From time to time I get asked the question why use an Agile Coach I’ve read a book or taken a CSM course. It seems pretty easy. So why would I want to hire a coach?

With just a single team this is basically right, a good coach will still make a difference but you can bootstrap your efforts on your own.

So why use a coach:

• You want to get going faster
• You want to avoid the mistakes that most people make when they start (Scrummerfall, Command and Control Management).
• You’ve started and don’t know how to deal with the organizational impediments that Agile has revealed
• You want to scale
• You want to recover an “Agile Attempt” that went off the rails
• You want to recover a traditional project that is late and over budget
• You’re struggling to Agile in a hostile environment
• …

The reasons vary with each client, but in my mind it boils down to the fact that Agile is easy to describe and hard to do.

Update: Don Grey and Esther Derby have already written on this topic. Great minds think alike.

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If you want to bring Mark into your organization for Training, Coaching or Consulting please visit the corporate site: The Agile Consortium.