Requests from clients to track our work?

[Andrew Webster]

Hi Lonely Coaches!

My current client, for whom I'm coaching as the sole coach, wants me to track my work in Jira using Scrum ("Scrum-for-One" anyone?) with a desire to see me "burn-to-zero" (their term) every sprint.

Hmm.

For me, this is not the first time I've had requests like this.  I've had it when I was working as part of a team of over 20 coaches.  It didn't work for us then, and I don't see it working now.  Even though we taught different approaches to work for different kinds of work, we found that management would nod and smile and somehow think this didn't apply to the coaches' work.  Their reasoning, the reasoning I'm up against now, is that people coaching Scrum should "do Scrum".  My best efforts to educate are working just fine on the engineers and researchers I work with, and their managers.  But the operations manager who's "in charge" of me nods, smiles, agrees with me, and then clearly reverts back immediately!

This feels to me like one of those "never coach alone" moment.  Except I am coaching alone!  And I'm sure as heck clear that my coaching style does not fit Scrum - in fact that's why they employed me.

Anyone got any bright ideas that'd help?

Thanks in advance,

- Andrew

[Jeff Hoover]

I feel for you Andrew. 

Her are some questions for you and/or your client:

• What length sprint would they want for your work?
  
• Should they be able to expect that you can plan a sprint's worth of specific coaching to forecast (previously commit)? 
• What about sprint goals? Is your coaching work likely to be well-represented by sprint-length objectives?
• When something unplanned of higher value appears mid-sprint, will they expect you to write a story for it, estimate it, and move equivalent work out of the sprint? Is that the best use their money? If the new immediate priority jeopardizes the sprint goal, should you abort the sprint or wait until the next sprint to do the immediately highest-value coaching?
• What even is a potentially releasable product increment for coaching?
• What would happen at a sprint review? Who should attend? Does the operations manager want to attend a sprint review for you and a second one for the team?
• What about a sprint retrospective? Who should participate? Your whole coaching team (of one, yourself) or yourself and the team you are coaching? The latter would mean that the coached team participates in two sprint reviews per sprint. Or maybe the operations manager wants to retrospect with you themselves each sprint. Or maybe the engineers, researchers, and managers who should be attending sprint reviews and retrospectives for the team would like to add those same meetings for your work?

It seems to me that they might not like the expectations placed on them if you "do Scrum" properly. And if you don't do it properly, why would they want you to be coaching on it?

Best,

Jeff

[George Dinwiddie]

Andrew,

I feel for you.

On 9/18/19 5:21 PM, Andrew Webster wrote:
> Hi Lonely Coaches!
>
> My current client, for whom I'm coaching as the sole coach, wants me to
> track my work in Jira using Scrum ("Scrum-for-One" anyone?) with a
> desire to see me "burn-to-zero" (their term) every sprint.
>
> Hmm.

Ugh! I've been there.

> For me, this is not the first time I've had requests like this.  I've
> had it when I was working as part of a team of over 20 coaches.  It
> didn't work for us then, and I don't see it working now.  Even though we
> taught different approaches to work for different kinds of work, we
> found that management would nod and smile and somehow think this didn't
> apply to the coaches' work.  Their reasoning, the reasoning I'm up
> against now, is that people coaching Scrum should "do Scrum".  My best
> efforts to educate are working just fine on the engineers and
> researchers I work with, and their managers.  But the operations manager
> who's "in charge" of me nods, smiles, agrees with me, and then clearly
> reverts back immediately!

If they want to track your activities, that's easy to do. You can create
a lot of tasks and burn them down over the sprint.

That's not scrum, either, of course. Scrum requires delivering value
each spring, not completing activities.

So how do you deliver value? A coach cannot do it alone. It's a team
effort. The value comes from what the team does differently. The coach
is just the catalyst for that.

So, to do what the operations manager wants, the entire organization,
include the operations manager, would have to commit to the improvements
they plan to make during the next sprint. The coach can then help them
do that. It they don't make it, it's a failure of everyone, including
the operations manager. So, take on smaller objectives the next sprint
and try again.

It's a little weird, but it might be just the ticket for getting the org
to buy-in to making substantive changes.

