2020 is the 28th year of the EuroSTAR Software Testing Conference and an incredible milestone for everyone involved. In those 28 years we have all experienced so many incredible moments in 28 years. EuroSTAR initiated a series of open letters from community leaders looking back at their younger self. The letters acknowledge all that has come before and shows how each personal journey is important and adds to the community as a whole.
I was asked to provide the seventh letter in the serie and luckily I was 28 in the year 1999. This was an interesting year in IT.
In the March issue of Bits & Chips I described the phases that organisations go through when adopting agile. In the three waves of agile I describe challenges that the organisation encounter and how the role of the Agile Coach evolves during the transition. In adopting Agile, organizations ride three waves.
Organizations that start with agile often have a strong focus on the teams. When the individual teams hit their stride, the focus shifts to the way the teams collaborate. Organizations increasingly start to understand that business agility and responsiveness are key to survive and stay ahead of the competition. In order to yield value, the work of single Agile teams should, therefore, be integrated and embedded in larger business processes. In the second wave, the adoption of Agile is shifting from a single-team focus to a wider organisational approach. The role of the agile coach shifts from learning the team how to do their team events to initialising cross team collaboration and creating a focus on a continues delivery.
Once teams have learned to plan and launch collectively built releases the focus shifts from realising technical products to business delivery. This is the third wave. In the third wave, the Agile coach will evolve into a delivery coach or a counselor. The delivery coach is best compared with a business consultant. To get a better understanding of what the counselor role could look like, it seems we need to warp into the future. Let us have a look at the Start Trek Ships counselor to shape the role of tomorrow’s Agile Coach.
Derk-Jan de Grood 