It’s been a while for me being an agile coach. The more I practice, the more I learn everyday on the ties of human behaviour. I have been fascinated with the transformation happening in me, evolving from a Scrum master to becoming an agile coach. Let me put it into context, working with agile/scrum teams is simple but living up to it’s values is complex.

As team produces awesome outcomes for the betterment of their customers experience and creating business value sprint after sprint, they ideally delve into one unit as a team. I see my role as a crucial part to their attainment towards good to great teams, it can make or break things.

So what does it mean and how does it impact you as an individual?

When you become a part of a team equipped with required skill-sets formed to deliver great outcomes, lots of people give up trying to keep the performance a consistent success for a long period of time.

How can you help as a facilitator or coach?

Firstly stay away from;

• Their team commitments
• Solving tech problems
• Providing your solutions
• Attaching yourself in their successes and failures
• Not letting the conflicts emerge
• Not letting them learn by their mistakes

Are you thinking, ‘If a Scrum Master is not helping to do the above, he is probably not doing his job’, isn’t it! Sounds crazy!

Well, Yes it is freaky to disassociate yourself with the team goals.
You have to be their mentor, coach, protector and a good facilitator. Yes, this is definitely leading towards Servant Leadership. Thanks to my mentor Simon Bristow, who introduced me to this concept, I was amazed but had lots of curious questions, and was most certain believing it won’t work in the real world.

When I actually started practicing it, I realized the enormous value it gave to the team on every step and I started believing in it. The Scrum Master as servant leader is a perfect testimony, and it starts with you…hence its just cant be achieved by a certification. Its a mindset, you need to shift your thinking upside down from command-in-control to servant leader and that is why its simple… but hard.

I started with,

‘What can I bring to the team in order to make them succeed..’,

‘How can I help you to achieve your team goals..’

As Mahatma Gandhi says, “You must be the change you wish to see in the world“, it starts with you. At every opportunity, uplift the agile principles within the team, they always come to rescue if something is not working. Keep enhancing their knowledge and understanding of those principles including you as they evolve and learn. Make mistakes tell the team which principle you have disregarded, so that they learn from it. Finally Trust the team to come up with their own solutions.

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Shri is an pragmatic agilist, working as an coach and passionate about bringing people together for a purpose to work as one unit and create great outcomes. Focused to deliver customer eccentric business outcomes connected to strategy. Also a critical thinker to tailor solutions within given constraints and context. Sharing the goodies of agile way of doing things learnt from others and experiential learning. Lean thinker. Love the concept of learn fast and move forward towards working solutions. Also a believer in people being the most essential part of the whole equation, instilling trust and motivations help building great products and solutions.

To learn more about me or my blogs please visit https://freeagilist.com/

Follow me on twitter: @ShriTaralkar