Just Say No

A good craftsman needs to take care of his tools, to keep them oiled and sharp. As an Agile Coach, you don't have any obvious physical tools apart from your trusty notebook and pen (and perhaps some super sticky notes, index cards and markers in your bag). You are the diagnostic instrument that both senses and perturbs in coaching situations. You use your eyes and ears to notice what's happening. You trawl through your pool of past experiences to help identify underlying issues. You rely on your heart to empathise with people you work with and reflect your values in the actions you take.

What can you do to stay sharp and true? In a nutshell, you must take care of yourself. You need to take time to rest and stay healthy in both mind and body. You have a lot more to offer a team that you are coaching if you are alert and centred. Bringing energy to your work is difficult if you are running yourself into the ground by taking on a heavy burden of commitments. Remember a burnt out coach is no use to an agile team.

In our Agile Coaching book, Liz advises "Be Kind to Yourself." I wish that I'd added one from me on "Sustainable Pace."

Sustainable Pace is a guiding principle in agile software development. Many agile coaches forget to apply fundamental principles like this to themselves. I know that it's tempting to try and help with every request that comes to you for coaching. But take a moment to look into your heart and consider whether you can really take on all this work. Each new request is likely to increase the context-switching you'll have to keep up with and most requests expand, as you explore beyond the tip of the iceberg. A practical first step in getting some control of this is to list out all the parallel streams of activity that you are involved with including community commitments, such as reviewing sessions for agile conferences, going along to agile user groups, and contributing to online agile discussion forums. You may be surprised just how many things are on that list!

Now what? Consider trimming that list. You'll find some commitments that you simply have to see through, others you may be able to put on hold. Now consider how to avoid becoming overstretched in future. Become more aware of the choice you have when a new request for your time comes in. Sometimes saying "No" is better than trying to squeeze the extra work in and doing a half-assed job. Giving a considered "No" can build your reputation as someone who only accepts work that they can take on. Keeping your workload sustainable helps you to leave enough time in your life for important things that help keep your energy up. When you spend time with your loved ones and have fun, your become stronger and more able to cope when things get tough.

However much you love coaching agile teams, don't become an addict! Practice saying "No" so you have space in your life to say "Yes!" to the things that matter. Hopefully, one of those things that matter is your own work as an agile coach. By saying "No" more often, you'll be able to be more present and effective for the teams that you say "Yes" to.

Comments

[Chris Chan]

Agreed. As a coach, I feel I can only coach 2-3 teams concurrently (depends on the experience of the team, some less time, some more time) and at the same time coach and consult with management whilst balancing all the other activities that a coach needs to do (eg forums, user groups, conferences, blogging etc...)

I find using a personal kanban board helps me prioritize, limit WIP and help me manage my flow of work.

[Rachel Davies]

Chris,

Yes, I'd say about 2-3 teams is possible depending on how much support they need. What's harder is if those teams are in different organisations or different cities.

My particular weakness is to volunteer to help out with too many agile community conferences. I am trying to limit my WIP on that to 1 per year. I have also experimented with a personal Kanban board but I didn't have the energy to keep up with it.

Best regards,

Rachel

[Wildfalcon]

You just inspired me to write a post about this, I call it commitment debt :-)

[Rachel Davies]

Laurie,

Glad to hear that I inspired you to write a blog on Commitment Debt - http://wildfalcon.com/archives/2011/03/07/getting-stuck-in-commitment-debt/ I've really struggled with this. Even today I ended up doing work on XP2011 and Agile Alliance Conference Sponsorship committee instead of starting my own To-Do list. Perhaps I need to give Personal Kanban another try.

Best regards,

Rachel

[Liz Keogh]

I keep 3 "concerns" on my personal Kanban board. Experience has taught me that any more than this means one of them always drops off my radar. I've found Kanban's a great way to manage personal WIP, especially if some of those concerns are ongoing with no particular end date, but it's got to be easily accessible and trivial to use (I use LeanKit Kanban).

We also used Kanban very successfully for managing a coaching team, by putting our personal limits on a board and letting the lead coach swap concerns between us according to our abilities (technical, etc.) until the most important were covered, without overloading any one coach.

[Rachel Davies]

Liz,

Thanks for sharing your experiences here. You make a great point about extending this to managing a coaching team.

Best regards,

Rachel

[Dave Nicolette]

Wonderful advice and an important reminder for all of us. Thanks!

[Jbrains]

Another point for clear goals and a clear business model. Without them, one chases every rabbit, catches perhaps a few and only by luck, and ends up exhausted.

[Deborah Hartmann Preuss]

Absolutely agreed. In addition: make time for rest during your week. I mean rest at work: many of us find five solid days of travel/teaching/coaching unsustainable. When do you reflect on all that your "radar" picks up on ehile working with your teams and org? When do you read, or stare into space and imagine what's possible? When do you clean your desk? These reflective activities are very much part of your work - sharpening the coach's saw, so to speak.

Despite our passion to make life at work better for folks, we are not superwomen, and we need to take care of ourselves in order to be centered to do so. Thanks Rachel, Liz, Liz and others for reminding us, and for helping teams have a conscience on this topic, with things like Kanban.

[Vn Nilesh]

Saying no is not just limited to coaches. In my personal opinion it also applies to developers as well. Many times people keep working on parallel tasks and end up not completing all of them on time. This results in reduced velocity and delivering less number of features to the customer.

[T. Moris]

Do you have a checklist to gauge the suitability of a project for agile based development?

[Rachel Davies]

Yes I do have a checklist for gauging the suitability of a project for agile development. It is in part derived on the DSDM Atern checklist with some additional questions from my consulting experience. Would you like me to email you a copy?