The Road from Project Manager to Agile Coach

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Being a successful PM doesn't mean you'll be a successful Agile Coach

So many things that contributed to my success as a PM are exactly the same things that spell doom for an Agile team.  I am exploring this in my professional life and jotting these thoughts on my blog.  In this lens, I have also linked to some of the materials I have found most useful.

PM to Agile Coach 

This is my blog of Agile musings that come up as I work with teams.

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Coaching Agile Coaches 

Agile coaches coach EVERYONE on the team, including people who want to replace them as the Coach! (This is a good thing, I promise.)
Coaching Agile Teams: A Companion for Scrum Masters, Agile Coaches and Project Managers in Transition
This is my book-in-progress. You can download draft chapters and let me know what you think. What did you learn? What would you change?
Value of an Agile Coach
This Declaration of Interdependence lists the key ways an Agile Coach (or Product Owner or Team Member) brings value to the team by helping the team see themselves and their environment more clearly.
Tao of Holding Space
Now, for a little heavy (but exceedingly useful) philosophy. I flip this open at the start of each day and think about what it says. It usually keeps me from tinkering with my team too much.

Coaching Product Owners 

The Product Owner is key to the success of the team. This person embodies the vision, goals and order in which the team will produce real value (real: as in, real stuff used by a real customer). Their role is hard and they need the Coach's support.
Mike Cohn's Product Owner Course Slides
Great information about what it means to be a Product Owner and what one does with Product Owner-ship.
Book in progress: Agile Product Management: Turning Ideas into Winning Products with Scrum
This is Roman Pichlers' book-in-progress on product ownership. You can download draft chapters and learn from them. You can also influence how the book turns out!

Books on Agile and Leadership 

If you buy something from this list, you'll automatically be making a donation to National Public Radio. Doesn't that feel good?
Leadership and the New Science: Discovering Order in a Chaotic World

Leadership and the New Science: Discovering Order in a Chaotic World

by: Margaret J Wheatley

The best insight a leader can get on what it's going to take to turn Agile into a competitive advantage weapon it was meant to be.

Amazon Price: $14.25 (as of 07/10/2009) Buy Now

Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great

Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great

by: Esther Derby, Diana Larsen, Ken Schwaber

Practical and immediately useful.

Amazon Price: $19.77 (as of 07/10/2009) Buy Now

The Cycle of Leadership: How Great Leaders Teach Their Companies to Win

The Cycle of Leadership: How Great Leaders Teach Their Companies to Win

by: Noel M. Tichy

Agile meets Six Sigma tools (although neither would admit it).

Amazon Price: $14.41 (as of 07/10/2009) Buy Now

Collaboration Explained: Facilitation Skills for Software Project Leaders (Agile Software Development Series)

Collaboration Explained: Facilitation Skills for Software Project Leaders (Agile Software Development Series)

by: Jean Tabaka

This book was recommended to me by 3 people a 72 hour period and for good reason. Among other gems, check out the definition of concensus.

Amazon Price: $46.47 (as of 07/10/2009) Buy Now

Agile Estimating and Planning (Robert C. Martin Series)

Agile Estimating and Planning (Robert C. Martin Series)

by: Mike Cohn

THE book on release planning. Get it. Love it. Use it.

Amazon Price: $44.43 (as of 07/10/2009) Buy Now

Has anything you've read here sparked a question? 

Are you thinking, "How in the world could this possibly work?" Well, ask away. I'm not the end-all be-all in Agile, but I have some experiences I'd be happy to share.

Lensmaster

LyssaAdkins wrote...

Angus:

Squidoo has some limitations in answering posts and interacting back and forth. Would you be willing to put this same comment into my blog at:
http://lyssaadkins.wordpress.com/2008/06/06/two-tips-to-help-product-owners-with-release-planning/

I can't wait to answer it...there are some really straightforward reasons why planning this way works well. - Lyssa

ReplyPosted June 09, 2008

Lensmaster

Angus wrote

Lyssa,

I am responding to an article of yours on Scrum Alliance (I can 't respond there as I am not a member). I am a Program Manger of a software product with programs involving around 70 engineers and lasting up to 18 months. Lately the development organization has decided to work with scrum. I am skeptical. I have many questions but here is one to start.

You say in the article that release planning is a matter of laying out all the stories into sprints, looking at the dependencies and so on (sounds like basic project planning to me).

What I don't understand about this is that I understand that the details of a story are only worked out just before the sprint. So how much can I rely on this release planning if the stories making it up are very high level?

Reply Posted June 08, 2008

Lensmaster

LyssaAdkins wrote...

Hi Mark:
Refactoring, installing the latest security patch, upgrading hardware-all of these are infrastructure tasks that need to get done. 2 suggestions: 1)make the work transparent and allow the team (w. the product owner) to decide how much to do in a sprint. 2)state the work in business terms.

ReplyPosted December 10, 2007

Lensmaster

Mark Baker wrote

Hi Lyssa,
I'm a Cert. ScrumMaster (Dec 06) and we've been using Scrum now for 1 yr on a variety of software products. One issue that's come up is how far a Team can go with re-writing or re-factoring code within a Sprint esp as it introduces risk the sprint may fail. Thoughts?

Reply Posted December 07, 2007