What is an Agile Coach?

An agile coach is a project management professional that helps to scale Agile practices across a team or organization. They enable teams or organizations to be more flexible, transparent, and efficient.  So basically, an Agile Coach is a person who knows the various best practices of various processes of Agile.  Also, this person guides the other members who are new in the team about Agile processes, as well as experienced ones. It also looks out for any loopholes for the new team. One needs to have both patience and the presence of mind to become a good coach, as it is not an easy task. 

• The person is an Agile Process Expert, who knows the best of the process involved.
• It is not biased.
• It is an Agile Expert.
• The coach is generally not from an organization.
• It has implemented Agile Processes across different cultures and environments.

Need for Agile Coach

• Unrealistic expectations: Agile is easy to understand but hard to master thus resulting in problems during the transition due to unrealistic expectations of how easy it is to implement agile within the team or organization. The agile coach is responsible for making the transition process smooth for the teams.
• Every situation is different: There may be cases sometimes when the project managers have implemented all the right Agile processes but still, something is not working properly. Agile practices that work in one business unit may not work in other. The role of the agile coach is to plan and design the adoption of agile values across multiple teams.
• Agile not delivering expected results: There are situations when agile is not delivering expected results. An agile coach helps here to figure out the reasons why agile is not delivering the expected results and determines the steps that need to be taken to remedy the situation.

Types of an Agile Coach

Below are the different types of agile coaches:

1. Agile Team Facilitator

The focus is on a single team. The role of the Agile Team Facilitator(ATF) is broader than conducting meetings. The person must also guide the team through the paradigm shifts and lead them toward collaboration and self-organization. Ultimately, ATF’s role is to make sure that Agile works within the team.

• The focus is on a single team.
• The goal is to help a single team transition to agile and increase the team’s productivity.
• The agile team facilitator’s role is to make sure that Agile works within the team.

2. Agile Coach

An Agile coach is concerned with spreading Agile at a multi-team level and throughout the organization. 

• They have prior experience as an agile team facilitator.
• Their role is to spread agile at the multi-team level and throughout the organization.
• They are responsible for integrating agile teams.
• Mentoring and coaching of agile team facilitators.
• Measuring the results of the transition to agile.

3. Enterprise Agile Coaching

It works at the enterprise level as the name suggests. The coach is not mainly concerned with day-to-day tasks but is concerned about the overall structure of an organization.

• They work at the enterprise level.
• They should have a good grasp of at least some enterprise agile frameworks like SAFe, LeSS, etc.
• They are less involved in the day-to-day task of helping teams to implement agile.
• They are responsible for helping to change the overall structure of the company to facilitate the agile principles.

What does an Agile Coach do? 

The role of an Agile Coach can be temporary or permanent, depending on the needs of an organization. Many small organizations, hire an agile coach on a contract basis and large organizations hire an Agile Coach for a long term in a team. The duty of an individual is-

• Spread Agile best practices between different teams.
• Plan and design the adoption of agile values across multiple teams.
• Provide training sessions on various agile frameworks like scrum, SAFe, etc.
• Integrate Agile teams within non-Agile processes.
• Measure results of an Agile transition.
• Responsible for guiding teams through the implementation process.
• An agile coach will keep businesses on task.

What are Agile Coach Responsibilities?

There are 3 different types of responsibilities-

1. Process Coach/ Flow Coach

Process coach is proficient in executing agile method process on multiple teams to enhance their ability to self-organize and collaborate effectively with each other. They support their employees and teams by providing guidance to best achieve business objectives.

• Teaching and mentoring Agile teams.
• Making the transition smooth.
• Train Scrum Masters, Kanban Leads, and Product Owners. 
• Determining the correct metrics to ensure a standard measurement. 
• To enable changes in working ways.
• Recommendation of various ways to get into a contract with vendors and customers.

2. Delivery Coach/ Agile Project Management

It is responsible for a steady flow of business values that does not weaken due to technical debt. The delivery coach works with the quality, design, and product management departments as well as with the stakeholders to ensure the alignment of business objectives.

• Taking care of delivery hurdles
• Supervision of multiple teams
• Coaching and complete guide to Scrum Masters
• Building self-organizing teams of Agile teams 
• Enhancing predictability of solution delivery
• Interacting with stakeholders for generating business value

3. Enterprise Agile Coach

Enterprise coaching has a great impact on the strategic direction taken by the company. They bring tools and processes which seamlessly integrate Agile practices with existing aspects of a given business environment.

1. Neutralizing the resistance change
2. Mentoring of business model
3. Imparting training to Agile Coach 
4. Supervising community practice
5. Imparting periodic training on Agile

What are Agile Coach Specialities?

There are 3 agile coach specialities:

• Technical coaches: It works closely with the developer and has an experience with coding and integration.
• Operation coaches: These coaches focus on establishing leadership for agile teams and overseeing the successful adoption of the agile method.
• Non-directive coaches: These coaches offer support for people or organizations individually that are looking to solve specific problems related to Agile.

Agile Coach vs Scrum Master

Parameters	Agile Coach	Scrum Master
Definition	The agile coach works as a coach for the entire organization.	Scrum master works as an agile coach for his team.
Role	Plans and design agile practices to be implemented in the organization.	The Scrum master’s role is to remove roadblocks for the team to achieve objectives.
Training responsibility	It coaches for the outcome the leadership team such as the product owner, and scrum master on agile principles and processes.	It coaches for compliance with his team to work as an efficient unit.
Interdependence	Agile coach coaches Scrum Master.	Scrum master learns from the agile coach.
Agile implementation	Implements agile values and principles across the organization.	Implements agile values and principles within the team.
Job duration	It has a limited duration until the goal is achieved.	The duration is throughout the Scrum team journey.
Certifications	It has certifications in ATF, ACC, SPC, and PMI-ACP.	It has certifications in PSM and CSM.
Remuneration	High remuneration.	Less remuneration.

How to become an Agile Coach?

1. Build Agile Coach Skills

There are a few skills that are often requested of agile coaches: 

• Knowledge of Agile frameworks: Knowledge of various agile frameworks like Scrum, Kanban, and SAFe will be critical in being an effective Agile Coach. Proper knowledge of what distinguishes one framework from the other.
• Communication: Knowing how to communicate effectively, knowing how to persuade, negotiate, inspire, and resolve conflicts is one of the skills expected in an Agile coach.
• Knowledge of project management tools: Knowledge of how to use project management tools and software enough to explain to others how to use them. 

2. Gain Agile Project Management Experience

Job descriptions often ask for experience in agile environments. One can gain experience in a few different ways:

• Work as scrum master: Many job descriptions count scrum master as coaching experience. Being a scrum master act as a natural stepping stone to agile coaching.
• Work on an Agile team: As an agile coach, one should be familiar with how agile works on different teams, and knowledge of other methodologies will be useful as well. 

3. Get an Agile Coach Certification

Agile coach certifications can make you more competitive in the job market and will also signal to employers that one has a baseline knowledge expected by professionals. Below are some of the common certifications:

• SAFe Practitioner (SP).
• SAFe Practitioner Consultant (SPC).
• SAFe Program Consultant Trainer (SPCT).
• PMI-Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI-ACP).
• ICAgile Certified Professional in Agile Coaching Certification (ICP-ACC).
• ICAgile Certified Expert in Agile Coaching Certification (ICE-AC).