PAC class 1 – 2017
My story behind creating the Professional Agile Coach (PAC) education program, started more than 3 years ago. I experienced an increasing need to elevate the craft of Scrum Mastering and Agile Coaching in most companies. I saw many people working as Scrum Masters or Agile Coaches did not have the necessary experience and knowledge in areas like change dynamics, agile leadership, Professional Coaching, Professional Facilitation and Professional Teaching.
I wanted to help people be aware about the mindset, principles, models and practices in the different areas and teach them how to use them in their daily life. I had a number of coaching sessions with my own coach and she helped me to see what to do. Very early, I realized that it required a lot of work and I started to work with Ole Rich Henningsen to create the Professional Agile Coach (PAC) education program. Ole had similar thinking and ideas about Agile Coaching and Scrum Mastering. We started to work together as a team, crafted a PAC vision, established weekly synchronization meetings and managed work on a Trello board. In 2016, Ole and I did a Open Space session at the Scrum.org Trainer Face-2-Face event in Holland and got more feedback on our current work and ideas.
We scheduled the first class for Autumn 2017 and worked on the PAC material. We wanted more than just the traditional course material and created a manual supporting each of the 5 modules with relevant teori, models, principles, practices and exercises (group + individual). The current PAC manual is 120+ pages.
In September 2017 also had a full PAC class and what a learning boost for both the participants and us.
Top 3, I have learned
- I am impressed and excited to experience how much people can learn and grow in just 3-4 months, when they are open minded.
- Group and individual exercises between modules, is such a powerful structure to help participants to reflect and use the new knowledge.
- Decomposing what I have been doing for many years in Coaching, Facilitation, Training into chunks of information ready to be explained and understood by other people, created new awareness and much deeper understanding for me.
We did a lot of adaptation and smaller improvements during and between modules. Identifying larger areas to improve, I have the following top 3 candidates I will bring to the larger PAC retrospective with Ole in a few weeks.
Top 3, to improve for PAC class 2
- The PAC journal for participants to capture their personal goals and improvements, was too detailed and ambitious. We will make a lighter and more focused PAC Journal for the next class and create a structure to help participants use it more between modules.
- More class demonstration in the first couple of modules before participants do group exercises (in later modules we can faster push participants out of their comfort zone).
- During initial interview, make sure participants have a solid foundation of Scrum+Agile and otherwise recommend how they can prepare before module 1.
I am looking forward to start with the next class in February (already sold out).
Certified Professional Agile Coaches from PAC class 1, December 14th 2017
Read more about the Professional Agile Coach education and see testimonials from previous participants (in danish).