Agile Certified Coach (ICP-ACC) Workshop

Agile Coaching Workshop

2 Days Classroom Session

Overview

The Agile Coaching Workshop is classroom training program that is unique and one-of-a-kind training that focuses on both the areas of “being agile” and “doing agile” of Agile Coaching. This is a highly interactive workshop that makes ample use of discussions and exercises to help participants hone essential coaching skills like self-awareness, coaching stance, mentoring, facilitation, active listening, powerful questioning and coaching for action. The course explores real world scenarios/situations and challenges, and help you devise powerful solutions to them. It will help the learner differentiate between and among teaching, mentoring, facilitating, consulting, and coaching, and will help gain the skills needed to create a safe environment for meaningful collaboration and healthy conflict resolution within an agile team.

Whether the coach is internal or external to the organization, agile coaching covers a broad spectrum of teaching, mentoring, problem solving, planning, leadership, team-building and mastery of skills and knowledge.

Agile Coaches must challenge organizations to change culture — establishing new paradigms — which permit agile-lean thinking and quickly deliver value. A coach must be competent, professional and ethical — having business and technical knowledge and an understanding of change and the impact it has on individuals and organizations. Few of the elements participants would learn during the workshop:

The various roles, skillsets and disciplines of an Agile coach – coaching, facilitating, mentoring, teaching and how to develop "your style," moving in and out of those roles while remaining flexible, open and confident.

The philosophy behind servant leadership and practices and techniques to enable you to become a true servant leader; putting the needs of others first to facilitate the development of high performance teams.

Agile Coach thinking – the mindset shift necessary to help you, and others, focus on team improvement, value-driven delivery, and leveraging constraints while living in the present moment, staying curious, innovative and having fun.

Ways to establish mutual trust allowing you to create a safe, supportive environment in which your team can excel.

Active listening and powerful questioning techniques utilized to leverage your ability to focus on what is being said and maximizing communication and collaboration through seeking and receiving information.

This 2.5-days course takes place over 2 days, including 4-6 hours of preparation work by course participants prior to start of the workshop.

Who should attend? Who will benefit from the workshop?

This course is designed for:

Project, Program, and Portfolio Professionals who aspire to the role of Agile Coach.

Experienced Scrum Masters, Agile Project/Program Managers or Iteration Managers who want a more comprehensive understanding of the complete range of business and Agile coaching skills.

Agile coaches who want to enhance and improve their professional skills as Agilists and professional coaches.

Coaches who wish to increase the ability to break through seemingly insurmountable problems with their teams.

Agile managers, Product Owners and others wishing to access a broader range of skills in working with teams.

Skilled coaches who wishes to polish your skills and learn a few new tricks and techniques.

Functional managers or Scrum Masters with some experience as an Agile coach, but Agile seems like it is not working for your teams.

Someone trying to become a Certified Scrum Coach or ICAgile Certified Expert in Agile Coaching.

Someone coaching or mentoring Agile teams, but you seem to be caught in a rut or just going through the motions and not making progress.

Pre-Requisites

Knowledge of Agile (Scrum or Kanban or XP) would be very helpful. Working experience in the field of Agile is also highly recommended. The class prepares you to act as a leader on agile teams and leave with ideas for helping them as soon as you get back.

Course Outline

1. The Agile Coach and Agile Coaching

Agile Coaches have developed professional coaching, mentoring and/or training skills and realize that their skill as a coach is developed through working with others and continuously learning about and improving their coaching skillset. To assist you in becoming more proficient in your coaching, you would learn about:

Definition of Agile coaching

The Agile coaching mindset

Defining Agile team facilitation

Agile team facilitator behaviors

Assessing one's ability to serve the team

Responsibilities and skills of the coach

Achieving self-awareness/self-management in the coach

Developing more advanced Agile coaching skill

Setting boundaries for coaching

Internal vs. external coaches

Defining the coaching "contract"

Designing a coaching alliance

2. The Coach as Professional Coach

Effective Agile coaches know the parameters of their job. They avidly take up their responsibilities and help others take up theirs. They can clearly articulate the differences between their role and that of others in the organization such as product owner, project manager, program manager and functional manager. Agile Coaches can communication their role and set agreements with their client to identify what this looks like. Exploring these concepts, the workshop would cover:

