Solution Focused approach to Agile Coaching at Agile Central Europe, Kraków, April 9th, 2010

As I had announced in my last post, I talked to day at Agile Central Europe, again presenting my Solution Focused approach to Agile Coaching workshop.

In Kraków I had less time available compared to the XPDays Benelux version, but I still managed to add a few more information on the subject, in particular clarifying my position on the roles of an Agile Coach. The Agile Coach is, in fact, a collection of many roles and, when in the role of the coach, there are indeed several techniques already available from the world of Business Coaching and Psychotherapy that can help us doing a better job, Solution Focused being one of them.

Here are the slides:

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And this time there was even a handout, where I summarised the main concepts and techniques, that can be downloaded from here.

The main change, however, was in the exercise part: as at AgileCE the audience was larger and the room organised for a frontal presentation more than a workshop, I had to change to exercises in pairs, giving up the concept of the independent observers I used in Belgium. This simplified the organisations of the “groups” as there was no need to move or reorganise chairs and allowed a faster pacing of the exercise rounds, thus allowing more time for the content.

As in my experience the observer plays an important role in learning these techniques, I reintroduced the concept “from the window” by proposing an open space session to continue practicing in a smaller setup and with observers.

I did my best to deliver the material and, as far as I was able to see, the audience accepted it well, but I’d like to get your feedback, so you’re welcome to comment on these pages!

Update: Robert Dempsey wrote also a post about this presentation.