This morning I loaded up my calendar after a few days off work, only to discover that I was late for my own ‘weekly review’ with myself! After quickly apologizing to myself and making up an excuse about connection problems, I started reflecting.
In fact, I had completely forgotten that I had even committed myself to this! The first reflection was that I was glad that I had actually blocked time in my calendar to work on this.
I knew instinctively that it’s the sort of thing that is easily bumped to the bottom of the priorities. But we wouldn’t take that approach with a team retrospective. So I know Ineeded to commit myself to the reflection somehow.
After a hearty discussion during the Agile Coaching Academy (run by the Agile Centre), we related how many agile coaches tell other people to reflect but don’t spend sufficient time reflecting on their own performance. We also talked about what value does an Agile Coach bring?
What value does an Agile coach bring? How do we know? How can we improve?
I stumbled across this from Lyssa Adkins. “Agile coaching, done well, is impossible to see from outside the team and can be invisible even to team members. It’s hard for the the people you coach to know how the thing you did with them contributed to their success!”
Lyssa Askins provides a sample worksheet for a weekly reflection. I’ve based the worksheet on this and have adatped it to my own needs. By doing such a reflection, an agile coach can not only reflect constructively on our performance, but also consider the value that an agile coach brings to the team.