The coaching stance

Maintaining neutrality in coaching

Self-awareness and self-management

Holding the client's agenda

Issue identification and exploration

Action commitment and achievement

Professional coaching skills

3. The Coach as Mentor

Successful Agile coaches have learned to not go it alone. They have acquired their skills by calling on the skills and knowledge of mentors. Through being mentored, they learn to mentor others. As a group, we would explore mentorship – the process of formally and informal sharing knowledge via social contracts. Specifically, I would consider:

Mentoring and coaching the Agile roles

Mentoring and coaching transitions and practices

Understanding the individual change cycle

Identifying and handling resistance from individuals

Mentoring vs. coaching

4. The Coach as Teacher

The terms coaching and teaching are often used interchangeably referring to the transfer of knowledge or experience and the education of an individual to another. However, a knowledgeable Agile Coach knows that this definition does not always hold true. We will explore the differences between mentoring and coaching versus teaching. You will explore different modes and methods of teaching and when you should switch "modes." The workshop would focus on:

Mentoring and coaching versus teaching

Teaching the Agile basics and mindset shift

Modes and methods of teaching

Distinguishing and articulating Agile frameworks

5. Teams and The Team Coach

Successful Agile Coaches can diagnose and assess healthy team functioning, including the ability to identify dysfunctional behaviors or circumstances. I would review these patterns and indicators and learn practices and techniques to coach the team through their learning curves toward steadily improved performance. You will learn to coach teams towards high performance by:

Understanding team development

Understanding a model of team development

Detecting a team's stage of development

Helping a team move up the development curve

Setting up the team environment

Creating team trust

Learning shared leadership and self-organization

Continuously seeking to improve

Defining and identifying high performance

Knowing and establishing team vs. group mindset/behaviors

Understanding strategies for dealing with several types of teams

Understanding your role in the self-organizing team

Handling conflict and dysfunction within the team

Identifying and managing 'Group Think'

Handling organizational impediments

Promoting leadership engagement

Outcomes this workshop will produce

Mastering agile coaching skills will require both time and practice, this workshop will allow you to:

Understand and utilize the key skill areas and knowledge areas applied by the best agile coaches.

Create healthy teams that are resilient, creative, resourceful and resonant.

Listen fully and ask essential, powerful questions that open up new possibilities and propel people into action.

Clearly ascertain the distinction between coaching and mentoring and know when to apply each most successfully in any given situation.

Understand how to address the dysfunctional approaches to conflict teams often develop.

Coach and mentor people through all kinds of change, especially the change required to occupy agile roles fully.

See the broader organizational context more clearly and determine the best interventions, and your best actions, to positively affect it.

You’ll walk away from the course with your personal coaching improvement backlog – a tangible plan you can use to thoughtfully improve your coaching when you’re back on the job.

You’ll have many new things to try with your teams and you will probably depart with a few provocative ideas to chew on (in fact, maybe wrangle with for a while). All of these outcomes add up to your ability to become the excellent agile coach your teams and organization needs.

Certification

Agile Coaching Workshop is accredited by the International Consortium for Agile (ICAgile) as fulfilling all Learning Objectives in the Agile Coaching track. The participants will earn ICP-ACC [ICAgile Professional - Agile Certified Coach] certification. This certification is a key step toward achieving the ICAgile Expert-Agile Coaching (ICE-AC), the industry’s first competence-based certification.

Continue Education Credits

Participants of this workshop is eligible to claim Continue Education Credits towards one or more of the following Institutions:

NASBA (CPE): NASBA continuing professional education credits (CPE) assist Certified Public Accountants in reaching their continuing education requirements. Total of 16 CPEs are eligible.

PMI (PDU): This workshop meets the criteria of PMI’s Leadership PDUs (PDU-L), Strategic PDUs (PDU-S), and Technical PDUs (PDU-T) for various PMI credentials. Technical PDUs are available for the following PMI credentials: ACP, PBA, PfMP, PMP, PgMP, RMP, and SP. Total of 15 PDUs are eligible.

Scrum Alliance (SEU): This workshop meets the criteria towards SEU requirements for Scrum Alliance’s CSP (Certified Scrum Professional) continued education requirements. Total of 15 SEUs are eligible.

IIBA (CDU): This workshop meets the criteria towards CDU requirements for CCBA and CBAP certifications. Total of 15 CDUs are eligible.

Have questions about Agile Certified Coach (ICP-ACC) Workshop ? Contact Shailesh Thakkar