Exciting news! My session on Coaching Heuristics has been accepted into the program of Agile 2018 in San Diego. It’s tentatively scheduled for Thursday morning August 9th.

The full title of the talk is Coaching Heuristics: What’s in Your Tookit?, and we’ll be using the Agile Coach’s Toolkit deck for most of the talk and exercises. I’ll bring several decks (>20) to pass out to participants, and plenty of PDFs for anyone who doesn’t get the actual deck.

(Note: the Coach’s Toolkit deck is not for sale, but I give it as an extra when people buy the 3-volume set of Agile Coffee Conversation Starters. And by the way, prices are going up sometime mid-April.)

Now the fun begins! I’ll be revising and rehearsing the talk from now until August, so I’m open to feedback from anyone who has used the deck themselves. Hit me up on Twitter @AgileCoffee and let’s chat 🙂

Here’s a preview of the abstract:

To ring in 2017, I’m unveiling the newest deck from Agile Coaching Cards: the Agile Coach’s Toolkit.

This deck is something I’ve been developing for at least a couple of years, and it wasn’t until launching the kickstarter campaign that I saw the possibility of creating it. Yep, this is the deck from the fourth stretch goal.

So I told a couple friends about this new deck, and they had questions.  So to answer their questions, allow me to share my description of the new deck.

What’s in a coach’s toolkit?? How about the agile coaching cards? What’s the difference?

The first three decks (Agile Coffee Conversation Starters) are lean coffee topics. Each volume has 46 to 51 topic cards plus a few support and blank cards to make playing easy, nimble. Topics are printed on the face side of the card, and a coffee bean design is printed in one of three colors on the back. I’d been amassing topics for several years of meetups, so it was simple to curate my/our favorites. Printing hundreds of decks at the expected quality required a kickstarter boost… and those great boxes they come in were a bonus.

This new deck, on the other hand, is a collection of concepts that coaches should know – a toolkit. I kept the design consistent with the original lean coffee decks, but added this fourth color. Instead of a coffee bean design on each card back, these are flash cards with information on both sides. Title/author/link on one; a drawing, chart or statement on the other. Recreated all graphics in a consistent style, font and color palette. These also come 54 cards to a deck, and the box fits this set right in with the original three.

All lean coffee and toolkit decks fall under my product brands and websites: Agile Coffee (.com) and Agile Coaching Cards (.com)

Can I venmo / paypal you??

No. I cannot and will not sell this current batch of the Agile Coach’s Toolkit. I printed them for me and now just give them away to friends, Kickstarter backers, and other random folks.

The Toolkit deck has certainly been a labor of love, something I’d been ideating for years. These concepts printed onto cards makes for easy access; repeated practice breeds familiarity – something a coach could call upon “in the moment”. By producing this deck, I am becoming more proficient in the awareness and exercise of these ideas as they pertain to my coaching stance.

How can I get a deck?

Well, unless you’re a kickstarter backer, I’m not sure how to answer that one. I’ll be sending out the decks to backers over the next month or two (slow drip), and I’m also passing out a few to local friends. Basically I’m too busy and cheap to be mailing these all over the world, but that doesn’t mean you can’t get one.

Are you attending the Global Scrum Gathering in San Diego (a.k.a. #SGCAL)? If so, look for me there. I’ll be sure to have a couple dozen on me. Otherwise, look out for tweets or announcements on this site. You’re bound to get lucky, right?

As for the original three decks of Agile Coffee Conversation Starters, the initial printing was a success and has sold out. I plan to make another order very soon and put them on sale by April 2017.