{"id":641,"date":"2011-08-02T19:13:48","date_gmt":"2011-08-02T19:13:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/agilepartnership.com\/?p=641"},"modified":"2011-08-02T19:13:48","modified_gmt":"2011-08-02T19:13:48","slug":"agile-coachs-powerful-questions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dev2.agilepartnership.com\/fr\/agile-coachs-powerful-questions\/","title":{"rendered":"Agile Coach&#8217;s Powerful Questions"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/agilepartnership.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/08\/iStock_000003286671Small.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-645 alignright\" style=\"margin: 10px;\" title=\"iStock_000003286671Small\" src=\"http:\/\/agilepartnership.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/08\/iStock_000003286671Small-300x110.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"296\" height=\"106\" \/><\/a>Last June, I had the great opportunity to attend Lyssa Adkins&#8217; and Micheal Spayd&#8217;s Coaching Agile Teams course in Montreal, Canada. They truly have a unique and lean approach to sharing their knowledge and experiences. One of the skills we worked on is the ability to ask Powerful Questions (PQs)<\/p>\n<p><strong>Powerful questions&#8230;<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Are truly open<\/li>\n<li>Are not asked with a \u201ccorrect\u201d answer in mind<\/li>\n<li>Invite introspection<\/li>\n<li>Reveal additional solutions<\/li>\n<li>Almost always lead to greater creativity and insight<\/li>\n<li>Send people into a realm of discovery<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: xx-small;\">Source: Coaching Agile Teams. Co-Active Coaching Whitworth, et al.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>Powerful questions might look something like this:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>How can you do that better?<\/li>\n<li>Can you explain that to me?<\/li>\n<li>What will this get you?<\/li>\n<li>What is it we\u2019re not seeing?<\/li>\n<li>What is your responsibility?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>As a ScrumMaster or Agile Coach, powerful questions have served us well. We simply listen, ask a question, and once again let ourselves be amazed by the answer. But as ScrumMaster or Agile Coach, we do have an <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">unhidden<\/span> agenda &#8211; that is, insuring that teams and the organization adhere to Agile values and principles and rethink possible solutions within the rules of, let&#8217;s say, Scrum. With that in mind, I sometimes allow myself to deepen my questions, all the while avoiding the notorious \u201cleading questions\u201d &#8211; implying that I already have an answer.<\/p>\n<p>So instead of stopping at default, abstract level powerful question, I might ask a more concrete question and hopefully, keeping it powerful. I figured it&#8217;d be fun and maybe even useful to share some of these questions that reflect real life situations in an Agile\/Scrum environment. I&#8217;ve divided it in 3 categories: Team, Product Owner and Organizational questions.<\/p>\n<p><strong>PQs for the Team<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\u00a0What steps will you take to maintain good communication with your colleagues \/ Product Owner?<\/li>\n<li>How should the Product Owner hold you accountable for the sprint&#8217;s performance?<\/li>\n<li>What Agile engineering practice will add the most value to this Sprint?<\/li>\n<li>What action item from our retrospective do you feel you have the most influence over?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>PQs for the Product Owner<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>What would your Minimal Viable Product look like?<\/li>\n<li>How do you plan to maximize ROI for this Sprint\/Release\/Project?<\/li>\n<li>How can you help in the delivery of the Sprint?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>PQs for the Organization<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>What will be your reaction when the team fails \/ succeeds?<\/li>\n<li>What can the team hold you accountable for in order to have a successful release?<\/li>\n<li>How can you help the Product Owner?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Do you feel these questions are any less powerful than the more abstract ones?<\/p>\n<p>Do they seem leading in any way?<\/p>\n<p>What powerful questions would you or have you asked?<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ll continue testing these out over the next few weeks&#8230;Stay tuned!<\/p>\n<p>Cheers!<\/p>\n<p>Eric<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last June, I had the great opportunity to attend Lyssa Adkins&#8217; and Micheal Spayd&#8217;s Coaching Agile Teams course in Montreal, Canada. They truly have a unique and lean approach to sharing their knowledge and experiences. One of the skills we worked on is the ability to ask Powerful Questions (PQs) Powerful questions&#8230; Are truly open [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev2.agilepartnership.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/641"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev2.agilepartnership.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev2.agilepartnership.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev2.agilepartnership.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev2.agilepartnership.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=641"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dev2.agilepartnership.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/641\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev2.agilepartnership.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=641"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev2.agilepartnership.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=641"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev2.agilepartnership.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=641"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}