Agile Development: Types of Agile Coaches according to the Agile Coaching Institute
By: Lazaro Ibanez
Tags: Scrum, Scrum Master, Agile Methodology, Agile, Agile Development

Agile Coaches are called: Agile Facilitators, Scrum Masters, Scrum Coaches, Iteration Managers, Kanban Coaches, or Enterprise Agile Coaches. The name doesn’t really matter, what it is important is the job they do. The Agile Coaching Institute offers a classification based on the three most common scenarios and provides a three certification levels for Agile coaching.

If you want to know a little bit more before go in detail, about What is an Agile Coach and What they do, take a look at this two articles:

The three most common scenarios where Agile Coaches can be find in the job environments nowadays are:

Level 1: Agile Team Facilitator

The focus of an Agile Team Facilitator is on a single team. The Scrum Masters, Scrum Coaches, Iteration Managers, Kanban Coaches fall into this category. Their goal is to help the single team transition to Agile and ultimately increase the team’s productivity.

The role of an Agile team facilitator is to make sure that Agile works within the team. Their job is not to only introduce daily stand-ups or retrospectives but to also make sure that these ceremonies deliver value to the team. While Agile previously appeared in many companies via a bottom-up approach, we are now witnessing more Agile implementations being introduced via a top-down approach. In such a setting, where team member motivations to change might be mixed, it is very important that an Agile team facilitator is able to explain the value of Agile to the whole team.

Level 2: Agile Coach

The Agile Coaches usually have some prior experience as an Agile Team Facilitator as it is a natural stepping stone in the process of becoming an Agile Coach. The goal of an Agile Coach is to spread Agile at a multi-team level and throughout the organization, but not at an enterprise level. They usually work with Agile Team Facilitators and other internal Agile roles to identify and remove any obstacles hindering the implementation of Agile. Sometimes to be able to fulfill their job the Agile Coaches might engage with teams on an individual basis.

Typical undertakings of an Agile Coach are:

Integrating Agile teams or departments within the wider processes of a predominantly non-Agile company.

Encouraging the proliferation of Agile best practices between different teams.

Mentoring and coaching of Agile Team Facilitators.

Overcoming resistance from top management due to a perceived reduction of control.

Measuring the results of transitioning to Agile.

Level 3: Enterprise Agile Coach

While the underlying skills of coaching are similar to that of an Agile Coach, they work at an enterprise level. Usually the Enterprise Agile Coaches have to possess knowledge of organizational design, enterprise change management, and executive leadership coaching. At the same time, they also should have a good grasp of at least some enterprise Agile frameworks like Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe), Large-scale Scrum (LeSS) or Disciplined Agile Delivery (DaD).

An Enterprise Agile Coach is less involved in the day to day tasks of helping teams to implement Agile and is more concerned with helping to change the overall structure of the company to facilitate the Agile principles. This task requires working with the senior leadership and helping them understand the benefits of Agile as well as the structure needed to make it sustainable within the organization.

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