Coach

... once a team understands what it is doing wrong, it must then take steps to improve.

✥ ✥ ✥

Although a team may understand how well it is performing, it doesn’t always know how to improve.

When we see ourselves accurately, it is sometimes clear what we can do to improve. But often it is not the case.

An outside expert can help us make the necessary adjustments to improve. This is why even top performers in sports, music, entertainment, and other fields usually have personal coaches. Interestingly, the coaches are not necessarily the top performers, but are particularly adept at teaching, observing, and challenging their protégées to ever greater heights.

Therefore:

The ScrumMaster coaches the team to greater performance.

✥ ✥ ✥

These are the kinds of things that are central to the ScrumMaster's role as a coach:

• • Identify deficiencies in how people are doing tasks. A prerequisite to this is identifying a problem. The team may see problems themselves, or they may be revealed to them through the Knight of the Mirrors. Then the coach identifies factors that team members might be contributing to the problem.

  • Then the coach helps the team learn how to overcome the deficiency.

  • As the team works on the deficiency, the coach continually monitors and provides helpful feedback.

  • After the team has overcome obvious problems and has achieved a high level of performance, the coach challenges the team to achieve even higher levels of performance.

Superficially, there is a great deal of overlap between Coach, Knight of the Mirrors,,Sheepdog, and Cheerleader. However, they are essentially different.

• • Knight of the Mirrors focuses on reflecting accurate status to the team — manifestations of problems. These are symptoms. On the other hand, Coach takes the symptoms and finds the causes, then seeks to repair the causes with the team.

  • The Sheepdog pattern is all about reminding the team to do what they should do. A Coach also provides behavioral instruction, but it is feedback about whether the team is executing the change properly. A Sheepdog might give an unsolicited comment, “Remember to be prepared in our Daily Scrum meetings.” A Coach might respond with the following, “Yes, that is a good test. Now write several similar tests to cover these other aspects of the PBI.”

  • The Cheerleader gives positive feedback as encouragement. The Coach gives positive feedback as a means of reinforcing correct behavior that they have been working on.

In order to be an effective Coach, the ScrumMaster should hone the following skills:

• • A strong working knowledge of the development process the team is following.

  • Technical knowledge, as some problems are rooted in the technical aspects of the product or technology.

  • Ability to investigate problems to discern root causes.

  • Pedagogical skills and techniques.

This is one of the key differentiators between a ScrumMaster in Name Only and a highly effective ScrumMaster.

Picture from: Presentermedia.com.