You Don't Want an Agile Coach

This article was originally published by the author on LinkedIn.

In a recent article on McKinsey.com, Anand et al. write, "While the role [of agility coach] has exploded on LinkedIn and many profiles claim to be agility coaches, there is no degree or accepted global accreditation that provides comfort around the skills and experience needed for the job [emphasis added]"

I would like to respectfully disagree.

Not with the fact that anyone can put agile coach or agility coach on a business card and begin to market themselves without any real experience or credentials. That part is frighteningly true. And with over 10,000 job listings for agile coach on Indeed.com the last time I looked (and World Economic Forum naming it the #3 job of tomorrow for product development), I’ve no doubt more and more people will adopt agile coach on their LinkedIn profiles. 

What McKinsey Got Wrong about Agile Coaching

My disagreement is with the statement there is no global accreditation for an agile coach. As the only non-profit certifying body and trade association in the agile space, Scrum Alliance® established the gold standard for what a Certified Agile Coach℠ should be back in 2008.

A Scrum Alliance Certified Enterprise Coach or a Certified Team Coach will spend years to obtain this highly sought-after certification. Only after years of full-time coaching, in multiple different organizations, can one even apply to this peer review program. 

Every Certified Enterprise Coach℠ (those who specialize in helping with organization-wide transformation) and Certified Team Coach℠ (those who focus on helping at the team level) retains demonstrated excellence in coaching and expertise in agile principles, practices, and values.  A Scrum Alliance Certified Enterprise Coach or a Certified Team Coach will spend years to obtain this highly sought-after certification. Only after years of full-time coaching, in multiple different organizations, can one even apply to this peer review program. 

What They Got Right: Companies Need Certified Agile Coaches

What McKinsey gets right is that companies suffer when they don’t have the right expertise to guide them. In selecting an agile coach, you want to engage someone experienced, trusted and vetted. Transformation is hard enough without dubious advice from recently minted ScrumMasters with the over-confidence to call themselves agile coaches.

Adding to the equation of failure to achieve sustainable agility, I firmly believe that the reason so many agile transformations sputter and die is because leaders underestimate the amount of change necessary to trust teams with decision making, to incentivize team performance, to create budgets that can flex with plans, and to nurture the cultural mindset shift necessary to work in a new, self-organized, integrated way.

These things aren’t easy to learn or to do. And they certainly aren’t changes that can be magically generated by some prescriptive scaling framework or three-step program. These are the kinds of changes that require patience, time, and a Certified Agile Coach. 

If you believe you are an agile coach in the world, I invite you and challenge you to test your abilities in a peer-reviewed process of becoming a Certified Agile Coach with Scrum Alliance. This isn’t a two-day course with a badge at the end—this is the mark of excellence and proven ability within the domain. 

And to the leaders out there: If you’re looking to move your organization from a traditional way of working to a more adaptive and agile organization, dont settle for someone that has printed agile coach on their card. Insead, engage with some of the world’s most highly sought after and experienced Certified Agile Coaches. You can find them at all types of companies… even at large consultancies like Accenture and McKinsey.

Want to bring in an expert to help or to build internal capabilities? Find a Scrum Alliance Certified Agile Coach®. 

This article was originally published by the author on LinkedIn.