Hope this helps,
- George

>
> This feels to me like one of those "never coach alone" moment.  Except I
> am coaching alone!  And I'm sure as heck clear that my coaching style
> does not fit Scrum - in fact that's why they employed me.
>
> Anyone got any bright ideas that'd help?
>
> Thanks in advance,
>
> - Andrew
>

--
----------------------------------------------------------------------
* George Dinwiddie * http://blog.gdinwiddie.com
Software Development http://www.idiacomputing.com
Consultant and Coach
----------------------------------------------------------------------

[Jon Kern]

I would ask them what the purpose is… Why do they want this? 

And if anything, Kanban is probably a better “demo” than a x-length sprint.

And if all else fails, do the minimum required to make the “report" look good for the consumer (ops guy). Especially if he has no power over you.

Jon Kern

linkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonkern/

blog: http://technicaldebt.com

twitter: http://twitter.com/JonKernPA

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[Glenn Waters]

My thoughts are along the lines of what George said.

What if there were an Agile Guidance Group where a team of people and one lonely coach guides and reviews the improvements on a weekly or bi-weekly basis? Kind like a Sprint Review and Sprint Planning but clearly with a different rigour since you are deep in the complex zone or maybe in the chaos zone where only experiments will reveal direction.

The guidance group could also do daily standups. I'm finding that useful with my current client to get a quick checkin because the coaching requests come at random times and its good to stay in sync where effort is being spent. 

A guidance group is also good to help build stronger relationships with those who want the change.

Glenn

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[Tim Ottinger]

How fascinating!

So, to them coaching is a series of planned tasks to be completed every fortnight? 

Doing scrum has nothing to do with Jira, of course. Why do they think that Jira has something to do with it? 

I have heard of people insisting that coaches use a personal kanban, though. 

It’s not impossible to conceive of it. But using a task board is different from “doing scrum” too. Nor is it “being agile.”

I would look for things to say “yes” to, conditions in which “yes” make sense, but it sounds to me that they don’t understand your mission, and you are probably not aligned with theirs. 

Some conversations probably need to begin now, and continue. There is a lot of education that needs done. 

Peace,

Tim

--

Peace,

Tim
-------------------------------------
http://www.industriallogic.com/
http://agileotter.blogspot.com/

[Tim Ottinger]

Oh, George already said all of that.

I’ll be over here if you need me.

[Mark Levison]

Andrew - this whole situation seems odd. 

Why do they think that JIRA is useful? (At all)

Why do they think a coach needs to be tracked?

Why do they think Scrum relates to coaching? Frankly even Kanban is a stretch - the work is so highly variable that the idea of standard work seems odd.

Others have already provided excellent advice on dealing with it.

My small addition  - for Scrum to be a thing there must be a team and a common goal. If it helps share: https://agilepainrelief.com/notesfromatooluser/2019/01/what-are-the-limits-of-the-scrum-framework.html as way of helping the controller see this is insane.

Good luck

Mark

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[Andrew Webster]

Thanks all!  At the very least, knowing that my mild case of boggle is likely to be shared by other coaches is highly reassuring.

The short version of what they want is "to know what they're getting".  I've had the conversation with them more than once that sounds like:

Do

Client: "What are we going to get?" 

Me: "What do you want to get?" 

"We want to get agile!"

"And what would that mean to you?  How would that help you?"

"We don't know, we want to find out!  And we've read a great book - should we do that?" 

"Have you tried doing that?" 

"Yes.  Well, no.  It's too hard and no-one wants to do it."

"Ok then... let's just check - if you were doing better than you are now, how would you know?  What would have changed?  More revenue?  Less waste?  Work seems to get done faster?"

"Yeah, all of that!"

"Good.  I can help with that.  Would you like me to show you some things that might help?"

"Yeah!  Well, no, we're too busy.  Can you just put in into Jira and then we'll look at that."

Me: "And how would that help...?"

Loop 'Note: no exit condition

Nonetheless, y'all have given me something to ruminate on.  I'll report back if I make progress.  They're good people, and I know they can do even greater work, but they can't quite see the wood for the trees. 

More anon.

Thanks all again!

- Andrew

[Adrian Wible]

I use Kanban to track coaching activity. I think it's a reasonable approach.

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[George Dinwiddie]

Andrew,

It sounds like they can't envision what reasonable outcomes and
practices are. Perhaps you could help them, based on the needs you observe.

