How to be a Brilliant Agile Coach (Top 7 Tips)

“Harder the task; Agiler the approach.”

In contrast to traditional waterfall development, agile product management may be the “new kid on the block,” although the publication of Agile Manifesto was in 1997.

Our approach to developing software products has changed due to agile software development. It has provided significant advantages for quickly bringing software products to market, but product management’s strategic thinking is often put aside.

Agile has spread over many different areas in addition to software development.

Traditional product management concepts are incorporated into businesses using agile development through agile product management. To achieve this, firms must implement a method to convert these long-term business strategies into shorter development cycles.

Product managers have been mainly influenced by agile consuming their corporate cultures, even though this agile tsunami has upended the status quo for many disciplines.

Agile development methodology emerged from software developers’ ambition to quickly write better, more effective code while maintaining a healthier work-life balance.

Agile product management introduces new guidelines, resources, and standards.

There is a wealth of information about agile product management, including articles, manuals, books, courses, and certifications. You don’t need all of it.

Take this article as your lone direction and follow along!

What Exactly Is Agile Product Management?

Although there are millions of publications about product management on Google, only some on agile product management exist.

Agile product management is currently a hot topic.

First, let’s clear up a common misunderstanding: agile is not a method. Instead, it is a way of thinking about how groups might work together fruitfully to accomplish a task.

Agile has become popular in most industries thanks to an increase of experienced Agile practitioners willing to introduce their preferred methodology to new workplaces, consultants, and coaches prepared to facilitate the change.

The term “agile product management” means precisely what it says. In an agile context, product strategy and roadmaps are created. It promotes an adaptive approach to product development and execution so businesses can react fast to input and produce goods that customers adore.

Agile product management, often known as scrum or kanban, is fundamentally a reaction to the pervasive adoption of agile software development approaches. These techniques strongly emphasize early delivery, continual improvement, and evolutionary development. 

Numerous agile methods are straightforward to comprehend. However, misunderstandings of expectations, duties, and procedures give birth to complexity.

Product managers prioritize several initiatives, many of which they identify using quantitative and qualitative research techniques, to determine how to pursue the strategy and its related goals and objectives. 

These product features are meant to please customers, demonstrate the worth of the product, and foster loyalty.

As the quote goes, “Agile; a touch fragile; treat with care.”

Let’s contrast agile product management with the conventional product management strategy now that we are clear on what it is.

Products can assist businesses in achieving greater levels of sales, expansion, and profitability. Companies have been creating and selling items for generations, developments have significantly facilitated human life, and products have allowed businesses to expand outside their own country.

Whether the requirements are understood or not, traditional project management especially stresses thorough upfront planning for all projects.

Agile is a generic technique used for software development projects. Still, it strongly emphasizes cooperation, regular product releases, customer collaboration, timeboxing events, and the capacity to adapt fast to change.

Note the Detailed Comparison Below:

• While agile product management places more emphasis on quick delivery through short iterations, traditional product management places more emphasis on minimizing upfront risk and maximizing control.

• Substantial weightage is given to planning and analysis in traditional product management; they spread over iterations in agile product management.

• In traditional product management, the sponsor can approve, while in agile product management, the product owner has that power.

• Traditional product management applications include:

• A complex application environment.
• A high cost of failure.
• The potential for well-defined requirements before installation.
• In contrast, agile product management has a low loss cost and amorphous requirements.

• Waterfall is the typical approach used in traditional product management, whereas agile or iterative is used in agile product management. 

• In conventional product management, change management is a systematic process using a defined template and is only approved when warranted. Regarding agile, product management is time-box-driven and uses a prioritized product backlog.

• Contrary to agile product management, which is casual, vocal, and frequent, traditional product management involves formal, infrequent communication.

Thus, it is clear that agile product management is better suited for newer technological fields. Due to its flexibility, it not only promotes better team communication but also paves the path for better outcomes.

Now that we are familiar with the fundamentals, let’s learn more about the Agile Coach, who is vastly underappreciated.

Who Is an Agile Coach?

By reading on, you can discover what an Agile coach does, what advantages they offer, and whether or not this is the perfect job for you.

Are you curious about what an Agile coach is and why Indeed named it one of the essential jobs in the world for 2019?

This is why:

Agile implementation is a fantastic approach to streamlining your company, but motivating staff and making significant organizational changes can be difficult. An agile coach can help in this situation.

Agile coaches enhance operations while increasing productivity and teaching employees new skills. They also foster a productive workplace for both themselves and other people.

In recent years, the position of Agile coach has grown in prominence. The widespread acceptance of agile has caused the market for agile coaching to expand quickly.

An Agile coach, sometimes called a delivery coach, instructs businesses on agile project management and how to use agile personas. They also execute significant structural adjustments and workflow procedures to help teams function more effectively.

Agile coaches may be in-house personnel or outside consultants. A corporation typically recognizes the need for an agile coach when switching from its current working techniques, like Waterfall, to using the Agile approach principles.

