Transformational Coaching: What Moves a Person to Change. Part IV

Transformational Coaching entails rewiring… helping people ditch the ineffective way for an effective way.

Example: Transforming from waterfall to lean-agile.

Anti-patterns and Muscle memory: One technique that a transformational coach should be aware of is … to be aware of the Agile anti-pattern that the coachee is exhibiting… and nip it in the bud...the moment it is observed.

There will be a lot of these ‘nipping in the bud’ activities… so do the transformational coaching the moment you observe the anti-pattern; eliminating one anti-patten at a time. Don’t do it all in one go…what the brain can absorb and the attention span of the coachee is small and short respectively.

An anti-pattern emerges when a common response or a patterned way of responding to a problem is used … looks appropriate but is ineffective; ignoring another existing response that is more effective.

It is easier said than done! Muscle memory is the enemy. Have patience…. rewiring of the brain takes time.

Example: Thinking in terms of ‘tasks’ and WBS (work breakdown structure) is an Agile anti-pattern. These are waterfall artifacts! Instead, move the coachee to think in terms of Business Value! This leads to thinking in terms of features… it has the business value described in its benefit hypothesis; features (expressed in PI objectives) are spread across a roadmap showing the pathway towards the completion and delivery of the minimum viable product (MVP)! Of course features are decomposed into vertically and thinly sliced pint-sized stories (yes, you read it right: pint … to make a point of the size). Tip: ditch the ‘tasks’ under the story… task has hours associated with it…whilst story has points (again, size, if you will… pint-sized story is the best!)… these two (hours and size) don’t go together… assigning time value to a size/point does not makes sense… it is oxymoron to do so! Task is an agile anti-patten…ditch task … leave ‘task’ in the waterfall world.

To be continued.