- Team _completes_ at least 90% of the functionality taken on for a
sprint.
- Whole Team identifies how to tell that functionality in a story is
complete, prior to the start of the sprint.
- Team has a working system at the end of each sprint.
- Product owner has ordered work so the early working system has
identifiable value.
- Operations Manager... (other observable outcomes and supporting
practices as you and the team choose over time)

These then can be backlog items for them to learn to do. Once they've
done them, they become acceptance criteria for their way of working and
these tests need to pass every sprint. Have a discussion (including
operations manager) at each sprint boundary about whether these tests
pass or fail on the just-finished sprint.

- George

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[Ron Jeffries]

Andrew,

On Sep 19, 2019, at 7:02 AM, George Dinwiddie <li...@iDIAcomputing.com> wrote:

It sounds like they can't envision what reasonable outcomes and practices are. Perhaps you could help them, based on the needs you observe.

I really like George's examples. They make me think that the job of a coach is not to do things, but to get other people to do things. In a sense, the coach is the "Product Owner" for the organization's process.

That might be expressed in terms of goals like those George listed, and against those larger goals one could perhaps plan one's weeks to address things. I'd be sure as heck to create some goals for whoever wanted you to put stuff into Jira!

Ron Jeffries

ronjeffries.com

I have two cats, and a big house full of cat stuff. 

The cats fight and divide up the house, messing up their own lives. 

Nice work cats. 

Meow.

[Eric Willeke]

This is one of my favorite threads here for a long time :)

Lots of great thoughts already, but to add a couple more that I believe fit the intent of Scrum, allow for effective coaching, and also actually make Jira marginally useful. I think it's really close to what Ron and George suggest, but I think it bullet points:

- declare a Sprint goal for your coaching each Sprint. Use it as a driver for good conversations with the people impacted by and required for the work you have in mind.

- use those conversations to articulate the effort we think various people and groups need to do to acheive the outcomes represented by the goal.

- write those things down as Jira thingies, making sure to note the why for each item. Maybe a phrase starting with "so that..." would be useful? 

- get everyone's agreement and declare Sprint planning to be over

- ask people to note what they learn as they work towards the goal, and move the thingies to a column where we can see what people have done, and know what we need to realize about from a learning perspective at the end of the Sprint

Short form, I find scrum works great for helping focus coaching work, but fails equally well as it does anywhere if it's not a cross functional change team. I've never been successful using a group as coaches as the "team", it's only worked when I add a coach to a cross functional leadership team and use it to focus and manage that group's change efforts.

Eric

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[Andrew Webster]

All,

George: good list, and for me it highlights how much the COO has been keeping busy with his ideas, rather than letting me get on with the job I know to do. Your list will re-seed my backlog.

Ron: Exactly.  A colleague of mine defines "leadership" as "causing a future that was not going to happen on its own", a phrase that's in the back of my mind all the time.  Your comments also had me realize (duh!) that the COO is relating to me as my PO, not as a stakeholder.  I don't have to argue with him about that, but I can quietly take charge of my backlog!  After all, I was employed as the domain expert in Agile ways and means.

Eric: I wish there was an "everyone" whose agreement I could get.  So why don't I cause that everyone and stop complaining that I'm alone!  I'll have as a great first sprint goal "create the everyone", and I've got a few likely candidates in mind.  And if I can get Jira admin rights, I'm changing the name of issues to "thingies" immediately!  (I might change the name of sub-tasks to "doings" - let's keep folks clear on the difference between the value created in a story and the actions taken to create it, why not eh?)

Updates here as they happen. Thanks again, everyone, for being in this group.  Lonely coaches miss stuff, and conversation brings out much that's missing.

- Andrew

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[Wouter Lagerweij]

I may on occasion have been selective in my understanding of what is asked of me, taking into account my own thoughts of what I might want to achieve.

For instance, if I were asked to use Scrum for my coaching, I might enthusiastically agree and start forming my change team, an obvious prerequisite to using Scrum, as Erik mentioned.

Or I might use it, as I think George said, to get clarity on goals and expectations, generating buy in from my stakeholders for the incremental steps to take in the directions agreed on.

Or I might say 'no', and see what happens, since learning how to say no in constructive ways is an important thing to coach, and observing the reaction will give wonderfully useful information...

Wouter

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