What's Next for Agile Coaches?
Insights from Agile Community Network Episode 113
You've helped teams work through difficult problems, but the next job description barely resembles the role you've been doing. The title sounds junior. The responsibilities sound senior. And the salary asks you to make another compromise. How do you decide what to pursue without losing sight of what you bring?
In Episode 113, the ACN community talked about career choices in a tougher market for Agile coaches. The conversation moved beyond job titles into the problems people can solve, the skills worth developing, and the relationships that help opportunities emerge. There wasn't one route forward. There were useful ways to make the next decision more deliberately.
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Start with the problem you help solve
The opening discussion focused on what organizations are willing to pay for. Customers still need better experiences. Businesses still need to manage costs, adapt to changing markets, and make decisions about AI. A coaching background can help with those problems, but a job title alone doesn't explain how.
Sheila Eckert made that concrete by describing a question a client had asked her: how would they know when a team no longer needed a coach? She encouraged people to define the outcomes of their work and what they would leave behind. That gives a prospective employer something more useful to consider than a list of ceremonies you've facilitated.
Look beyond the title for your strengths
Diana Larsen encouraged people to look at the parts of coaching they most enjoy and do well. Product coaching, helping teams collaborate, or guiding people through new technology can point toward different opportunities. Learning the job titles used for that work can widen a search beyond roles explicitly called Agile coach.
She also cautioned against adopting a new label before developing the experience to support it. Calling yourself an AI coach doesn't establish that you can help someone use AI effectively. Start with the capability, then find language that describes it clearly.
Sheila McGrath brought in another kind of experience: helping people from different disciplines understand one another. Getting accountants and developers to find common ground takes judgment and patience. Those skills can be easy to overlook when a resume is organized around titles rather than the work someone actually did.
Learn where the work is moving
Shawna Cullinan described a shift away from routine coordination work and toward deeper problem-solving. As tools take on more administrative tasks, coaches need to understand product delivery, the measures that matter to it, and how teams make decisions about the right problem to solve.
The discussion treated AI fluency as part of that development, alongside the human judgment needed to question its output. Learning a tool is a start. Understanding how it changes the work, and where people still need help thinking together, makes that learning more useful.
Build a reputation people can recognize
The community connected reputation with both sharing your thinking and showing up for other people. Sheila Eckert encouraged people to develop their own viewpoint, seek speaking opportunities, and participate in groups before they need a new role. Diana emphasized relationships with people who know your work, including communities around a field you want to enter.
For applications, Sheila suggested tailoring a resume to the language of each role so relevant experience is easier to find. Jörg Pietruszka offered a complementary step: ask former colleagues what you did that made a difference. A strength that feels ordinary to you may be exactly what others remember.
Look closely at the tradeoffs
One participant raised the uncomfortable mismatch between junior pay and expectations that sounded closer to program management or transformation leadership. The responses didn't reduce that to a simple rule about accepting or rejecting the job.
There was a clear warning about undervaluing yourself or agreeing to expectations that would be difficult to meet. Sheila McGrath also pointed out that job descriptions can be broad or constrained by an organization's hiring process. Talking with the employer can reveal what the role actually involves. She described times when learning a new industry or technology had made a lower-paid role worthwhile for her.
Near the end, a participant offered a way to evaluate the next opportunity through network, experience, and training. Would it connect you with people, deepen useful experience, or provide learning that moves you toward the work you want? The same contribution brought the decision back to personal values. A promising title or a possible future benefit still needs to fit what matters to you now.
Questions to bring to your next career decision
What problem can you explain, with an example, that you helped a team or business solve?
Which part of your work do others value most, and what would you need to learn to build on it?
What would you need to clarify about a role's responsibilities, pay, support, and learning opportunities before saying yes?
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