Yes, the title is clickbait! It was generated by ChatGPT on request after several suggestions for improvement and ended up providing this headline. After almost two months since its launch, you have probably already heard about it or even been able to try it out.

We wondered if this technology could help us in our day-to-day work as Agile drivers, and can ChatGPT even replace Agile Coaches?

In this article we explain how we are using ChatGPT in our day-to-day work with the teams.

If you still don’t know what ChatGPT is, he explains it himself:

I define myself as a large-scale language model trained by OpenAI to generate text based on a dataset and machine learning algorithms. My main function is to answer questions and generate coherent texts based on a given context.

Facilitating a retrospective with the complicity of ChatGPT

We have a mission to facilitate a retrospective at the end of a sprint, and we try to try some original way to help generate ideas. The team needs a different approach after some time pigeonholed with a problem affecting them, so we asked ChatGPT, “How can we help foster creativity in a retrospective?”

He throws several ideas at us, many of them classic, many others disposable, and a different proposal to what the team had been doing, lateral thinking. This one can help us bring out the potential of ChatGPT in hindsight!

We explain to the ChatGPT the problem that is troubling the team, and we co-create together some ideas to attack it, while the team generates its own. We use some of the ideas from the Chat to slide them anonymously onto the idea board, and they begin to foster a new debate, and are so disruptive that the team notices how they themselves begin to open up new ways of tackling the problem.

None of these ideas end up reaching fruition, and some of them are even declared absurd by the team. What is certain is that new conversations are leading to new action plans, while certain frustrated faces are starting to turn into motivated expressions!

Simplifying user stories

One of the Product Owners asked us for ideas with a user story that the team has been stuck on for several sprints. It’s so big that they don’t know how to tackle it!

We have been watching and even tested how ChatGPT refactors code, so we tried ChatGPT, passed it the user story with all the details and acceptance criteria and asked it to split it for us.

He divided the story into 8, with their corresponding business value proposition!

Obviously, not all divisions are feasible, however, it gives us another point of view that we needed, and saves us a lot of headaches in arriving at a viable solution.

Could ChatGPT kill the Agile Coach role?

This is ChatGPT’s own answer to the question:

¨No, a language model like ChatGPT could not play the role of an agile coach effectively. An agile coach is an expert in agile methodologies and has the skills to guide and mentor a team in their adoption of these methodologies. In addition, an agile coach is also able to help resolve conflicts and problems that arise in the team, and provide feedback and guidance to improve performance. A language model such as ChatGPT can provide information and knowledge about agile methodologies, but it cannot replace the experience and human skills of an agile coach.

There is no doubt that ChatGPT is a further step in technological transformation and a powerful agent of change. Moreover, like any tool currently available to us, it is necessary to give it a meaning and consider HOW it can help us, and we want to be part of the Early Adopters.

Have you already tried it?