I was commiserating with Antony Marcano that just when you're enjoying working with an Agile team, it's often a signal that your job as Agile Coach is done and it's time for you to say goodbye. When you coach a team, you coach toward this moment when you can make your exit.
Think about it like this, when you teach a child to walk, you hold their hand and help to create confidence that it's safe to make their first steps. But your goal is for the child to walk on their own. It's the same when you're an Agile Coach. You're working towards the day your team can run without you.
So although you might enjoy being the centre of attention and being the person who orchestrates your team's agile process, you need to teach them to conduct it for themselves. Incidentally, this reminds me there are even orchestra's that work in a collaborative style without a conductor, such as Orpheus Chamber Orchestra.
Try to remember this, whenever you take on a task for the team, you are embedding yourself in their process. If you're the agile specialist that they rely on to run their agile meetings, they're not really owning their Agile process. So instead, work with the team to share your agile know-how and teach them how to do things for themselves as you go.
I hate goodbyes so I aim to gradually slip away. It helps to remember that “Every exit is an entrance somewhere else” (Tom Stoppard).



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