Coaching Agile Leaders Assessment Guide

As a coach, you must assess both the business climate and the customer’s culture in order to obtain the
right insights and ensure the coaching engagement success is optimal. This document includes two types
of assessment questions that allow coaches to gather and collect data from leaders at multiple levels in
the organization.

The assessment focus areas are divided into qualitative and quantitative questions. The option to use
both is up to the coach assisting the organization to assess the leadership agile fluency.

The collected qualitative data (the interview responses) is analyzed and categorized into themes. The
themes represent the information to be presented to the organization leaders with additional clarity with
industry knowledge.

The collected quantitative data defines a category hierarchy that describes the business leaders
experience and behaviors. The leader can be either:

1. Resilient
2. Transforming
3. Adapting
4. Novel

Conducting the Quantitative Agile Leader Self-Assessment

Use an online survey tool to collect the data from the leaders. A total of 40 questions can be applied. See
Appendix A for the quantitative focus areas and leadership attributes.
The quantitative focus area includes the following:
 Goal Setting and Performance Management
 Management and Leadership Style
 Work Environment and Organizational Culture
 Autonomy and Responsibility
 Collaboration and Teamwork
 Communication
 Competencies and Mastery
 Continual Improvement and Learning Organization
 Processes and Tools
 Value Generation and Purpose
The agile leadership fluency described in Table 1 defines the level of experience and knowledge in
applying agility as a leader based on the self-assessment during the quantitative survey:
Table 1: Agile Leadership Fluency
Agile Leadership Fluency Description Score/Rank
Resilient Influences the organization 121-160
Transforming Demonstrates fluency in agile behaviors and 81-120
influences teams
Adapting Applies new knowledge with an agile coach 41-80
facilitating
Novel Demonstrates limited agile knowledge and 10-40
behaviors

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Qualitative Agile Business Leadership Assessment
A few focus areas have been identified to help you gather the data necessary to produce insights about
the organization. The assessed insights form the strategy baseline for the organization to follow. The
insights also create a landscape for you to traverse and develop the appropriate learning experience for
the people participating in the agile transformation.

The focus areas include the following:

 Business Flow – Identify the current and future business goals.
 Business Culture – Identify the organization’s beliefs and values.
 Customer Pull (Engagement & Satisfaction) – Describe the organization’s awareness of its
customers’ loyalty.
 Team Engagement – Identify the goals and vision for teams in the organization.
 Agile Transformation – Describe the expected results from the agile transformation.
 Personal Ownership/Accountability – Identify the commitment level to a successful
transformation.
 Agile Leadership – Assess the current leadership style for the leaders engaged in the
transformation.
See Appendix B for the qualitative interview questions.

Conducting the Qualitative Interview

The interview can be conducted remotely or face to face (the preference is face to face, which in our
connected world can also be via video conference). The following steps will help you conduct a
successful interview:
Before the interview, test your environment and equipment:
 Schedule a 45- to 60-minute interview session.
 Prepare the questions.
 Verify your audio recording device has enough battery power for 45 to 60 minutes.
 Test the audio recording device by recording your voice and then listening to the recording.
 Bring pen and paper as a backup in the event of a recording device failure.
Start the interview:
 Greet the person and ask how they feel about participating in the interview. A positive response
indicates a higher probability of a good interview.
 Ask the person you are interviewing if it is okay for you to record the interview. If the interviewee
says no, get your pen and paper ready to take notes.
 Turn on the audio recording device.
 Explain how you plan to ask questions and use the results.
 Test the recording device again with the interviewee.
Conduct the interview:
 Proceed through all questions.
 Make sure there is at least two to three seconds between questions. This will make it easier for
you to transcribe the interview later.
 Ask for clarification if you do not understand a response.
Close the interview:
 Thank the person for making time to participate in the interview.
 Stop the recording.

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  Say goodbye to the interviewee.

Creating Themes

 Transcribe the interview recording into a written document to share with the interviewee.
 Look for words, phrases and ideas that repeatedly occur throughout the transcript.
 Create themes by identifying a category for these words, phrases and ideas. For example, you
may create a theme called “Faster time to market” that is based on phrases such as “need to
respond to the customer sooner,” “competitors are eating our lunch,” etc.
 Limit the themes to one or two per question.
 Identify where a top-level theme can be created. A top-level theme may have multiple sub-
themes.

Presenting Your Findings and Recommendations

 Schedule a two-hour meeting with the stakeholders.

 Create a presentation.
Facilitate the meeting:
 Set up an easel with a large pad of paper for parking lot discussions.
 Set up a second easel with a large pad of paper for questions.
 State the purpose of the meeting.
 Identify the problem statement.
 Use images and illustrations to share your findings.
 Provide two or more recommendations to resolve the issue.
 Identify the next steps.
 Thank the stakeholders for attending.

