An Agile Coach is someone who takes teams beyond getting agile practices up and running into their deliberate and joyful pursuit of high performance.

Agile coaches help train corporate teams on the Agile Method and best practices, and they oversee the development of agile teams to ensure effective business outcomes for the organization. They are responsible for guiding teams through the end to end development cycle and are tasked with encouraging workers and leadership to embrace the agile method. The agile coach’s ultimate goal is to arm agile teams with the right knowledge, tools and training so that they’ll be able to use agile to its full potential to achieve better outcomes.

Implementing agile can help streamline processes, but it isn’t easy to make significant changes in an organization. Encouraging everyone to get on board with a new method requires significant effort on the part of management.

“Having a coach in place to give guidance can help a team navigate through the rough patches in the early period when the team or management questions the value of agile.”

An agile coach will keep businesses on task while they embark on building internal agile development teams — which can help save time, money, and resources. The coach serves as an objective party to help navigate common roadblocks and pain points in the adoption process. Before they leave, the goal is to have a fully functioning agile team that is energized and ready to embrace the method.

The role of agile coach can be temporary or permanent, depending on the organization’s needs. Larger businesses with multiple agile teams might want to keep an agile coach on staff to help oversee the method long term, but the position is typically temporary or contracted. For most businesses, especially midsize and small organizations, it’s more useful to hire an agile coach on a contract basis to help get an agile team up and running and later parting ways once everyone has adjusted.

Agile coaches aren’t just responsible for organizing an agile team; they also help the company embrace agile as a culture shift. To properly implement the methodology, an agile coach needs to encourage buy-in from employees and key stakeholders.

Agile coaches pull from their own background in project management, IT, and other related fields to understand what will work for the business. Since some employees might be unfamiliar with agile, it’s important to focus on the fundamentals and to make the agile framework accessible to everyone.

Part of the job is leveraging experience and teaching the basics to bring people up to speed with an agile way of working.

As an agile coach, you’ll need to have strong communication and interpersonal skills, since you’ll be working closely with employees across the entire company, including leadership. Chances are, you’ll find it difficult to convert some workers to the agile methodology. In these instances, you’ll need to know how to navigate the corporate culture to help the organization realize its goals.

A good coach knows how to work with the team and the leadership to change the environment. Managers and management are often quite resistant to agile because it fundamentally challenges their power and control. The coach works with the leadership to see the future and be patient along the journey. The coach also works with the team to help them transform to being self-managing and accountable. These are big changes.

Most common responsibilities for an agile coach include:

• Coach agile teams in the Agile mindset
• Integrate related Agile methods and best practices within the company
• Develop standards and requirements for the agile process
• Provide training to employees on the agile process
• Help teams navigate agile tools and software
• Encourage employee and stakeholder buy-in

The most important skills for an agile coach include:

• Soft skills such as active listening, trust, conflict management, servant leadership, emotional intelligence, mentoring, facilitation, change management, teaching, and powerful questions
• Strong understanding of Scrum and Kanban
• Experience as a Scrum master or any other role in Agile team
• Strong communication and problem-solving skills
• Interpersonal skills and patience

Agile Coaches earn between $85/Hour to $135/Hour ($161,500 to $256,500 annually) if they work on a contract basis. For full time employees, earnings between $110,000 and $180,000 with benefits is prevalent within the US. Demand for Agile Coaches is expected to rise much faster than other IT roles. Experience, training and certifications, location, and industry are several factors that would impact expected earnings of Agile Coaches.

Agile Coaches do work in one or more of the following roles:

• Agile Coach
• Scrum Coach
• Agile Team Lead
• Lean Coach
• Senior Agile Coach
• Scrum Master/Agile Coach

Past participants of our Certified Agile Coach (CAC) training program came from variety of industries, including healthcare, banking, finance, credit card issuers, retail, oil and gas, manufacturing, distribution, transportation, communication and internet, energy, computer manufacturers, consulting firms, credit bureaus, network manufacturers, software, hardware, government organizations, satellite manufacturers, credit unions, and oil refineries to name several. Here are few of the 140+ organizations that our past participants represented:

Walmart, Kroger, Target, Accenture, USAA, Shell, ExxonMobil, Citibank, Master Card, Visa, Duke Energy, Bank of America, IBM, FedEx, Aetna, Anthem, CVS, Walgreens, Tesla, Verizon, Infosys, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, CapitalOne, USPS, US Bank, Blackrock, CBRE, TD Ameritrade, Wipro, Micron, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Discover, Chevron, Ford, HP, Allstate, State Farm, Desjardins, Petrobras, Enterprise, US Coast Guard, US Department of State, UHG, FDA, SAIC, BCBS, HCSC, PepsiCo, Dell

We at Chicago State University offer several career enhancing training programs for Certified Agile Coaches. Agile Coaches can pursue to attend one or more of the following training offered by us:

1. Certified Agile Facilitator (CAF)
2. Certified Enterprise Agility Coach (CEAC)
3. Certified Agile Transformation Coach (CATC)
4. Certified DevOps Transformation Coach (CDTC)
5. Certified Business Agility Coach (CBAC)
6. Certified Agile Leadership Professional (CALP)
7. Certified Agile Change Practitioner (CACP)
8. Certified Servant Leader Practitioner (CSLP)
9. Certified Emotional Intelligence Practitioner (CEIP)

Enterprise Agility Coaches can earn a Master’s Certificate in Agile Management (MCAM) by completing training programs 1-4 in addition to Certified Agile Coach (CAC) training. They can further their advancement by earning Advanced Master’s Certificate in Agile Management (AMCAM) by completing training programs 5–9. Both the Master’s Certificate in Agile Management (MCAM) and the Advanced Master’s Certificate in Agile Management (AMCAM) are the first and only such programs in the world!