This just in from the put-your-money-where-your-mouth-is department:
Bob M. hung out a blog post describing the evil that is agile coaching. I didn't recognize myself in the mirror he proffered, but because I'm an agilist I value feedback as the first necessary step in the whole problem solving system. Without a closed feeback loop, how can we reach clarity and improvement/acceleration?
So, this is for all the people I've coached, whether as a paid agile coach, coworker, manager, or neighbor. Take a look at Bob's post for inspiration and pop back here to do me a favor by answering questions:
Am I evil?
In what ways am I evil?
In what ways have I served you, or done you disservice.
I await your feedback.
I can't comment on your coaching as I never worked with you quite that way. (...that I know of. If you were coaching me, you are a failure.)
ReplyDeleteI do buy this:
"Similarly, Scrum Mastering is the work of the Devil, bending its considerable efforts to accommodating the status quo and deliver more-or-less irrelevant local optimisations (and that’s in those rare cases when it’s working “well”)."
Spelling devil with the definitive article and a capital D might be overreacting. It's more of a dungeon mini-boss.
I worked at a place like that so I can certainly commiserate with the writer. At least in my current gig the process is only described partly agile and the company culture is release on time, drop features. So stuff gets done.
For agile to work, IMHO (we all have one) upper management has to buy in and be willing to change their behavior. If they don't the coaches and consultants won't be able to keep their promises.
Thanks for corrections. Link should be good now.
ReplyDeleteIt is possible that I've not seen agile done badly enough. Maybe I've been lucky enough not to see SMs and coaches doing the bad things others have seen. If so, I'm glad for it.