Agile Coach Daily Checklist

As an Agile Coach you can operate both in person and remotely. Working remotely is absolutely possible but it takes a little bit more work to achieve than if you were face to face.

We work across many multinational clients with collocated teams and distributed teams alike. Here we share some of the common activities our Agile Coaches undertake and on what frequency.

Daily Activities

1

Work item waiting times / time in column
Look for high waiting times and work with the team to reduce work item waiting time

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2

Work item mileage – number of status changes. High mileage items are a great topic of conversation at the next retro

3

Blocker/impediment identification, management and escalation

4

Probabilistic forecasting against goals / milestones

5

Lead time distribution analysis (cycle time)

6

Housekeeping check – make sure all aspects of Jira/VSTS are up to date

7

Escaped defects RCA data check – make sure all defects have the root cause analysis fields populated

8

Review and track progress against goals

Weekly Activities

  • Weekly surgery Skype call – this is a calendarised online meeting allowing any number of people from your organisation to dial in and get answers to questions and explore topics of interest.
  • One to One mentoring call to cover:
    • Follow up on Leanware actions
    • Review and improve the coaching plan
    • Answering difficult questions
    • Asking difficult questions
    • A sounding board

Quarterly Activities

  • Data analysis – remote review and assessment / benchmarking of Jira / VSTS data
  • Understand the predictability of the team
  • Cycle time distribution
  • Cycle time scatter plot
  • Team throughput
  • Bottleneck identification
  • Flow efficiency
  • Escaped defects
  • Assessment against the Solutioneers 23 core delivery principles that create high performance teams.
  • Team Risk assessment & profiling

Adhoc Activities

  • New team member inductions with regards to Agile & Lean ways of working
  • Jira / VSTS support and administration
  • On-demand coaching Skype calls with team members
  • Facilitation of key Agile meetings / ceremonies where appropriate

Conclusion

Agile Coaching is valuable to teams whether you’re face to face or remote. The above activities are aimed as a starter for 10 rather than a definitive guide as it’s all about context.

About Ian Carroll

Ian consults, coaches, trains and speaks on all topics related to Lean, Kanban and Agile software development.

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