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How does someone become an Agile consultant?

Discover how to become a powerful agile consultant with insights from Martin Hinshelwood. Transform organisations through effective coaching and training!

Published on 21 March 2023

Written by Martin Hinshelwood

6 minute read

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How does someone become an Agile consultant?

Navigating the Journey to Becoming an Agile Consultant

Being an Agile and Scrum coach, the question, “How does someone become and Agile consultant,” is a pretty popular one, and I’d like to add that this isn’t an easy question to answer, as the journey to becoming an Agile Consultant isn’t at all a straightforward path and is different for everyone. 🌱

As this is such an important question, I believe this article is essential as I explain the process, detailing how one goes from being a professional in a specific field to a competent and effective Agile Consultant.

I know the importance of mastering your domain and industry before applying Agile principles, and keep in mind the need to underline the significance of context and abstraction.

In the article, I give an inside look into real-world Agile consulting experiences and practices, and I hope this insight guides you through the step-by-step process of becoming an Agile Consultant in your chosen industry.

Understanding the Agile Path

Very few professions don’t have a clear guide on how to become that professional, and this is why I often ask, “How does one become an Agile consultant?

Well, it’s not as straightforward as having the desire to simply declare, “I’m going to be an Agile consultant,” but rather, it’s a complicated process.

I’d also like to point out here that your journey to becoming an Agile Consultant must begin with being good at your profession and your job, and I mean really good. Agile is not a standalone concept but a compilation of ideas and practices that you add to what you’re already doing to make it more effective. 🌱

Expertise is Key

As with any profession being an Agile Consultant experience is crucial. Agile, just like Lean, is not the main event, but it is part of the process. You need to be competent in the work you’re focusing on and then integrate Agile practices. The same applies to Lean. The crux here is that you should be adept in the actual work that you’re doing.

Once you’ve achieved this, only then can you apply Agile or Lean methodologies and be recognised by others around you as someone who understands these practices well and can confidently become an Agile Consultant. 🔑

Being Seen As an Agile Expert

As with many professions, the perception of how others perceive your professionalism plays a significant role. Being an Agile Consultant is no different, meaning that as you demonstrate your understanding of Agile practices and how they can be used to optimise work, others start recognising you as an Agile expert.

Don’t underestimate the encouragement from those around you. Being recognised for your talent can spur you to do more and gradually, you’ll find yourself becoming an excellent Agile Consultant. 👀

Building Foundations

I want to stress that my background is in software development, so I must highlight that your Agile Consultant journey should start within your field of expertise. And I cannot stress the danger of taking on a role as an Agile consultant in an industry that you are unfamiliar with.

Here’s a perfect example, I have never worked in a car factory, so it would not make sense for me to serve as an Agile consultant within that particular industry.

Begin within your area of expertise, accumulate knowledge and experience, and then, you can extrapolate from there, moving forwards towards your goal of becoming an Agile Consultant. 🚀

Abstraction Know-How

Abstraction is the hidden art of Agile Consulting, as becoming an Agile consultant is not merely about gaining experience; it’s about abstraction. You must understand your work so deeply that you can separate the Agile and Lean story from the work.

You should discern how these methodologies impact and affect your particular area of expertise. Once you’ve gained enough experience in a specific context, you can help and advise outside that context.

Beyond Agile

Allow me to share an intriguing experience I had in 2016 while conducting training for the Ghana Police Service. As you can imagine, this training area was entirely new for me and I had no idea how to train anyone in the police service.

Thank goodness the training was not related to software but focused on how Scrum could be used for enacting organisational change.

This experience shows the benefits and application of Agile that can be effective in any industry worldwide. While I did have a very limited knowledge of policing, it was fascinating and inspiring to me to see the attendees trying to contextualise Agile principles in their line of work. 🌍

Applying Agile and Lean Everywhere

One of the key takeaways in this article is that you will need to be an Agile consultant within your line of work long enough to abstract ideas that would work in any context. Only then can you consult on them even if you don’t know the core context, and this ability requires years of experience to develop, so be patient and hone your skills. 🌐

Find Your Niche

Here’s some advice from me on an example for aspiring Agile Consultants to break into the industry of Agile and Scrum. Perhaps, you’ve spent the last 20 years working in finance. It makes sense then that your Agile consulting journey should start within the financial industry. 🚀

So, to begin with, start by figuring out how to bring Agile and Lean practices into the financial industry. After gaining enough experience, you’ll be ready to venture into another industry because the same principles apply.

Interested in learning more about Agile and Scrum practices?

