In March, an international group of Agile coaches and professionals, along with Scrum Alliance® staff met for one day in New York to explore the question: How can Scrum Alliance better support our coaching community? To explore and refine the answer(s), the group formed the Coaching Advisory Team (CAT). Over the next year, CAT will be working together to help support Agile coaches through a variety of products and services.
We’d like to share a little about who we are, what we discussed, and what we’ll be working on.
Coaching Advisory Team
- Brock Argue, CEC, CTC®, Canada
- Shannon Carter, CSM®, CSPO®, United States (Scrum Alliance, Team member)
- Stacey Louie, CSP®, United States
- Erika Massie, CSPO, A-CSMSM, United States (Scrum Alliance, Product Owner)
- Rachele Maurer, CSP, United States
- Mauricio Robles, CSP, Costa Rica
- Meghan Robinson, CSM, United States (Scrum Alliance, Scrum Master)
- Alex Sloley, CSP, Australia
- Mark Summers, CEC, CTC, Germany
You might notice that the team includes Certified Enterprise Coaches, Certified Team Coaches and Certified Scrum Professionals. This is by design, giving the CAT diverse perspective of current and future certified coaches.
Once we had the chance to get to know each other and create a team agreement, we heard the Scrum Alliance vision for the CAT. We’ll be using this as a starting point for our work.
Coaching Advisory Team Vision
To
serve aspiring and active Agile coaches with the
resources &
services to be most effective at their craft. To
provide guidance on how Scrum Alliance can better support our coaching community’s role in
improving organizational performance and outcomes.
Next, we received some background on Scrum Alliance and coaching support to date. Brock presented the
CTC/CEC Improvement Team’s background, purpose and initiatives. Mark shared the structure, successes, and numbers from past
Scrum Coaching Retreats.
With a vision and some background, we looked at who – and how – to best support first. We brainstormed a number of great ideas; but, honoring the Scrum value of
focus meant we needed to choose a starting point. We ultimately chose three epic initiatives to work on over the next year:
- Articulating a Clear Path for Agile Coaches
“As a current or future Agile Coach, I would like to have a clear path to follow so I understand how to grow as a professional in my field.”
- Coaching Retreats
“As a Scrum Coaching Retreat attendee, I want to have ongoing, immersive learning experiences in the context of community so I can grow and expand my coaching skills and build connections.”
- Supporting the Journey
“As a current or future Agile Coach, I need support, tools, and resources wherever I am in the world so I can hone my craft and support organizations and people on their Agile journey.”
Finally, we created backlog items for each of our epics. Since we are a Scrum Team of widely distributed volunteers, we decided to work on our backlog in four-week sprints, starting immediately.
We are all excited and honored to be part of the CAT and are looking forward to updating our coaching community as we make progress!
If you’d like to provide feedback or ask questions, please email
[email protected].
Best wishes,
The Coaching Advisory Team
(Brock, Stacey, Rachele, Mauricio, Alex, Mark, Shannon, Meghan, Erika)