 basketball coach of all time between 1963 and 1975 he was responsible for leading the UCLA basketball team to win 10 out of 12 national championships this was unheard of this was unprecedented and so his success on leading teams in the basketball court was renowned more importantly though was the relationship he built with his players the influence he had on those around him he was known as someone who inspired those around him and encouraged them to achieve success out on the basketball court but more importantly in life and to do that through integrity to character to teamwork several presidents of the United States have cited his influence on them on who they've become and who they continue to want to be coaching is powerful I believe that all of us in our own way are thirsting for seeking for our own version of John Wooden in our lives I also believe that we long to be this type of person to others and it's certainly influenced my thoughts on coaching who I want to be and what I want to be to others now coaching in our industry in our community is actually something fundamentally new I did a quick Google trend search to see you know when did this term agile coach come about and it's actually as of 2006 2008 2011 even the term agile coach barely even existed nobody was even searching for it and then from that point it goes on this exponential curve upwards up till this you see this giant spike in the in the past year in terms of just you know as an anecdote of interest in in the term and so coaching in industry coaching in our workplaces is a relatively new phenomenon and I like to do a little experiment here so let's just let's just do a test so if you are currently a team member so like a let's say a programmer or a QA so other than a scrum master could you could you stand up someone who has a someone who's a team member stand up for moment please all right thank you can sit back down who is an agile coach of some kind maybe that's a consultant maybe that's an internal coach stand up fantastic okay sit back down please any scrum masters who didn't include themselves in the previous category could you please stand up I I'm going to use Lisa Adkins kind of mindset which is scrum masters are a flavor of an agile coach thank you very much you can please sit down and finally if you are in management maybe you maybe you might be responsible for hiring a coach or choosing scrum masters or something like that could you stand up great thank you very much so you can see that in some way this thing that did not exist six years ago more or less has now impacted all of us in some way most of us in some way and like all things that kind of move really quickly I think from time to time it makes sense to stop and think about how did we get here what exactly are we getting ourselves into where is this going five years from now ten years now what does it mean to have multiple generations of employees in a company and and a coaching organization in a company and you think through that do that mental exercise ten years from now what what happens over time as people grow up in that environment what does it mean and where we going with it and ask this question because I was a coach I fell into coaching by accident I was passionate about software I was actually in product management for a company and I had experienced the trials and tribulations of working in an incredibly bureaucratic organization and being completely unable to deliver solve problems and build things and get them in people's hands and then I go somewhere else and I and I'm told we do agile here and we'll teach you about I even knew about the term coaching and I said wow if I can help a new different group of people come to experience this kind of great working environment then sure I'll do it and I had no idea what I was doing and I made lots of mistakes excited to learn about new things and try new things and they just ate it up and they they ran with it and it was very rewarding to me to be part of that community but like all good things came to an end in the sense that I had the opportunity to be part of a larger organization so I start spreading my wings I start coaching elsewhere other teams all over the world and you know working all the way up with vice presidents and executive order on the team which was especially scary because I had actually never held the job as a programmer in about 15 years the only job I had a programmer was my very first entry-level job which I held for a year so and since then I've been doing product management and all these other things so then suddenly to be thrust in the team of experienced knowledgeable skilled programmers was terrifying but fortunately there were wonderful people very competent very eager to do do a good job and and welcome me in and I very much thank them for that but now I'm in this interesting situation of like say eating my own dog food if you're not familiar with this phrase it basically means that if you had to eat the food you fed your dog you would have a much different appreciation for what your dog has to deal with and you might be feeding them different different food and so here I was as a renounced agile coach now being part of a team and having to follow all the things that I had been practicing and preaching over the previous years and going into that I don't think I was fully appreciative or prepared for exactly what that would be like and so I'd like to share a little bit of the story today and then having gone through this being part of a team some realizations that I came to how it influenced my thought process but also why I wasn't necessarily successful as a coach was as I couldn't achieve that same success of coach why did I make that decision I couldn't quite understand I hadn't quite figured out why I had not been able to be successful and I think that having been on a team again gave me some new insights and I'm going to leave that discussion