Agile Coaching: The Remote Twist

Aiding teams navigating through agile methodologies and the various roadblocks that may entail has just been added a level difficulty: social distancing. In a new paradigm, where we’re trying to help teams perform their best while being away from each other communication can get more complicated.

But first, let’s pause on the new found challenges for a bit to talk about the role of agile coaches within a company. In case you have never heard of Agile Coaching, this relatively new role emerged to train teams in the implementation of agile methodologies. And not only teams, agile coaches may also operate at a leadership level, making sure stakeholders are buying in into the organizationational change that switching to Agile might represent. 

These coaches’ agenda will always have growth and improvement as guiding principles. Helping and understanding teams through their journey will be the core of their work. 

The lifespan of the Agile Coaches’ duties will depend entirely on the organization’s needs: some may need help resolving a one off while bigger companies with multiple agile teams might have them on staff to make sure performance is at its full potential at all times.

In catching up with other Agile Coaches lately, we discussed how much the quarantine has shifted the daily activities used to aid teams: the usual in person facilitation, coaching and team building activities now seem something of the past. 

In this context, coaches have had to find new ways of connecting with the team members and having teams connect with each other in hopes of preserving a hard earned team morale and collaboration spirit. By now, we have all experienced the sometimes frustrating experience of a 5+ people Zoom meeting and how going through a few rounds of those a day can lead to burnout. Here’s some more on that.

We wrote before about how people may drift away into silos while being fully remote, truth is not everyone is 100% built for it teleworking. And that’s ok. 

To help encourage engagement all around we have handpicked some list of remote team building activities:

https://museumhack.com/virtual-team-building-for-remote-teams/

https://www.quizbreaker.com/remote-team-building-activities

And finally, our own tested and favorite one: sketchful.io which is as simple as drawing and guessing and it’s great to take the edge off at the end of a long week.

Need further help managing your remote team? We’d be happy to jump in!