September 28, 2011 Meeting Summary

The BeyondAgile meeting on Wednesday, 28 September 2011 featured Lyssa Adkins and Michael Spayd talk about "Coaching Great Agile Teams: The Being and Doing Work of an Agile Coach". We had over 40 people turn out for the event who shared numerous “roses” about their meeting experience.

Lyssa and Michael gave a dynamic talk that featured their Agile Coach Competency framework. They used a pair teaching style where each built on the other’s comments. This made it feel more like a dialog and was more engaging for me than a typical presentation. They announced their recently formed Agile Coaching Institute where people can find more information at http://www.agilecoachinginstitute.com/coaches/.

I have already found the framework useful in my discussions about agile coaching at work. It’s easy for me to fall into stereotypes such as the “dogmatic agile guru”, or “technical wizard”. I found this framework helps take a more balanced view using the four components: Lean - Agile Process Knowledge, Domain Mastery, Teaching & Mentoring, Coaching & Facilitating.

Their site has a description with chart at http://www.agilecoachinginstitute.com/resources/competency-model/

For those that missed this event we are able to share a video of Lyssa and Michael’s talk that can be accessed here: http://vimeo.com/30197048

Thanks to Harold Shinsato for recording and posting the video, and to Michael and Lyssa for agreeing to share this content with our community.

By Bruce Winegarden