till later but I think this whole scenario I'm it's a bit of a cautionary tale and I think it's a cautionary tale on on a couple fronts one on a personal level for for you coaches out there for your scrum masters for those who might be aspiring to be that to think about what it would be to practice what you preach eat your own dog food what it likes would it's like to be on the other side the second aspect is where are we going as an industry as a community where's this coaching thing taking us and so when I was not when I when I joined the team again working on some legacy code 15 20 years old which is a great intellectual challenge in of itself was very intellectually stimulating very interesting challenges we're working on and there were some things I absolutely learned to hate I hated stand-ups I despise them because here I was working on some challenging technical problem I was up at night in my bed you know we're playing with my kids and totally distracted because there was some problem going through my head and I couldn't figure it out and I'd wake up early the next morning come into the office because I thought I had figured it out and then I'd start coding and then I would break all my tests and be you know two minutes away from being able to fix it and then everybody stop and you'd be ripped out of the environment it's time to have the stand-up now and so I'd stare at my feet as the problems turning through my head and you're completely ignoring what everybody else is saying because frankly it makes no difference to what you're trying to accomplish because they're all working on different stuff it's that they're relevant to me and I see my two bits and I just wait and long for this thing to be over so I didn't really hate the stand-up what I really hated I really hated was these distractions from coatings I got to stare at my shoe and completely irrelevant what I was trying to the problem I was trying to solve I loathe the retrospectives so it's Friday I want to go I know if I don't solve the problem I'm go home on the weekend and it's going to be burning through my head well I'm trying to spend time with my family my kids and I want to get this thing you know this code checked in and have that sense of satisfaction solve the problem and then I'm ripped out of that world time to have the retrospective we need to get meta we need to get meta and think about you know how we interact and all these things like I'm not thinking about that I'm trying to I'm like I I agree it's important absolutely I agree it's important but I haven't been thinking about that I'm not prepared for that I've got something else on my mind they think about so you know how we interact with each other and have to navigate all these social cues and issues with with people and as wonderful as they are the great people yet it's still challenging to you know kind of have to it's a very vulnerable thing to be in a retrospective right and it was really frustrating when you know that there was the elephant in the room there's not one elephant there's multiple elephants in the room if you see me afterwards please ask me about my my experience with actual elephants here a couple years ago it involves an electric fence and the power going out I was in a tree I was okay a co-worker threw in the hut on the ground I think I had and so the things that the elephants in the room the the years and years of legacy code that was holding us back because it really needed to redesign but nobody was willing to do what we never talked about that the the fact that there was all these organizational issues and product management and we weren't actually getting feedback from the customer no we weren't going to talk about that the fact that we had great wonderful people but we still hadn't developed the report to to really trust each other and tell each other what we really thought and meant because that is such a car so so much vulnerability we hadn't yet established but we didn't talk about that because it was Friday afternoon we were thinking about coding and we weren't probably going to check affect those things anyways and so it was really frustrating to be you know here and so here I was sullen you know impatient just let me get this thing over with and then I despise the estimates I have no clue how long this thing is going to take because every time I do something like oh yeah this is easy I don't know problem I just got changing it from like a string to an integer I mean how hard could that be right like suddenly you'd like hit spiderwebs out into every you know far reaches of the code and you're like wow this blew up really quickly and frankly whether it was going to take a day or two months didn't make a difference because we're going to have to do it anyways it's not going impact any decision and probably most of all I I abhorred the concept of being coached I was terrified now that I was no longer officially a coach that the company would take a coach and then now like insert them on the team and say here's your here's your official coach now because who the heck would they be to tell me how to be productive as a programmer and fortunately had the force and ought to do this and this and happen but it was this perpetual fear and then I have to think well I don't think I'm really alone so after I've told you all of that about how I'm so forlorn and frustrated and patient meetings and just you know and all these ceremonies all these things that I've been telling people to do for years is as an agile coach who would actually want me on their team hands up if you would want me on your team okay wait you can't say that you're leaving me so that's kind of interesting yeah it's it's a I probably fit all the criteria of someone who'd be a you know what an awful awful team member if it was by the criteria of how engaged they are in these meetings but the thing was is I don't think I was alone I think I was just