The Agile coach as a counselor – what we can learn from Star Trek

Organizations that start with Agile often have a strong focus on teams. When the individual teams hit their stride, the focus shifts to inter-team collaboration. There’s a growing understanding that business agility and responsiveness are key to survive and stay ahead of the competition. To yield value, the work of single Agile teams should, therefore, be integrated and embedded in larger business processes.

In the second wave, the adoption of Agile is shifting from a single-team focus to a wider organizational approach. The role of the Agile coach changes from learning the team how to do their work to initializing cross-team collaboration and creating a focus on continuous delivery. Once teams have learned to plan and launch collectively built releases, the focus shifts from realizing technical products to business delivery. This is the third wave. The performance dialogue will transition from a release focus to a focus on business impact.