Customer Reviews
Informative and invaluable - By: Michael Chung, 27 Feb 2010 
So what is "Agile Coaching"?
Chances are, you've heard this phrase being knocked around at work or from reading blogs. In the software development community, it's refreshing to find a well written & informative book that cuts through the jargon & buzz words.
The book provides real practical advice on how to apply techniques & methods that aid both day to day development & long term project outlooks.
The authors' experience shines throughin this essential addition to the bookshelf.
Advice from the code-face - By: Allan Kelly, 26 Oct 2009 For me the book is a book of two halves. As you would expect half of it is about coaching Agile teams. In that you'll find that it covers similar ground to my own Changing Software Development: Learning to Become Agile - both are about introducing change. While I cover more management & background they cover more personal stuff.
The other half of the book is a nice, modern, discussion of how Agile teams work. Its not Scrum, Kanban, XP or any other method. It describes what you find. Its one of the best introductions to current Agile practices you'll find. Plus, it incorporates a lot of experience which earlier books couldn't.
One of the things I liked about this book is the "corner cases." This book covers those bits of the Agile development process which sometimes get skipped over. For example: the advice to keep your white boards mobile, something I always do but until now nobody has ever put itin a book.
There are lots of other great tips from two people who arein the trenches coding & helping people develop better software & systems.
Not just a book for coaches - By: J. Higman, 17 Oct 2009 This book is the result of many years spent coaching teams to be agile, & the cumulative experience really shows.
There's a great emphasis on the pragmatic application of agile practices, & plenty of real-world examples & stories.
But it's is not just a book for coaches - anyone who worksin an agile team will find lots here to help with understanding the process more deeply.
If you're just starting out with agile, it's a great way to learn what it might feel like to bein a well-functioning agile team.
And for those who have been doing it for years, there are fresh ways to look at the process, & some inspirational advice for when times are rough.
A much needed book about a very important practice - By: Simon Kirk, 11 Oct 2009 Coaching. How hard can it be? To the uninitiated a great coach hardly seems to do a thing: a small comment here, a gentle prod there. The result, the subjects magically improve.
Of course the truth is that there's no such thing as magic, & that coaching is a skill (maybe an art) that takes years to perfect. As others have said here, Agile has internalised the vital role that coaches can play, & as it growsin popularity there are going to be more & more people trying to coach, without knowing where to start.
This book is perfect for them. It's packed full of tips, snippets, pauses for thoughts, techniques, & most importantly stories. It can get a nascent coach started on the right road.
Vitally, it talks not just about practical application, but more importantly about the frame of mind a coach needs to have. Given a bad coach is perhaps more damaging than a good coach is helpful, helping them focus on the way they act is a fundamentally important part of the book's message.
Finally, more experienced coaches will get plenty from this book, too (I know I did); Whetherin the form of revisiting known techniques, discovering new ones, or apropos reminders of the aforementioned mindset.
I don't know of any other book aimed at Agile coaching. Great stuff, & much needed.
Agile Coaching an Agile Coach - By: B. A. Swann, 14 Sep 2009 I have seen Agile coachingin action! While the value of coaching a software teamin any form of best practice cannot be underestimated, it can also be extremly destructive if the coaches don't have any experience of writing software at the sharp end, merely a collection of letters after their names that give them a false sense of confidence that knowledge gainedin the circles of academia can be unswervingly applied to the real world.
Here is where the difference comes in. From reading Rachel & Liz's book it was pretty clear that they don't see their work as a textbook that can be applied to any software dilemma but more as a series of guidlines & techniques that can be used to improve teamwork, communication & job fulfillment. After reading this book I quickly came to the conclusion that I needed someone with proven agile coaching experience to help me set up my software team. I use the Agile Coaching book as my point of reference, while I amin the lucky situation of being able to build my team around what I have learntin the book, I wish I had this kind of help when I was working with large legacy teams from non agile backgrounds.
