November 23, 2009 in Agile by Mark Levison

metal Whistle

Occasionally, I’m asked why should you 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 a single team you can bootstrap without too much trouble. Even then a good coach will still help you navigate the adoption process.

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’s simply that Agile may be easy to describe, but it’s hard to do.

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