Five Reasons to Hire a Coach for Agile Teams

I run into managers who think that they can coach the team as the team adopts Agile methods. In my experience, this usually doesn't work out very well.

So managers, support the team as they learn Agile methods by hiring a coach! It's a investment in success.

Here are five reasons that coach cannot be you.

1. The team needs someone skilled in XP engineering practices and current on the latest testing tools. If you haven't written code in more than three years, or you've never worked on a team that used all the XP practices you don't have the knowledge to coach the team. Sorry. Doesn't make you a bad person or cancel out your value to the organization. Does mean you are not the right person to coach on XP.

2. You may have a conflict of interest. If you are being measured on delivery dates, its possible that you'll ask the team to cut corners, work extra hours, or drop practices to meet a date. That would be bad. The team needs someone who will hold the process in place and help them hold firm when someone is worried about making a date. That can't be you, if you're the one worried about making the date.

Even if you'd never do that, on some level, the team may not believe that yet, especially if you've ever done so in the past. And if they think you'll cave in the face of a date, they'll cave before you even ask them to. It just works that way.

3. A coach will help the team stick to the process, and guide them away from making adjustments that nibble away at iterative incremental development until they are back in a mini-waterfall.

Agile really does involve a shift in the mental model of software development, and until you have an intuitive grasp of the principles and values, the nibbles will make sense to you, too. You've got to live it for a while before you can coach it.

4. As long as you are there to solve problems and tell people what to do, it will be easy for the team to remain dependent on you. It may feel good to be needed, but in the long run, it doesn't help the team, doesn't help the company, and doesn't help you.

5. You've got a ton of other stuff to do supporting the team, removing obstacles, running organizational interference, and working on the work system. Plus you have to do the budget.

Of course, you don't have to be dependent on outside coaches forever. Once you've established a few Agile teams, you can develop a cadre of coaches made up of your own experienced people.

Pfeffer's Six Dangerous Myths About Pay

A few days ago, I had a little twitter conversation with Dave Rooney, Ben Simo, and Elisabeth Hendrickson about rate vs. cost.

Which reminded me of Jeffrey Pfeffer's excellent article, Six Dangerous Myths About Pay (originally in HBR May/June 1998).

This article should be required reading for all managers.

The Myths are:

Myth #1: labor rates are the same as labor costs.

Myth #2: cutting labor rates will lower labor costs.

Myth #3: labor costs represent a large portion of a company's total costs.

Myth #4: keeping labor costs low creates a potent and sustainable competitive edge.

Myth #5: individual incentive pay improves performance.

Myth #6: people work primarily for the money.

Ain't none of 'em so.

When managers confuse labor rate with labor cost, they make decisions that usually end up costing lots of money.

Labor is an easy to count cost. It's much harder to count the costs of multi-tasking, poor decision-making, ineffective and demotivating work systems, communication latency and other wastes. But the later factors have a big effect on productivity, and therefore, labor cost.

When to stand back, when to step in

Part of my definition of a successful team is that the members of the team increase their knowledge and capacity as a result of their work on the team. That means that giving the team the opportunity to learn is part of the job.

One of challenges I see when managers first start working with agile teams is knowing when to step back, and when to step in. Swinging too far in either direction hampers team learning.

Helicopter Managers step in too soon. They swoop in at the first whiff of a problem to "rescue" the team. They deprive the team of the chance to think, solve problems, and decide together. These managers may believe they are doing the team a favor; what they really do is hamper the team's development.

Absentee Managers throw up their hands and say "you figure it out," no matter what the issue, or whether the team has the skill and authority to solve the problem. These mangers let the team flail and churn, wasting time and building frustration. People do learn from mistakes; but when people feel frustrated, hopeless or abandoned by their manager, increased capability is not the likely learning outcome.

Self-organizing teams still need managers. But those manager need to know when to step in, and when to stand back.

Here are three guidelines to help managers gauge their actions with self-organizing teams.

#1. If the team has the skills to solve the problem--or they are on the verge of having the skills--give them space to solve the problem. If they're stuck or don't see how to use the skills they have, ask questions to help them get unstuck. They will learn much more from wrestling with the problem than having the manager fix it. (Assuming it's not a management problem. Then it's managements job to fix it.)

#2. When time is not of the essence give the team time to work the issue. If it takes a day or two to solve the problem, will it bring the company to it's knees? (If the answer is yes, you've got bigger problems than working with a self-organizing teams.) Keep in mind that many companies live in permanent fire-fighting mode and believe that everything is urgent. Or the manager believe that people won't actually apply sufficient effort unless they believe the issue is urgent. Again, that's a bigger problem. OTOH, if there's information that will help the team solve the problem give the information. Withholding the information is just plain wrong. Likewise, if there's a very simple solution that the team is overlooking, ask questions to help them discover it.

#3. If the solution space is limited in scope and impact, or the decision is reversible, give the team space to solve the problem, even it there's a good chance they'll get it wrong the first time. If the solution space isn't bounded, then there's something amiss with the way the problem or decision authority has been delegated. Bound the issue so that the team is involved and there's appropriate fiscal and management oversight.

There's always a trade off between expediency and a learning opportunity. Self-organizing teams can outperform manager-let teams....but only if the managers are willing to navigate the balance.

Shifting from a manager-led team to a self-organizing team is a little tricky. It calls on a different set of skills, and brings up questions about value and identify for many managers.

But there's still plenty of work for managers to do. It just doesn't involve task management and having all the answers.