A Leader of a Lean | Agile transformation using the A2F Framework is expected to apply the Program Portfolio and Team principles effectively across the enterprise. As a coach, he/she is expected to be a journeyman or master of Lean | Agile practices and processes, and be able to mentor, and lead Agile Program Managers and Scrum Masters to develop their skills in scaling Agile. The Coach must certainly demonstrate the empathy, concern for others, egolessness, practicality and patience that makes it possible to be an effective agent-of-change for individuals, teams and organizations. The coach must have expertise in one or more roles or skillsets associated with Lean | Agile solution development to an extent that enables them to solve both common and unusual problems which may confront an organization.


Provides hands-on support, recommendations and guidance across Agile teams—notably through executive, delivery leadership and team training. Regularly assesses and calibrates team Agile fluency leveraging the enterprise framework including direct support of work mobilization activities (e.g., road map development, functional decomposition). Role is considered the topmost Agile expert within a key business segment or as part of an enterprise CoE whose focus is primarily on the coaching aspects of Agile Methodology to be leveraged across various businesses and respective Agile teams. The Coach’s responsibility is inform the A2F Method and educate stakeholders on their role in the Agile operating model, as well as the business value the Agile method provides. The ultimate goal of the Coach is to bring Lean | Agile teams and Program Portfolios to a level of self-sufficiency.

Overall Responsibilities:

  • Recognized as an Agile expert within and outside the Enterprise and requires broad and comprehensive expertise in leading-edge theories or techniques in the Agile space.
  • Recognized as top level Agile expert whose focus is on coaching and training executive leadership and mentoring Agile Program Managers (APMs) and Scrum Masters.
  • Ability to provide guidance and oversight to multiple teams, growing capability across the organization.
  • Significant in-depth expertise in Agile to interpret internal and external obstacles and recommend best practices.
  • Helps APMs and Scrum Masters resolve complex problems, taking a broad perspective to identify unique and innovative solutions.
  • May help lead Agile Program Portfolios in the absence of an APM.
  • Offers advice and guidance for delivery teams on how to transition to and operate in scaled delivery environments.
  • Coaches other teams & leads teams in other business units to drive Agile adoption.
  • Expert knowledge of Agile principles and practices, with extensive experience working in an Agile environment.
  • Advanced knowledge of agile theory, methods, including scaling -techniques, rules, and practices, estimating/sizing, product management, planning, forecasting, conflict resolution, coaching / leverage models, capacity and capability building and facilitation.
  • Knowledge of current and emerging competitor and market trends.
  • Ability to establish Agile goals and objectives that support the strategic plan and delivery execution.

Recommended Certifications:

  • Certified Enterprise Coach (Scrum Alliance).
  • Certified Team Coach (Scrum Alliance).
  • Certified Scrum Professional (Scrum Alliance).
  • Certified Scrum Master (Scrum Alliance).
  • SAFe Program Consultant (Scaled Agile Institute).
  • Team Facilitator (IC Agile).
  • Agile Coaching (IC Agile).
  • Expert in Agile Coaching (IC Agile).

 

There are different types of Agile coaches that work in different areas of the A2F Framework. However, it is possible an Agile coach can take on these different roles. Below are the suggested Agile coaching roles needed for a successful transformation:

Enterprise Coaching – Training and follow up coaching for executive leadership and mid-level management on how to support and promote agile adoption, ensure basic understanding of agile engineering and agile team interaction. Additionally, we will execute specific coaching for stakeholders that need to interact with agile engineering teams to help the entire organization "be agile".

Process Coaching – Ongoing coaching for agile teams, down to the individual team member that helps teams operate as agile teams and team members to play their roles to the maximum extent possible. Process coaching is highly interactive and involves constant surveillance of agile teams to identify areas of improvement. It feeds back lessons learned to agile trainers to improve agile training and onboarding across all teams. The focus is on properly executing agile ceremonies, story definition and estimation, backlog grooming, sprint planning, and DevOps execution.

Technical Coaching – Focus on the technical aspects of executing agile software engineering such as how to execute in a CI/CD model to improve code quality. CI/CD maximizes automation to eliminate hand-off bottlenecks and swarming techniques to avoid defects downstream. With technical coaching, we will continuously help the engineering teams leverage and integrated environment include agile planning tools, DevOps engineering environments, automated deployment and testing tools for security, automated testing and usability.