Agile coaching means different things to different people, and I often find myself in conversations about what it really is. To help clarify and share my perspective, I’ve put together key insights based on these discussions. 
What is an Effective Organization?
An effective organization consistently delivers value to customers in a way that retains the great people it has over the long term. It aligns its decisions and actions with its purpose and goals, fosters innovation, adapts to change, ensures financial sustainability, and operates sustainably to remain competitive and impactful. These elements are key to long-term success, though how they take shape depends on the organization’s unique context and challenges.
What is Agile Coaching?
An agile coach helps individuals, teams, and organizations cultivate an effective organization by utilizing agile, lean, and agility. They use a variety of approaches, tools, skills, and competencies to guide clients in aligning their decisions and actions with their own goals while building the capabilities needed for long-term success. Agile coaching is not about agility for its own sake—it’s about using agility to drive real business outcomes, such as customer value, financial sustainability, innovation, and organizational resilience, by creating an environment where people can engage, deliver, and thrive over the long term. A truly effective organization balances financial sustainability with an environment that enables people to do their best work.
- Who are “Clients” in Agile
Agile coaching is a journey, not a destination—guiding teams through continuous learning, adaptation, and growth. Coaching? Throughout this article, when I refer to “clients,” I mean the people, teams, and organizations being coached—the individuals and groups we serve and partner with.
- The Adaptive Nature of Agile Coaching: Every agile coach works in a unique environment, supporting individuals, teams, departments, and organizations differently. Because people are at different points in their journey, a coach must meet them where they are. However, this doesn’t mean staying in place, avoiding challenges, or simply keeping everyone comfortable. Clients have different goals and desired outcomes, adding another layer of variation. Coaching is about guiding people forward, helping them grow, and supporting meaningful progress toward their goals. Given the diversity of contexts, needs, and objectives, a one-size-fits-all approach simply doesn’t work.
The Core Principles of Agile Coaching*
- Shift from relying on your knowledge to tapping into their knowledge and wisdom (capability building).
- Use the minimum amount of your own knowledge necessary while drawing out the wisdom already present in the room.
- People always have more capabilities than they think—your role is to help surface these capabilities rather than simply providing answers.
- The idea is to “maximize the amount of advice not given!” How else will people carry on once you, the coach, are gone?
- Bring honesty and integrity to your coaching work (collaborative partnership).
- Without these, there is no real way forward.
- Truly believe that clients are creative and intelligent (human dynamics).
- A coach’s belief in their clients’ potential is essential to unlocking their growth.
- Bring yourself authentically to every coaching engagement (unique perspective).
- Your background, personality, and perspective shape your coaching approach—use them authentically.
Agile coaching isn’t about agility for its own sake—it’s about hitting the target: customer value, innovation, and sustainable business success.
- Your background, personality, and perspective shape your coaching approach—use them authentically.
- Meet them where they are while maintaining forward momentum toward their stated goals (balanced approach).
- Recognizing current reality while keeping the client moving forward is key to effective coaching.
- Focus on sustainable, long-term success (measurable outcomes).
- Coaching should lead to long-term benefits, not just short-term fixes.
- Maintain a service-oriented mindset (collaborative partnership).
- A coach is in service to the client, not the other way around.
- Balance observation with action while maintaining transparency in the process (experimentation).
- Knowing when to step back and when to engage is crucial for effective coaching.
- Align agile coaching with business outcomes (impact-driven coaching)
- Agile success is not the goal—business success is. The coach should help teams and leaders understand how agility supports their broader strategic goals rather than focusing on process adherence.
Agile Coaching in Action: A Real-World Example
Let me share a recent coaching experience that illustrates these principles in action:
I was working with a team that was struggling with their sprint planning. Their manager had asked me to “fix” their estimation process, believing the team needed to be trained on better techniques. Instead of jumping in with solutions, I first observed their refinement sessions, noting how team members interacted [balancing observation with action].
What emerged wasn’t an estimation problem but that several team members weren’t speaking up during refinement. Instead of teaching estimation techniques, I asked open questions about their experience in these sessions [shifting from my knowledge to their wisdom]. Through these conversations, we discovered that newer team members felt they didn’t have enough context about the product to contribute meaningfully.
Rather than prescribing a solution, I asked what would help them feel more confident participating [bringing out capabilities]. The team suggested additional training and demos of their existing products and architecture. They also proposed pairing junior and senior team members during refinement sessions.
By meeting them where they were — acknowledging their discomfort — while maintaining momentum toward better refinement sessions [meeting them where they are with forward momentum], the team developed their own sustainable solution. Not only did their estimation accuracy improve, but they also built stronger collaboration patterns that served them well beyond refinement.
The Evolving Nature of Agile Coaching
Not everyone would describe agile coaching the same way, and that may be due to how they see the world, agile, or their organization . . . among other things. However, core principles drive what it means to be an agile coach and even agile, which most of us can agree on.
* No list is perfect. Are there principles that you see as critical to the foundation of being an agile coach?
Great description Jake!
The one other one I’d add is helping our client own the outcome. We need to accept that the ideal state we may have in mind may or may not work out. As you said each person, team, group, department and organization is unique. But through our work with our clients if we can help them improve their world and set them on a path of learning and improving … then we have succeeded.
Mike, well put!