Check out my courses on Agile and Scrum to equip yourself with the skills and knowledge you need to navigate your Agile Consulting journey. 🚀

Naked Agility is an #agile consultancy that specializes in #scrumtraining, #agilecoaching and #agileconsulting to help teams evolve, integrate, and continuously improve.

We recognize the positive impact that a happy AND inspired workforce can have on customer experience, and we actively help organizations to tap into the power of creative, collaborative, and high-performing teams that is unique to #agile and #scrum environments.

If you are interested in #agiletraining, visit https://nkdagility.com/training/

If you have identified the need for #agilecoaching and #agileconsulting, visit https://nkdagility.com/agile-consulting-coaching/

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Oh, that’s a great question. So how does somebody become an agile consultant?

Well, I don’t think, I don’t think, well, become, that’s probably the linchpin there. It’s really hard, a hard question because you have to be good at something.

Right, agile is not the thing that we’re doing. Agile is a bunch of ideas, practices that you bring along to the thing that you’re doing in order to make it more effective.

Right, you can say the same about lean. How do you become good at lean? Well, you have to be good at the thing that you’re focusing on with lean.

And then you bring in lean practices, you apply it to the actual work that you’re doing. You bring in agile practices, you apply it to the actual work that you’re doing.

You get seen by people around you as understanding some of these things more and how those things interconnect and how we can maybe change and shift the way we work in order to become more optimal.

Um, and those people that recognise you as doing that encourage you to do more of it. You do more of it and suddenly you’re an agile or DevOps consultant, right? That’s how you become that thing.

It’s not like it’s, uh, uh, I can just go, well, I’m going to be an agile consultant for, um, I don’t know, a car factory.

Right, I’m not going to go do that because I’ve never worked in a car factory. I don’t understand all the nuance of how car factories work. That would be a dumb idea to have me as an agile consultant or a lean consultant for a car factory.

My background and expertise is in software, right? You be a software engineer for 10 years, you be a DevOps consultant for 10 years, and then maybe you have enough knowledge and experience and stories and understanding on how to link those, how to abstract.

It’s really about abstraction, right? You need to understand the thing you’re doing enough to abstract the agile and lean story from the work, see how it impacts and affects it in your particular expertise.

And then perhaps you could go help and advise outside of that context, right? Because you’ve then got 10 years of helping and advising in a particular context, go help and advise in another context.

So, for example, um, I think it was 2016. I did some training for the Ghana Police Service.

So this was training line police officers. Um, they were not by any stretch of the imagination software focused, not, not, no software skills whatsoever.

And they wanted to understand how they could use scrum to enact organisational change.

Right, so instead of the scrum being the product, it’s the organisation. How do we enact organisational change over a long period of time and incrementally change the organisation so that, and then we see the results?

What data do we need to look at to monitor the feedback and increase that? And part of that was the new Inspector General of Police used to work for Interpol, and Interpol used scrum apparently, right?

I had no clue in what context, but he wanted to bring some of those stories into the way he was doing things in Ghana.

And that experience of, I was very clear when I was doing the training. I’m like, everybody be, I want you all to be very clear, I know nothing about policing, except what I’ve seen on TV, which is probably woefully incorrect, right?

Um, and what was interesting was while we were really talking about how organisational change worked, um, the head of CID, which if you don’t know what CID is, it’s the detectives, right?

They’re solving the complex cases, the murders and the stuff like that. The head of CID was engaging me in lots of conversations about how would I apply this to solving a case, right?

So we had to talk about, you know, I’m giving them information about how this would work in my world, and he’s trying to figure out how does he apply that in his world, right?

Because it’s completely different, and I can’t tell him how to do that because I don’t know how he does his work.

And that’s that piece, is it? You need to be an agile or a consultant within your context for long enough that you can see the abstracted ideas that would work in any context, and then you can consult on them even if you don’t know the core context.

That takes years of experience of doing that to be able to get that abstraction level to be able to work in another department.

So, for example, if you’ve spent the last 20 years working in finance, where should you be an agile and DevOps, and not DevOps, right?

But agile and lean consultant in the financial space, right? Look at finance teams delivering the stuff that finance teams deliver and figure out how to bring some of those ideal practices into there.

Do that for long enough and then you’ll have the experience to go into another industry and do the same thing because the same stuff applies, right?

You just need enough knowledge and experience to be able to abstract it.

Thanks for watching the video. If you enjoyed it, please like, follow, and subscribe. I always reply to comments, and if you want to have a chat about this or anything else agile, scrum, or DevOps, then please book a coffee with me through Naked Agility.

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