new I looked around at the other programmers and I don't think they like these things anything anymore than I did I really don't I think they had just learned to live with it I think they just learned that that was what was expected it was just easier just to go with the flow and so it wasn't fundamentally that I had eat my own dog who gone to the other side of the fence walked another someone else's shoes even having been as a product owner on a team before before being a coach had not adequately prepared me for what I was going to experience actually being a coder on a team and so there was this newfound empathy that made me realize how how ineffective I really is to try and accomplish change and influence people when you haven't walked in their shoes and it made me think well how did I get here in the first place so going back to my coaching days and my time my time coaching and and when that once I became disillusioned made me think more and realize and consider how why didn't that work why wasn't I successful as I was hoping I was going to be and so how did my coaching usually go in a in a big multinational company I was having successes and then you would get an executive important person somewhere come along and say hi Sean I've heard good things I've got these teams I want you to come coach my teams fantastic I'm doing good things my name's getting out there I can be useful I can help people people want my input this is this is really good feeling I'm eager excited up for the challenge and I would say yes and I would I would try and do my best but what's the problem with this statement thank you every time I would go and work with the team universally I'd walk it I'd find an environment where people were behaving perfectly rationally in the context that hadn't an environment that had been created for them there was always universally these smart motivated people who want to come to work and be successful on a given day nobody doesn't want that we all want to work come to work and be successful they all wanted to come to work and that everything they were doing made total sense it wasn't always the right thing but it was the right thing given the questions that would be people were asking them what management had been asking them how people had been rewarded in the past how people had been disciplined in the past that language that was we were used at work the things they were asked to keep track of all these things led them to behave in perfectly rational ways and so I love this quote from David Marquet is don't try and change the people change the environment and so once you kind of come to this realization that yeah people are motivated they want to do work they want to do good stuff they want to go they want to solve problems just as I did it's the environment around them and so he said well who's responsible for the environment everyone contributes to it but my view is that buck always stops with the leadership so I go back to manager executive or whoever say and come up with some polite way of trying to diplomatics and say like I think perhaps maybe you know I could coach you and what's the type of response and they don't necessarily say it exactly like this but you kind of get the gist what's what's the type of responses you'd expect to get in that situation I don't have time I don't have time right I I know this agile stuff I was the one who hired you clearly I know this stuff because right and you know really it's the teams that need to be whipped into shape I don't know how many times I've heard the teams need to be whipped into shape I'm a student of leadership I'm not I don't pretend to be a good leader but it's something I strive for and so I spent a lot of time thinking and observing and learning all I can and so there's a few principles of leadership and so when someone sends the message whether it's explicitly or even implicitly that they're not willing to accept coaching for themselves but they're willing to tell their teams to accept it what message does that send leading by example they just modeled behavior they just said that it is okay for me to think that I already know agile it is okay for me to say that I am too busy to learn anything more it's okay for me to reject being coach it's okay for me to not have the humility to accept that maybe I need to change some of the things I'm doing and so you cannot be surprised when anyone below them follows that lead you can't blame them for it and so I was in the situation where I had my mental vision of myself as this wise yogi on the mound who could you know dispense wisdom as an agile coach where I think many times when I was asked to coach teams this is to quote unquote whip teams into shape and now having the experience of being on a team I can fairly say that the team that I was sent in to work with was thinking you know oh great who is he to tell us what to do and he's not coding right and so I think that's very you know succinctly described how I ended up where I was and it made me realize that as much as an eager I was to try and go in and help teams and help them experience you know the the the joy I had in building things and solving problems if I get asked to coach by someone who's not willing to receive coaching themselves if I say yes not only am I going to have the only thing I can possibly do is teach someone a process and that's a lot of times what they would say you can go into the team but you can't change much of the interest or the ecosystem around them the process is the non-controversial part really that's what you think people are expecting to do and so I'm really limited to do that and by kind of accepting that every time you would do that I really came to realization that my coaching to a certain degree little by little was enabling an abdication of leadership it's saying these values these agile values and principles things or even the agile process as it was so often called