SAFe® Environments

Relentless Improvement – Use Kaizen Mindset in I&A, Team Retro’s, etc.

Value Stream Mapping – Use to identify bottleneck(s) and measure improvement

SAFe principles – Use as guidance when filling in gaps or reconfiguring

SAFe® Big Picture – Use as a spotlight to identify impediments

Promote a Team of Teams culture – Make it about ‘We”, not “Me”

Use SAFe ® Events to coach all facets of the ART

https://www.scaledagileframework.com/program-increment/

Essential SAFe® – Use as a litmus test to find improvements

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Coaching ART Agility in PI Planning

RTE

Normalized Story Points
Coaching the Roles

Scrum Master
Business Owner
Product Owner/Manager

Share yourself across the teams
Be visible the entire day
Use Energizers

Scrum Master

Raise the Water Level Evenly
Don’t be the Center of Attention
Pre-Conceived is Pre-Committed – Limit pre-PI Planning
Initiate the conversation, don’t be the conversation
Watch the timeboxes
‘Test’ the plan at regular intervals

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Good Objectives involve Ugly Writing

Objective writing should start early in the first breakout

Don’t wait until you have ‘perfect’ objectives; perfect is the enemy of good

As you learn more about the plan from creating stories, potential objectives will emerge. Write these down, no matter how incomplete they are

As you learn more about the objective through further planning-fueled learning, update the objectives

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Program Board Rules

Beware one person changing the board. The Program Board reflects team commitments to each other and the ART; one person can not create a commitment. If you see one person making a change at the board, go investigate
Start early. Don’t wait until the end of each breakout to update the board, continuously update it as you learn more about projected Feature completion, dependencies, and milestone achievements.
Look for anti-patterns.

Most features in later iterations (no swarming)
Too many dependencies (team structures?), etc.

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Iteration plans are “what if?” scenarios

Teams commit to Objectives and the Program Board’s dependencies and Feature deliveries, not iteration plans.
Teams create iteration plans to unearth dependencies, discover objectives, and to learn how to deliver to the business.
Iteration plans will almost certainly change as we iterate through the Program Increment. We are only identifying one of many possible scenarios to deliver on these Objectives.

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Breadth vs Depth

Start with a high level, end to end plan that is full of holes
As time permits, go back and fill in those gaps
Focus on “based on what we currently know, this is our plan. However, we know we have more to learn to fill in some gaps”
Raise the water level evenly. Create some story placeholders, which will generate some Objectives, which will raise some dependencies, which will identify more stories, which will update Objectives, and so on

Apply SAFe® Principle #3: “Assume Variability; Preserve Options”. Start with minimal constraints and a high-level approach and add details as they emerge.

https://www.scaledagileframework.com/assume-variability-preserve-options/

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No Silent Writing

Everyone has stickies and a pen in hand.
Everyone is generating ideas and writing those ideas down.
As an idea is written down, verbalize it. This creates collaboration and can spur other ideas.

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Program

Work directly with the LACE and APMO to further the Lean Agile Mindset
Value Stream Identification/Mapping
Metrics, Measuring and Improvement
Search and destroy queues - “Larger queues amplify variability” - Don Reinertsen

Daily Standups

Reason for the 3 questions
More like a Huddle than a Status
Goal is an updated plan for the next 24 hours

System Demos

Non-optional!
Team Agnostic
Product Manager delivered
Complete the PDCA cycle for the Iteration/PI
The only company that can use PowerPoint to demonstrate progress is the Microsoft Office Team

Backlog Refinement

Features are Team Agnostic
Stories are for the Team, not an individual
Features describe Opportunities to Realize or Problems to Solve, not Work to Do. E.g. “Stop doing work, start solving problems”
Focus on Benefit and Hypothesis as separate components
Keep a cadence

Coaching Program Execution

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Leadership Coaching

Coaching those tasked with creating a better system

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Empathy

It starts with empathy

“Empathy fuels connection. Sympathy drives disconnection.” – Dr. Brené Brown

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Courage

But also requires Courage

“the ability to do something that frightens one…”

