Lyssa Adkins - Coaching Agile Teams

In my team we had a dream: let’s start coaching agile teams. I am sitting in methods team in an ivory tower in our organization and we have not had real connections to our methods user. Now we are driving for more agile development in our organization and we saw our chance there.

 
One of my colleagues got a great idea: let's read a book "Coaching Agile Teams" and have study group around it. Yes - said most of us. There is three separate parts in this book and we took one part at the time. We read it in two weeks and then we met and discussed and reflected. After reading the whole book each of us were supposed to write a blog post or some other way reflect the book.
 

At the same time I get excited about sketchnoting. It was Ru who showed me some of her notes saying “I thought you might like this”. Said and done – I went home and started to practice. So it was very natural choice for me to reflect the book by doing my first sketchnotes.

Part 1 It Starts with You
Me having no experience on coaching and very short experience working agile - I had the feeling that I am now trying to bite off more than I can chew. I got stressed and desperate. I as a person will face too many challenges. And then again - let's try. Maybe my journey just will be longer than other's.

Part 2 Helping the Team Get More for Themselves
Even worse. This part was about different "roles" of coach. Like "Coach as Coach-Mentor", "Coach as Facilitator" and so on. I felt like I am facing high and thick wall. Every chapter started with summary "By the time you finish this chapter, you will be albe to answer these questions." Likewise every chapter ended with a refresher. Structure was good but the content was little bit discouraging for me.

Part 3 Getting more for Yourself
Finally I get the feeling that "Yes, I can do this". Journey will be long but I will reach my goal. The most important is that I have to merciful to myself. It is okay to fail and learn from you failures. Great book and I will be getting back to it certainly.

Now, I need to start my journey - somewhere with someone, either with a team or with  an individual. And I am horrified!