Agile Coach - Agile Scrum Master

Agile Coach role definition, Agile Team Coach, Enterprise Agile Coach, Scrum coach, Agile Transformation Coach, Agile Coach certifications

Agile coaching is the process of helping individuals, teams and organizations adopt and improve their agile practices. An agile coach acts as a mentor and facilitator, guiding the team or organization towards greater efficiency, productivity and overall performance while promoting continuous learning and improvement.

The role of the Agile Coach can also be defined as helping organizations implement the agile mindset, practices and frameworks by developing agile teams and facilitating the organizational culture change necessary for sustained agile success. Agile coaches help to train corporate teams on the agile methodology and oversee the development of agile teams to ensure effective outcomes for the organization. They are responsible for guiding teams through the implementation process and are tasked with encouraging workers and leadership to embrace the agile mindset. The agile coach’s ultimate goal is to arm agile teams with the right knowledge, practices, tools and training so that they’ll be able to use agile to its full potential.

An agile coach helps individuals, teams and enterprises to embrace a culture shift based on proven human-centric lean-agile principles, practices and values. This culture shift helps people and organizations continue to thrive in the ever-changing world of work.

Professional coaching

Professional coaching is about helping other people in finding their solution, based on getting a better understanding of their situation. It is done by finding the right question to unlock the right thought process in others, allowing them to find their own path and pursue it with ownership. For a professional Agile Coach, there are a few ideas to follow:

let go of your solution – your solution is less effective than the solution they came up with, use anchoring so they come with their suggestion and ownership
reduce the cost – mitigate or reduce different costs (financial, time, emotional, mental, fear etc.), identify which ones are real and create a mitigation plan
increase the benefit – clarify the benefit for reaching the goal, what it can do for them in the long term, helping them imagine the future
have belief – treat people as if they already are what they potentially could be, view them as they have the potential to become what they need to be
listen actively – listen for the intention behind the words, show empathy
ask to help them understand – ask questions not from personal curiosity and not to offer suggestions, but just to trigger answers
meet them where they are – don’t make assumptions, ask what they think they should be doing and why, ask what is the situation
create psychological safety – create conditions for people to feel comfortable, open, vulnerable and show your vulnerabilities as well
agree what coaching is – co-create a common agreement about expectations, definition and way of working between coach and the ones being coached
get permission to coach – coaching is voluntary, it is a pulled service, get explicit permission to coach the team or individual

Team Agile Coach role definition

Team Coaches focus on embedding Agile at the individual team level, using traditional Agile frameworks like Scrum, Kanban, XP etc. and help the team members collaborate more effectively, improve their processes and deliver high-quality products. They may work with one team, or multiple teams and they interact with groups outside of the individual teams, but their focus is on enabling and developing agility at the “make” or “build” level. They do the very important work of making sure that teams are able to build products the right way, and deliver work sustainably.

A Team Coach’s main focus is on partnering with their team or teams in order to accelerate their performance and achieve their desired outcomes. They do this through maximizing the team’s collective intelligence and through developing the team and its members. Team Coaches also support their Product Owners in figuring out what is the right product to build, they might support stakeholders to grow in agility, they cheer lead Agile in the rest of the organization. A Team Coach may bear the title of “agile coach“, but the agile coaching journey starts with Scrum Masters, Product Owners, Flow Masters and all of whom spend at least some of their time doing team coaching.

Agile Team Coach competencies

Agile – Lean Practitioner – A deep understanding of the agile mindset, values and principles and the application of them in a variety of agile frameworks
Facilitation – A neutral guide who supports a group to achieve their purpose and desired outcomes in a collaborative manner
Professional Coaching – A coach that engages a person in a creative process to discover their own insights and take inspired action without being attached to a specific outcome
Professional Team Coaching – A professional coach who uses an understanding of group dynamics and team development to help a team maximize their collective intelligence to achieve the desired results
Transformation Mastery – Application of organization development, behavioral sciences, and change theory to lead sustainable organization transformation
Business Mastery – Application of business strategy, management, product ownership, and process improvement
Technical Mastery – Expertise in the technical craft of developing software
Mentoring – Offer expertise and experience in service of fostering growth of others
Training – Increase knowledge and understanding

Enterprise Agile Coach role definition

Enterprise Coaches on the other hand don’t often work with individual delivery teams. Their focus is on creating an organization where every part is approached with greater agility in mind – top to bottom, end to end. Enterprise coaches help organizations scale agile practices across different departments, improve communication and alignment and drive large-scale agile transformations.

Enterprise agile coaches also work with senior leaders to ensure that agile culture is embedded throughout the organization. They coach leaders and leadership teams at all levels to grow their inner agility and constantly evolve their organizations through discovery and experimentation.

Enterprise Coaches define their success by the growth of agility in those they coach, as well as the ability of their coachees to cultivate agility in others in turn. In other words, they aim to equip people inside the organization to do their own Agile Transformation, rather than do it for them. In this way organizational agility is not only lasting, but it evolves organically.

They work hand in hand with Team Coaches to ensure that Agile at the team level is healthy and support agility in all areas of the organization, including Finance, Marketing, People Operations, etc. In order to function as an Enterprise Coach they have acquired professional coaching skills, leadership and organizational development skills, they understand business agility and large-scale change, and although they have expert knowledge and deep experience of Agile and Lean, they don’t have to rely on a specific Agile framework. An Enterprise Coach is a walking, talking example of agility embodied.

Agile Enterprise Coach competencies

Agile – Lean Practitioner – A deep understanding of Lean, product flow, scaling, culture, organization structure, management, along with an internalization of Agile values and principles. Experience of multiple different organizations and cultures
Facilitation – Large scale facilitation, facilitating challenging groups
Professional Coaching – Coaching leaders at all levels, including executives. Coaching coaches and developing coaching capability in others. Designing coaching programs
Professional Team Coaching – Systems coaching, coaching at all levels, coaching executive teams. Developing internal competency groups
Transformation Mastery – Large scale transformation. Lean change. Developing inner agility. Growing others to live in constant transformation and educating them to grow it in others in turn
Business Mastery – Business Agility. Understanding market forces and business drivers. Agile strategy. Product management
Technical Mastery – The application of Lean and Agile in the development of services and products in the market sector
Mentoring – Mentoring of leaders on creating organization environments, application of agile and Lean to leadership, designing mentorship programs, mentoring Team Coaches
Training – Leadership development programs, designing training programs, training the trainer

Agile Transformation Coach

The Agile transformation coach partners with and works alongside the C-Suite to create innovative and customized solutions to meet the business’ needs. This role is, in effect, a high-influence peer to the executives who act as a trusted advisor. As such, they have the ability to challenge their partners to produce clarity around the Transformation strategy.

Also, the Agile transformation coach works with Directors and Managers to ensure the Transformation strategy’s execution throughout the organization. The Agile Coach develops detailed outcome-based plans that deliver on the Transformation strategy and create clarity and alignment between the coaches and the delivery teams.

Agile Coach certifications

Agile Certified Coach – ICP-ACC – IC Agile
Expert in Agile Coaching – ICE-AC – IC Agile
Coaching Agile transformations – ICP-CAT – IC Agile
Expert in Enterprise Coaching – ICE-EC – IC Agile
Certified Agile Coach – CAC – Scrum Alliance
Certified Enterprise Coach – CEC – Scrum Alliance
Disciplined Agile Coach – DAC – PMI

Agile mindset