A Scrum Master works with “A” team. An Agile Coach works with ALL teams, AND executives AND other teams/groups. A Scrum Master ensures that the team is following the Scrum process, doing the ceremonies and behaving the right way.
The Scrum Master’s Role: A SM will usually focus on a single team or a couple of teams at most. Anymore and they are highly unlikely to be very effective.
Their primary focus will be internal by ensuring the team:
§ Communicates well to each other and stakeholders
§ Collaborates with their Product Owner to deliver work that holds business value
§ Understands and embodies the Agile values and principles set out in the Agile Manifesto
They will use many of the techniques associated with Agile Coaching, for example:
§ Training courses to fill in existing skills gaps, e.g. user story writing
§ Facilitating ceremonies such as the retrospectives
§ Mentoring individuals in specific Agile practices as needed
And possibly:
§ Professional coaching; that is using techniques to guide the individual to uncover answers to their own challenges, rather than imparting knowledge.
As the SM and the team mature, the SM will understand there are external factors that impact the team. The SM will begin focusing more of their time on these external factors. They become agents of change for their organisations again using some of the skills that would be associated with Agile Coaching. Their focus will still be the team but they will look to how managers and other teams affect the work the team does. This activity could include but is not limited to:
§ Facilitating/Participating in a Scrum of Scrums ceremony to understand the landscape of the wider department
§ Training other teams in order to build up common skills/knowledge
§ Identifying behaviours in other teams which impact their team, working with other SMs to resolve this
The Agile Coach’s Role:
An Agile Coach(*) will work with a number of teams either directly or through the team’s’ management. It is unlikely they will be able to develop the same level of personal relationships with the teams like an SM can, because their scope is set across a much wider area. Instead they will work with the managers and Scrum Masters to increase the overall agility of a number of teams.
For example:
An Agile Coach will either be assigned to a set of teams or will spend time observing how work is done within the wider group. Then they will use some of the same skills as a Scrum Master to help these teams improve, for example training. But they will also exhibit other skills that go beyond those of a Scrum Master. For example, an Agile Coach could leverage their advanced skill set, experience and knowledge by sharing concepts such as systems thinking to uncover feature teams. Alternatively a coach could work with a group of managers and HR to design a new reward structure. The skills needed for these organisation/management level challenges are very different to those of a SM.The Agile Coaching Competency framework from the Agile Coaching Institute sums this up well in that the two roles are largely defined by the level of scope and influence.
An Agile Coach will have a deep knowledge of the practicalities in the agile/lean space, which will be wider and deeper than that of a SM. Additionally, they will have a range of skills in Teaching, Mentoring, Facilitation & Professional Coaching, and their own delivery style which will be a blend of all of these techniques. Finally a coach will be a specialist in one of three domains, Technical, Business or Transformation. Where the Agile Coach specialises will be down to their experience and background.
For instance an Agile Coach focussing on the technical domain will have deep experience with a range of programming languages, automation, testing, delivery pipelines etc. Whereas an Agile Coach specialising in the Transformation domain will be an expert in systems thinking, organisational design and concepts like theory of constraints and operating model design.
A SM will have more limited knowledge in these areas due to the scope of their work. For example, a SM could know a lot of techniques required in the Business domain (ie. Product focus) at a team level e.g., helping teams learn how to split user stories or story prioritisation. However, they won’t have the skills to mentor higher level managers in building an agile portfolio or cover the training required for agile budgeting.
Two similar but distinct roles, complementing each other
Hopefully from the brief summary above you can see how a SM and Agile Coaches roles will differ. But it is important to remember that these two roles should not negate each other. Just because an organisation has hired an Agile Coach does not mean they would not benefit from dedicated SMs, and vice versa. In fact the most successful applications of agile practices will use a blend of SMs and Agile Coaches in order to bring onboard the range of skills that are needed. The roles then take on a synchronised nature, where the SMs and coaches collaborate in order to further the agile vision of that organisation.
