Do you really want an agile coach?
The term agile coach is as misunderstood as the role of Scrum Master… Probably much more so! with titles such as Team coach, Enterprise coach and Lead agile coach to name just a few further complicating this space.
An agile coach is not a higher ranked Scrum Master! nor a lead/chief Scrum master or a Scrum Master that can work with both Scrum and Kanban teams! Although you would expect they have deep knowledge of both in addition to many other frameworks and practices.
There are so many ways to define what an agile coach does….. So it’s important to be clear about the type of help required before going out and hiring one! To be successful an agile coach will need to actually coach…. Not just inwards within teams but outwards working in all directions. Many of the forces that determine success at the system level are usually outside of the remit of individual teams. Indeed very often local optimisations made at team level can and do de-optimise the system as whole! An agile coach needs to be able to work with all parts and levels of the organisation. Remember that the success of an organisation is not decided by how well everyone does their job in isolation but rather how well individuals and teams work together, remember organisations can and do fail despite everyone doing their job as well as they can!
The agile coach should be invited to work with senior management and leaders to help facilitate the exploration of the organisation and help identify the system's primary objectives, developing new ways of thinking and working. Often answers will exist within the client’s organisation, It’s not new ideas which are required but better ways of discovering and implementing these ideas.
If after reading the above you still think you need an agile coach It’s worth considering making this an external consulting role! True coaching while inside the hierarchical organisational structure is really, really difficult, as soon as you are part of the system you become influenced by it. It’s not impossible to coach from the inside, just a lot more difficult!