An agile coach promotes more efficient, open, and cohesive teams and better customer results, solutions, and goods and services.

Most agile coaches have backgrounds in project management, product management, IT, or software development. You didn’t know, I bet!

Roles and Responsibilities:

An agile coach must support the team, help them solve issues, and foster personal development.

There is a need for clarification regarding an Agile Coach’s duties.

Here, we’ve made an effort to clear up any misconceptions.

Let’s examine the obligations and roles:

• Provide all team members with training on the agile approach at the beginning of the project.

• Teaches them to adopt an agile attitude, which eases the shift.

• Establishing governmental regulations to enable agile-based methods.

• Throughout the project’s lifetime, instruct the team on each process step.

• Create guiding principles to support agile-based activities.

• Fostering an agile mentality across stakeholders and teams.

• Recommending different strategies to enter a contract with clients and suppliers.

• Encourage product owners to partner with business stakeholders to make more strategic decisions by teaching them how to make everyday decisions that will keep the project moving.

• Teach managers the fundamentals of agile tools like scrum and kanban.

• Coach managers on handling the potential cultural shifts the project might bring about in their function in a dynamic workplace.

• Develop an agile mindset among all team members, where challenges are welcomed as chances to adapt.

Being certified in agile coaching does not automatically make you an agile coach. So how do you map out your route, and where do you begin?

Here are some advice and tools to get you started if you’re passionate about agile, enjoy working with teams, and want to change careers.

Read These Tips to Crack Your Position:

Develop Your Agile Coach Skills.

A successful Agile coach will require a thorough knowledge of agile and its many frameworks. Scrum, Kanban, and SAFe are popular frameworks; understanding XP and lean is occasionally needed.

You must be familiar enough with project management tools and software to be able to instruct others on how to utilize them. These include standard project management tools.

Before beginning formal agile coaching qualifications, you should have experience working in agile frameworks. Nevertheless, learning the many frameworks used in agile development might be challenging even after a long career.

Learning Scrum First.

It’s safe to assume that most agile coaches began their careers with the scrum framework, even though many coaches specialize in eXtreme Programming (XP), kanban, and other agile approaches. Why?

If you start with scrum, you will have a strong foundation in understanding the fundamentals of an Agile mindset, the Agile Manifesto, and Agile principles and values.

Gaining experience as an agile or scrum team member is a prerequisite for becoming an agile coach.

A helpful reminder is that you may provide more value as an agile coach if your experience working on an agile team is more extensive and meaningful.

Joining a Community of Agile Practitioners.

Getting involved in an agile community before applying for agile coaching certification is a good idea. It achieves three objectives:

It keeps you informed of recent events in the agile community.

It introduces you to agile approaches and concepts that colleagues use in their firms on the outside.

It shows that you dedicate to using agile as a career, which is crucial in the application process to become a certified agile coach, as we’ll soon see.

Agile communities can be found locally or remotely.

Get Agile Coach Certifications.

Agile coach certificates can increase your employability and let companies know you have the fundamental knowledge that professionals require. You can learn more about agile coaching and develop new abilities while preparing for the certification.

It’s a good idea to obtain specific agile credentials to land a job as an agile coach. The Scrum Alliance’s training programs are the most well-known.

In job descriptions, the following certifications are frequently required:

SAFe Practitioner (SP)

SAFe Practitioner Consultant (SPC)

SAFe Program Consultant Trainer (SPCT)

Consider Beyond the Team Level.

If you have prior scrum master experience, you are accustomed to working at the team level. However, as we just established, agile is just as critical for organizations as it is for teams, if not more so.

Being able to influence change across the entire organization, not just within specific teams, is crucial for an agile coach.

Understanding how agile operates at scale and being able to guide organizations through it are essential. Most organizations looking to employ an agile coach want to implement agile across multiple teams.

Good Agile Coaches Are Lifelong Learners.

Building the experience necessary to become an agile coach can take some time. After that, to keep your credentials, it’s critical to stay up to date on fundamental agile concepts and how they relate to recent developments in software development.

Avoid Attempting To Be Indispensable.

Most professionals will tell you to strive to be indispensable or so good that they can’t function without you. Your objective as an agile coach is the opposite. 

Yes, you want to be critical, but if so, it suggests you give your clients the resources they need to practice agile independently. That’s the whole goal, right?

Agile coaches are crucial to the move to agile. Remembering that the transformation’s goal is to provide improved financial results is critical. Along the journey, you will encounter opposition, but realize that this is normal and necessary for the process.

Putting It All Together:

To become an agile coach today, start small.

More and more people are interested in becoming agile coaches as agile has become immensely popular.

Be patient and don’t be in haste; the advice above and resources can help you get started if you love agile. 

We strongly recommend reading some of Chisellabs’ product blogs if you are still fresh to product management.