I am often asked this question “How do I become an Agile Coach?”. Sorry to tell you the bad news first, but there is no set path to becoming an Agile Coach. Let me tell you my story and you will learn that there are various ways to become an Agile Coach.
My education and career have taken many different turns. I can see a golden thread throughout everything I do and that is communication and facilitation.
I love Agile because it makes sense. Simplify, communicate, collaborate; these are things we should be doing, however; we often don’t do these things and it makes work painful. In my role as an Agile Coach I want to solve painful ways of working. What makes me tick is observing how people work and coming up with ideas to make things better.
I deeply enjoy learning to communicate with others and language is central to that. Since I was a young child I have loved languages. I studied French and Arabic at University. I lived, studied, volunteered and worked in France, Burkina Faso, Jordan, Britain and now Sweden. I learnt along the way that I love problem solving as well as communicating.
Now I’m in Sweden, I am continuing my career as an Agile Coach with MEQIFY. Being an Agile Coach is exciting. I love the varied environments I work in and I get to communicate and collaborate with many different people to try and make their work lives better.
One very important experience for me was working in Jordan in 2013. I was researching, proposing and evaluating humanitarian projects to support refugees fleeing the war in Syria. That was a difficult job and in a stressful environment I had not experienced before. I realised I did not believe in the structure and process for delivering aid at that time. I was frustrated by decisions and policies that did not seem to serve the right purpose but would impact project delivery and value.
I returned to Britain and found a job with a Management Consultant development scheme. The scheme was excellent for mentoring, training and gaining experience on-site with customers. It was during this time I learned about Agile. My curiosity led me to learn a lot about Jira and Confluence, Agile delivery tracking and reporting tools, and soon others were coming to me for advice. I trained as a Scrum Master and as an Agile Coach, as well as taking other training courses and researching Behavioural Science, Organisational Design and facilitation. Soon I began coaching management teams and delivery teams to adjust their practices to be more transparent, to collaborate and communicate more. I enjoyed being able to facilitate improvements in a holistic way; at both team and management levels.
So how to become an Agile Coach? Make your own path. Follow your natural talents, see training as an opportunity to guide your thoughts and experiences and not the end goal. If this sounds like something you want to do, get in touch and look at MEQIFY’s career pages now.
This was originally posted by MEQIFY employee Sophie Triggs-Ramm on LinkedIn
