Stop writing ‘Scrum master/Agile coach’ on your CV

Many of us use the terms ‘Scrum master’ and ‘Agile coach’ almost interchangeably. We’re usually trying to sum up the role of ‘the person who drives the rituals, allocates stories and facilitates continuous improvement’.

I certainly used the terms interchangeably until recently. Probably because I have worked on so many tight-budget Agile projects where an Agile coach was either considered an unnecessary luxury, or there was just not enough work for both roles full-time so the Scrum master was expected to perform both roles.

So, I confess that when I was talking to Michael Simonetti about his views on the differences between the roles, I was nodding knowledgeably on the outside and rapidly taking notes on the inside. Within the program Michael works on, there are multiple Scrum teams working at scale so Michael has a great opportunity to observe what works and what doesn’t. Quotes from Michael in italics.

I read a lot of CVs where people write that they’re a ‘Scrum master/Agile coach’ as if there’s no difference. There absolutely is a difference.  A Scrum master is focused on protecting the team and facilitating the day-to-day. A coach is more about how the team develops over time.

Michael defined Scrum master as a servant-leader facilitator who works directly with the team, empowering them and removing impediments. He says Scrum masters are making a mistake if they go into the role expecting to ‘manage the team’. In Agile people need to learn to manage themselves and the Scrum master needs to facilitate that.

Likewise, an Agile coach is not a manager, they are a coach. They focus on building the interactions between people to create high performing teams. They teach the team to become outcome-driven without needing to be spoon fed. Michael had been to the Agile Australia conference and remembered a story from the Spotify Agile coach Fiona Siseman that exemplified the behaviour of an Agile coach.

The Agile coach gave an example of watching a team talking about a release plan – which was great because they were collaborating well which they hadn’t been doing before – but as she listened, she realised that the release plan was rubbish.

She had a choice at that point: ‘Do I let the guys keep talking and build more as a team or break them all up and say, “your release plan is rubbish”?’ She chose to let the team keep talking because that was closer to the outcomes she was working towards as the coach.

She made the decision to focus on the micro transactions between the individuals. To me that’s real coaching; building better relationships between people to make them more efficient in how they work together in the long term.

To confuse the issue slightly, Geoff Watts in his book Scrum Mastery (published 2013) describes the role of Scrum master as ‘…part facilitator, part coach and part coordinator. It is also part parent, part orchestra conductor and part sheep dog.’ You’ll notice the word ‘coach’ in there, which somewhat contradicts what we’ve discussed above about how the two roles are separate.

But I don’t see a major conflict, because there is nothing to say that a Scrum master cannot also be an Agile coach if they have the right skills, knowledge and personality. Given that every sprint is different and often has a specific focus for the team, why not likewise have the Scrum master don an Agile coach hat for that unit of time to focus on team dynamics and long-term performance?

This combining of the two roles also works if you think about Agile coach as a temporary, or at least intermittent role in the team. For example, Michael told me that Spotify prefer not to have permanent Agile coaches in each team.

They use entry and exit criteria for the coach to come into a team for a specific purpose and then to leave. If you have a coach for a long time and you rely on them, that’s not a good outcome because that becomes just another role in the team. Better for the team to identify that they have a specific need for a coach in a specific area, which becomes the entry criteria.

On the other hand, there is also a benefit to keeping the roles of Scrum master and Agile coach separate. Sometimes the Scrum master needs the coaching. And it can be very difficult to survey the entire landscape, which a coach needs to do, when you’re immersed in the details as Scrum masters tend to be.

So if you think you can do both roles, fantastic, but best not to write ‘Scrum master/Agile coach’ on your CV unless you’re clear that these are two separate jobs.

Cheers - Kylie

P.S. If you are an experienced Agile practitioner and would like to be interviewed please send me a private message.