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Leadership coaching encourages a Lean Agile approach to solving complex problems

Source: Lean Software Development - An Agile Toolkit; Agile Manifesto

Eliminate waste

Amplify learning

Decide as late as possible

Deliver as fast as possible

Empower the team

Build integrity in

See the whole

Thinking Lean

Processes and

Tools

Individuals & �Interactions

Comprehensive Documentation

Working Solutions

Contract Negotiation

Customer Collaboration

Following

a Plan

Responding �to Change

Valued Over

While there is benefit in the bottom row, the top row is valued more

Embracing Agility

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Coaching Leadership to fundamentally shift from Fixed to Growth mindset

Prioritize Differently

Be Holistic

Assume Variability

Lead vs. Manage

Base prioritization decisions on economic forecasts and early indicators

To allow value-driven sequencing of work and visibility

Take a systems view rather than a local, siloed approach

To clearly see the impact as the value is delivered

Incorporate new learning rather than holding rigidly to plans

Fixed vs Growth mindset

To minimize effort and maximize decision quality

Set direction, remove impediments, and improve the system rather than command and control

To maximize team member engagement

Lean and Agile Leadership Principles

A fundamental change in mindset is needed to realize true value from Lean and Agile

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Enterprise Coaching

Coaching Business Agility

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Continuous Learning Culture

Individual learning can only go so far. Organizational learning is the differentiator
CLC thrives when RTE and Scrum Master both coach and exemplify continuous learning
CoP’s, Brown Bags, Show and Tell, Learning Challenge are some of the many ways you can support a Continuous Learning Culture

Continuous Learning Culture Assessment

https://www.scaledagileframework.com/?ddownload=47334

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Measuring for Continuous Improvement

“When we know little, we only need a little information to be better informed. When we know much (or we think we do) we need much more information to make a more informed decision. “

http://leaningagile.blogspot.com/2019/10/the-measurement-paradox.html

Critical Thought: RTE’s and Scrum Masters must ‘Walk the Talk’ when it comes to continuous improvement

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Continued Learning & Moving Forward

How do I get this journey started?

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Personal Continuous Learning

Communities of Practice

Establish a CoP to share your strengths
Join CoP’s to learn from others where you are weaker
Encourage/facilitate/organize CoP’s for your Agile Team(s) to promote learning and sharing

Learning Patterns

How do you learn? Self assess on your best learning pattern.
Determine the learning patterns of others in your coaching efforts.

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What Are You Reading Now?

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Continued Learning – SAFe® Scrum Master

Learn the basics of working with Agile Teams
How to scale agility across teams
Enable continuous improvement in your team and ART

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Continued Learning – Advanced Scrum Master

Deeper dive on the skills and understanding of a Scrum Master in a SAFe® world
Servant Leadership
Tools and techniques for true process improvement: flow, metrics, lean thinking, etc.
Definitely an advanced class

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Continued Learning – Release Train Engineer

Applying SAFe® theory and practices to the RTE role
Process improvement at scale
Enhanced coaching and facilitation skills

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Continued Learning – Implementing SAFe®

Refresh/renew on SAFe® theory and practices
Learn the advanced skills needed to help launch and sustain an ART
Enable to teach other SAFe® courses
Multiple SPC’s are needed on every ART!

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Additional SAFe® Courses to Advance Your Coaching

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Questions?

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Live Virtual Private/Public Classroom Experience With AgileSparks

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Thank You!

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Additional Learning

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When Team Agility is lacking…

Process without the mindset
Short cuts to fit “current reality”
Team Members not committed - dual (or more) allocation
Lack of Continuous Improvement
All or nothing approach – lack ability to utilize small batch sizes
No coordination or communication with other teams and ARTs

The RTE/Scrum Master will see these systemic issues when:

No one comes to I&A Workshop
Progress is not celebrated
Leadership is wondering where the value is
Demo’s are not celebrations
Etc…

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When Technical Agility is lacking…

No time committed for Built In Quality
Lack of Principles – Understanding/application
Deployments tied to releases
Not measuring impact of quality