In part 1 of this blog post, we explained that coaching is a 4-stage process which reflects the team's agile maturity. The stages are Educate, Show, Mentor and Support. Let's now focus on why delivery-oriented coaching is more valuable than coaching teams from the sidelines. Delivery-orientated coaching means showing things rather than talking about them.

"Agile Coach" is an extremely overused term today: it seems like every company wants one and lots of people refer to themselves as that. But what does it actually mean? An external consultant? The iteration manager (aka Scrum Master)? The person who facilitates collaborative workshops? An agile project manager? A trainer talking about agile? Someone who visits once a week and advises the team?

Recently workshopping with one of our clients, we were asked to take the attendees back to basics, "what does Agile look like"? As you can imagine, this is a pretty broad sweeping question with many possible answers. Below are the lo-fi props we used to conduct the workshop. 

It is inevitable that we make mistakes in a new environment. But if we allowed ourselves, and if others allowed us, to make mistakes on a small scale in rapid succession, then we can avoid failing big.