I wonder where Agile Coaches got the idea that their job is to convince people to change.
The longer I work with organisations, the more convinced I become that this is one of the biggest misunderstandings about the Agile Coach role. Organisations need to improve. Teams need to collaborate differently. Leaders need to make better decisions. It’s easy to conclude that an Agile Coach exists to help make those things happen. Somewhere along the way, however, helping organisations improve became synonymous with convincing people. Convincing leaders to support Agile. Convincing teams to work differently. Convincing the organisation that Agile is the answer. They may sound similar, but they are fundamentally different.
The Wrong Question
This became very apparent during our latest Scrum Master Meetup when someone asked a question that I suspect many Agile Coaches have asked themselves.
“How do we influence the entire organisation to adapt?”
My answer was simply,
“Don’t.”
There was a short silence, followed by a few laughs.
Of course, I wasn’t suggesting that organisations shouldn’t change. I was questioning the assumption behind the question. I don’t believe the role of an Agile Coach is to convince people. I believe the role of an Agile Coach is to help organisations understand themselves well enough that they can make better decisions. When people make better decisions, change follows naturally. That is very different from trying to persuade people that your solution is the right one.
When Experience Replaces Curiosity
One of the observations I shared during the meetup was that Agile Coaches often arrive with a backpack full of tools, techniques and frameworks. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. Experience matters. Knowledge matters. The challenge starts when that backpack becomes the starting point for every conversation. Instead of first understanding the organisation, Agile Coaches begin thinking about Scrum, Kanban, organisational structures or the latest practice they’ve seen work somewhere else. The discussion quickly shifts towards solutions before there is a shared understanding of the problem that actually needs solving.
This doesn’t happen because Agile Coaches have bad intentions. Quite the opposite. Most genuinely want to help. Experience naturally creates confidence, and confidence can quietly replace curiosity. After working with enough organisations it’s easy to recognise familiar patterns, but recognising a pattern isn’t the same as understanding the organisation standing in front of you. Before enough questions have been asked, assumptions start filling the gaps and yesterday’s solution quietly becomes today’s recommendation.
That, to me, is one of the biggest risks facing Agile Coaches today. The moment we become more interested in applying what we know than understanding what is really happening, we’ve stopped coaching. We’ve started looking for places to apply our favourite solution.
The longer I work with organisations, the more convinced I become that curiosity is one of the most valuable qualities an Agile Coach can develop. Not curiosity about the latest framework or AI tool, but curiosity about the organisation itself. Why does it work this way? What pressures are leaders under? Why are teams making the decisions they are? What problem is everyone actually trying to solve? Those questions almost always lead to better conversations than arriving with another practice to implement.
Stop Selling Agile. Start Creating Transparency
Rather than trying to convince people that something needs to change, make the work visible. Make dependencies visible. Make queues visible. Make delays visible. Help people see the system they are working in. When that happens, the conversation naturally moves away from opinions and towards evidence. People stop debating whether Agile is the answer and start discussing why work takes so long, why priorities constantly change or why teams spend so much time waiting for each other. Those conversations focus on understanding the problem before deciding on the solution.
I’ve found that when people genuinely understand the problem, they rarely need convincing that something has to change. They may not choose the solution I would have chosen, and that’s perfectly okay. Coaching has never been about getting people to adopt my answer. It has always been about helping organisations understand themselves well enough to make better decisions.
That is also why Agile Coaches should spend less time asking, “How do I get leadership to buy into Agile?” and more time asking, “What am I missing?” It’s a subtle difference, but an important one. The first question assumes the problem is leadership. The second assumes there is still something about the organisation that hasn’t yet been understood. Coaching starts with understanding, not persuasion.
AI Didn’t Change the Role. It Revealed It.
One of the reasons I find the rise of AI so fascinating is that it hasn’t changed what great Agile Coaches do. If anything, it has exposed where the value always was.
For years, Agile Coaches differentiated themselves through knowledge. We learnt frameworks, studied practices, collected tools and built experience from one organisation after another. Today, much of that knowledge is available to everyone. AI can explain Scrum, generate a Product Backlog, suggest retrospective ideas and even produce an Agile transformation roadmap in seconds.
I don’t see that as a threat.
If the value of an Agile Coach is simply knowing more than everyone else, then perhaps it should be.
But I don’t believe that’s where the value ever was.
The value has always been in understanding the organisation standing in front of you. Understanding the people, the relationships, the history, the pressures and the conversations that aren’t happening. AI can generate answers, but it still can’t create shared understanding. It can’t build trust, understand context or ask the question that changes the direction of a conversation.
If anything, AI is forcing Agile Coaches back to what coaching was always meant to be. Less about having the best answers. More about asking better questions. Less about implementing frameworks. More about helping organisations understand themselves well enough to make better decisions.
The Future of Agile Coaching
Perhaps this is why I struggle when people say Agile is over.
If Agile was only ever about events, roles and frameworks, then perhaps that conversation is worth having. But I don’t believe that’s what Agile was ever trying to achieve. At its heart, Agile has always been about helping organisations become more effective by responding better to change. Scrum, Kanban and every other framework were simply tools that helped us move in that direction. They were never the destination.
The organisations that will thrive over the next decade won’t be the ones with the biggest playbooks or the longest list of frameworks. They’ll be the organisations that learn faster, understand themselves better and adapt more effectively than everyone else. I would argue exactly the same is true for Agile Coaches.
Perhaps the question was never,
“How do we influence the entire organisation to adapt?”
Perhaps the better question is,
“How do we help the organisation understand itself well enough that change becomes the obvious next step?”
I believe that’s where the real value of an Agile Coach has always been. AI hasn’t changed that. If anything, it has simply made it more obvious.
Further reading
If this article resonated with you, you may also enjoy Have We Completely Misunderstood the Agile Coach Role?Although the focus is different, both articles explore the same underlying belief: the future of Agile Coaching isn’t about implementing frameworks better. It’s about helping organisations become more effective by creating transparency, enabling better conversations and improving the quality of decisions.
