I’m a big fan of Lyssa’s work, and she really hits the nail on the head with this. But it brings up an interesting thought exercise…if we re-brand scrum masters as “Agile Team Coaches”…what does that do to the Consultant Coaching Industrial Complex?
Scrum Masters are Grown, not Born
Agree… I think the first few years of the journey, the “Scrum Master” is a person growing their skillset but competent enough to keep a team stable and focused. As the year’s pass, I fully expect that person develop the skills of a team coach and be able to do more than “just hold it together”, otherwise they aren’t growing.
I would love to see Agile Team Coach be the ladder above Scrum Master and before Guild/Practice Lead, or Enterprise Coach… and I really hope it puts a dent in the coaching industrial complex. If companies are more rigorous in finding team coaches that match their need, they won’t need as much outside consulting.
This isan interesting take on the notions of Scrum Master and Agile Coach.
Having done Lyssa’s bootcamp, I’ll comment that the formal role of Agile Coach seems to be a bit of a misnomer; with coaching being a very specific domain where the coach is “invited in”. IMO, the Agile Coach role often doesn’t have that invitation, and instead is seen as the agile SME.
Absolutely! They’re seen as Agile Gurus, but rarely are they invited into a team, they’re assigned. And knowing what we know about team dynamics and org psych we can guess how it typically plays out.