how agile coaches help us win - the agile coach role @ spotify [lightning talk! 12min]

November 27, 2013

The Agile Coach Role @ SpotifyBrendan Marsh

How Agile CoachesHelp Us Win

Inspiration for this talk

What is an agile coach at Spotify?

3What do they do?

Why do we believe they help us win?

4

24M active users. 6M paying subscribers.

20M songs.

Growing fast

30

3 years ago

Tribes ”Provide fast and

reliable access to all the world's music”

”Enable high product development speed while maintaining a

highly available service”

P P P P Squad Squad Squad Squad

Chapter

Chapter

P P P P Squad Squad Squad Squad

Chapter

Chapter

Growing fast

25030

10010

Now

7How do we scale?

• “Feel like a mini-startup”

• Self-organizing

• Cross-functional

• 5-7 engineers, less than 10

• Autonomous

Squad

P

C

Tribes ”Provide fast and

reliable access to all the world's music”

”Enable high product development speed while maintaining a

highly available service”

P P P P Squad Squad Squad Squad

Chapter

Chapter

P P P P Squad Squad Squad Squad

Chapter

Chapter

Squads

Agile Coaches

Individuals

Squads

Tribes

Scope of the Agile Coach

12

The agile coach

Our primary goal: High performing teams and a high performing organization

Motivated people... building valuable, quality products...

...fast!

November 27, 2013

How do we help them reach high performance?

By going above and beyond the call of an Agile Practitioner

16

November 27, 2013

We definitely do the basics...

Scrum

Kanban

User stories

Stand ups

Retrospectives

Sprints

Planning PokerXP

Story PointsDemos

Agile - LeanPractitioner

Lyssa Adkins - The Agile Coaching Competency Framework

Agile - LeanPractitioner

Teaching

Mentoring

Coaching

Facilitating

Lyssa Adkins - The Agile Coaching Competency Framework

Agile - LeanPractitioner

Teaching

Mentoring

Coaching

Facilitating

TechnicalMastery

BusinessMastery

TransformationalMastery

Lyssa Adkins - The Agile Coaching Competency Framework

21

Some recent examplesof this in practice

1 on 1 coaching

- Team members

- Product owners

- Chapter leads

- Senior management

Agile - Lean

TeachingMentoring

TechnicalBusiness

Coaching

Squad coaching- During standups

- Retrospectives

- Planning meetings

- We’re part of the team

Agile - Lean

TeachingMentoring

CoachingFacilitating

TechnicalBusiness Transformational

Practitioner

Mastery MasteryMastery

Team offsite- Full day(s) offsite

- Team building

- Problem Solving

TeachingFacilitating

Agile - LeanPractitioner

TDD/XP workshop- 2 day workshop

- Facilitated by coach and CL

- Focus on engineering skills

TeachingFacilitating

TechnicalMastery

Agile - LeanPractitioner

PO book club- Series of lunch and learns

- Challenges POs

- What is the impact of planned work?

TeachingFacilitating

BusinessMastery

Agile - LeanPractitioner

27

Putting it alltogether

Section name

How do WE grow?

•Conferences / Meetups•Training / Workshop•Thought Leader Talks•Mentoring•Pairing•Agile Practices Sharing•Lean coffee•Unconference

29

Section name

Recap

First level text•Second level – Third level– Fourth level

30

Recap

Brendan MarshAgile coachbrendanm@spotify.com@brendanmarshbrendanmarsh.com