that's not my responsibility as a leader that has no influence on any of the decisions or behaviors or the words and actions I take as a leader not at all none of that's the agile coach's job please work with the team you whip them into shape teach them the process that's your job and you multiply that over time compound that generation over generation of leaders and managers of your organization and think about where does that end up five ten years from now when we don't have organizations where leaders realize that I should lead by example and so I think here be dragons I think we have fundamentally agile will fail in the long term until we embrace this leadership by example coaches scrum masters you're not willing to go take that leap and that scary terrifying leap to do something never done before and be a team member and experience and walk in their shoes and and code something that you've never never coded before but to gain that sense of empathy and establish the rapport with the people you are influencing that challenge to influence from within if you're an executive management of some kind of company who's not willing to seek coaching for yourself first lead by example don't ask others to do something you're not willing to do yourself so take that first step demonstrate vulnerability and I think when we do that we have a hope that these values and principles that we talk about all the time actually have a chance of catching on and sticking because it's not just about what we're doing today it's about when that new employee starts tomorrow then they get promoted and they get promoted and 25 30 years from now they're the CEO do they know the agile values and principles in such a way that they can apply them in the decisions and the behaviors and the words and the actions of being a CEO that education starts tomorrow so thank you so I think I talked a lot faster than I thought I was going to talk I have lots of time now to answer questions I suppose I'd like to say that it's been a bit of a you know a bit of a long kind of tumultuous journey and there's a lot more details and things that went on to it but I do want to thank a lot of the support I've had over the years in all roles and you know Chris and Todd are both in the room here today so I really have to give them a lot of thanks to being I talked I mentioned at the beginning of coach Wudin and his influence on people and being an inspiration for who they who they want to be in life not just in work but who they want to be in life not in terms of what you achieve but in terms of integrity and character and I have to thank those gentlemen for many ways being that to me so yes questions what do you suggest the question was I complained about all these things but what you do about them so one thing is understanding what the purpose of them is to begin with so because then we have the knowledge to say well what are we trying to achieve here and then and fundamentally what can we do as a team to achieve it and that's one of the first things is the team knowing that they have the authority to change that you know I think I thought you know we've worked with things before where they say oh we hate this stand up and a member Todd saying well why don't you change it really what we can change that they just did not know that was something within their their power to change and so what's the purpose of it the purpose is hey we're all working on those if we're working on the same thing let's not be distracted by meetings that are interrupted they're actually meant to prevent the like you know four-hour long meetings that interrupt your day you never get anything done but they don't make a lot of sense if you're not actually working on the right if it is the status report and that might be fine there were cases where we weren't legitimately working on the same thing and that was okay based on what we were doing but then you need it if we're not actually collaborating and sometimes we did and sometimes we weren't the other thing is is actually working on the same thing and that was something we actually did start to change and actually influencing from within with probably a more powerful way to do that rather than being a coach telling people to do but actually being a team member and saying hey team I've noticed this I hate this do you hate it as much as I do let's try something different and so we would start we say we're going to start working on the same stuff like not just like your story your story your story your story but we're going to work on the same story together and now we actually have something to talk about and then our stand-ups expanded to half an hour 45 minutes even sometimes and like oh my goodness that breaks all the scramble but the thing is we actually were all legitimately talking about the technical details about the problem we were called retrospect is I think there's some good suggestions of keeping track as you go along the week I think one of the big problems they had personally was that you're just not mentally prepared for it you forgot about all the stuff you were thinking of so we started keeping track with sticky notes and putting them on the whiteboard every time you ran into some frustration the frustration was obviously like this class is this is awful like this this this code right here is just like like holy every time I run into this it's so sticking open on the board and now you actually have something to remember at the end of the week so little things like that helped Chris and I actually took the team off-site and we started doing retrospectives kind of in the neighborhood restaurant and there is a big I think a big shift in mentality once we actually got off-site and it was kind of more of a social setting we got you know a little bit more you know informal we realized that we're not going back to the office at the end of the day so and established more of the rapport with