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 Appendix A: Quantitative Agile Leadership Assessment

Apply the following Likert scale to rank the leadership attributes for each focus area:

1 - Rarely 2 – Occasionally 3 - Often 4 - Very Often

Focus Area: Goal Setting and Performance Management

1. Discuss tradeoffs between scope and schedule 1 2 3 4
2. Use learning goals instead of performance goals 1 2 3 4
3. Ensure the business driver behind the project is clearly stated and visible to all members of the
team 1 2 3 4
4. Evaluate an individual’s work behaviors and outcomes against the defined objectives 1 2 3 4

Focus Area: Management and Leadership Style

1. Acknowledge that the pace of change is different for individual team members 1 2 3 4
2. Deal constructively with team members’ resistance to change 1 2 3 4
3. Empower team members 1 2 3 4
4. Abandon the “command and control” management style and replace it with a servant leadership
approach 1 2 3 4

Focus Area: Work Environment and Organizational Culture

1. Support flexibility in team members’ work hours 1 2 3 4
2. Reward results more strongly than adherence to process 1 2 3 4
3. Open to team members providing feedback on my leadership style 1 2 3 4
4. Celebrate the team’s success and use failure as learning opportunities 1 2 3 4

Focus Area: Autonomy and Responsibility

1. Team members are allowed to select their own tasks 1 2 3 4
2. Foster a safe environment that protects the team 1 2 3 4
3. Team members trust me 1 2 3 4
4. Teams can reteam to become new teams 1 2 3 4

Focus Area: Collaboration and Teamwork

1. Encourage collaborative design 1 2 3 4
2. Foster timely resolution of impediments 1 2 3 4
3. Support pair programming 1 2 3 4
4. Expect open communications 1 2 3 4

Focus Area: Communication

1. Share vision with context and clarity 1 2 3 4
2. Clearly articulate reasons for change 1 2 3 4
3. Listen with empathy 1 2 3 4
4. Promote metrics and display project information prominently for everyone to see 1 2 3 4

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Focus Area: Competencies and Mastery
1. Encourage creation and support of learning communities in order to promote knowledge sharing
1 2 3 4
2. Provide opportunities for professional development 1 2 3 4
3. Ensure the development team has the necessary skills to successfully deliver the product
1 2 3 4
4. Invite industry thought leaders to share experience with teams 1 2 3 4

Focus Area: Continual Improvement and Learning Organization

1. Receptive to innovations and recommendations emerging from the team 1 2 3 4
2. Encourage cross-team knowledge transfer 1 2 3 4
3. Reserve learning hours weekly for teams to self-improve 1 2 3 4
4. Encourage publishing papers and conference presentations 1 2 3 4

Focus Area: Processes and Tools

1. Teams are allowed to decide which tools to use in order to deliver results 1 2 3 4
2. Enable the team to evaluate complexity collaboratively 1 2 3 4
3. Teams are encouraged to regularly challenge processes to minimize waste and improve
effectiveness 1 2 3 4
4. Optimize the entire value stream 1 2 3 4

Focus Area: Value Generation and Purpose

1. Value customer feedback 1 2 3 4
2. Help create a sense of urgency to meet deadlines without using a “command and control”
management style 1 2 3 4
3. Understand and accept that on-time delivery of an acceptable solution is a high measure of
success for the project 1 2 3 4
4. Teams are encouraged to focus on delivering business value versus investing time in non-value
activities (for example, unnecessary documentation) 1 2 3 4

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 Appendix B: Agile Leadership Qualitative Assessment

Focus Area: Business Flow

1 List the organization’s mission goals.
2 List the top three initiatives your organization or department has committed to for this year.
3 Describe the blockers and/or impediments that are limiting the organization’s success.

Focus Area: Business Culture

4 How would you describe the organization’s culture?
5 What are the organization’s beliefs and values?

Focus Area: Customer Pull (Engagement & Satisfaction)

6 Identify your customer’s top three demands.
7 What value could you provide that would change your net promoter score or loyalty with your
customers?

Focus Area: Team Engagement

8 What are the team(s) goals for this year?
9 List and explain three characteristics that you wish your team would demonstrate.

Focus Area: Agile Transformation

10 Why are you pursuing an agile transformation?
11 Do you have executive sponsorship to support a long-term engagement? If yes, can you provide
the role(s) and name(s)? If no, what is the plan to obtain executive sponsorship?
12 Is this an enterprise-level or department-level initiative?
13 What do you plan to achieve by transforming the organization and teams to agile practices?
14 How many teams will participate in the transformation?
15 Describe your change management strategy.
16 Do you intend to have onsite coaching and trainers to facilitate the transformation?
17 How do you plan to sustain the agile transformation?

Focus Area: Personal Ownership/Accountability

18 What is your role in the agile transformation?
19 What will success look like for you?
20 How will you measure success?
21 What changes are you prepared to make in order to achieve the baselines identified by your
metrics?

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