each other that helps that helps for us and I'm not saying that'll help for everybody but for our team I agree with you yeah I have to have the same commonality of language and fundamentally these are like values and principles that are organizational wise have them isolated some group and so now if you're the CEO you're thinking about like how would I behave differently how would I make decisions differently with these things in mind and that change isn't going to happen overnight and it takes training and then fundamentally we're gonna leaders are all gonna have to learn how to pass that knowledge on so there's an agile transformation to company in one of the first steps is hire agile coaches is the right is that the right thing to do I don't believe that so there's terrific agile coaches on a wonderful wonderful really talented people I don't have anything against them and I was you know not talented but I was one myself I think that there's a transient place for coaching in an organization because as you say it's a big shift and it's and you need kind of that outside expertise different different ideas brought in but if that's kind of if you have a standing coaching organization forever and ever and ever and the leaders never like learn that it's something that they have to be I think that's I think that's a smell I don't see how that's sustainable who gets coach I think it's okay for the employees to get coached but I think I get you have to lead by example if you want agile an organization leaders up the chain start with them and say I need coaching for my opinion start with me I will I will readily admit that I don't know everything I need to know about this I need to change I need someone to help me and then that sets the example so when we've been shown that this is safe you know that new it's like so can you just share what's the success story you think in agile which bring us together I mean so much that you know we are believing in a job the question is some success stories that really like made me believe in agile and that you know it's getting you know it's not a new concept anymore and I think Josh talked about that as you know just boring to you so one challenge I think he says that more and more people are coming out of school and never having worked in a waterfall organization I have I work in a very bureaucratic organization that had you know and I wrote requirements documents that were thousands of pages long and no work could begin till it went to a phase gate and so I experienced all the pain and frustration and lack of building things involving problems that went with waterfall so when they actually got a chance to be like agile oh this makes sense to me I can I can see I know the problem but we're in a situation where people come out of school go into the workforce and the first thing they see is an agile organization they haven't seen the problems and so to a certain degree I'm not sure if I'm asking a question but but need to take the time to help realize that not everybody's going to have the same exposure to waterfall and why you know why that doesn't necessarily work and why do we do something different the success stories I think the success stories I had and the teams I worked with initially were quite similar when I went in and started working with teams they were frustrated by projects that would fail you know they would spend months and months looking on a project and it would just be nothing but pain and frustration and then it's been months and months and months putting in work and something that would just get thrown out at the end of the day because they did a bunch of design and then it didn't go anywhere or they gave it to customers and then the customers didn't care about it anymore and so the concept of oh we could actually we could actually solve some of those problems we can actually focus on building things and solving technical problems and giving it to people and seeing how they liked it that may think that made a big difference and I think that's the last question that's a really great question how does an agile coach know the challenges of the team and what are you looking for most of the most of the real things that is the challenges I picked up were did not come out from a stand-up did not come up in the planning or the retrospective meetings you couldn't as I couldn't as a coach lie we just like lie in and swoop in to go to a team's meetings and and really determine what their challenges were most of it ended up being and having been on a team I think I really appreciate this now was the day-to-day interaction the way we made decisions like oh well we're going to we're going to cut some corners on doing this code because of some external pressure that doesn't show up in those types of meetings and so I do believe pretty strong is that need to be embedded somehow and then I personally kind of look at agile coaches as being the leadership coach for the team whatever that team leader is help them see like oh wait a second did you realize that you know your team just decided that they're going to just do something because it means they can get it done this you know this sprint is that really the right thing do over the long term maybe we need to communicate to them how important it is to you know for maintainability or to help each other out if they're not they're too focused on their own work and not transferring knowledge and helping the team members so I don't have to answer questions I think embedding is important so I think I was yeah and that's a that's a big question I think there's a lot of aspects to that so I'd be happy to try it about that afterwards and maybe learn about your context a little bit more and if anybody's interested in setting up to I really appreciate it this is my third time in India now I think that the total of 8 years so in the past few years so I really enjoy it thank you very much for your time