Is the Agile Coach role dead?
Let’s get started with my title: ok, I know, there is nothing new in this title question “Is Agile dead?”. You can find many more texts about this subject going back to 2011 — as far as I know. I will link them in my text. So, may you are asking yourself: why the hell is this guy publishing this text? My reason for it is simple: as an Agile Coach — and there are a lot of layoffs for that position here in Brazil nowadays — I want to share the importance of paying attention to some social media, being part of some job role market discussions, and courses as well, and share my way to be prepared to shift/adapt my job position or career if needed.
I’ve been working in some IT positions since 2008 and, at the beginning in a Quality Assurance Analyst (QA) role. In that time, in my first IT job, I used to work with some tools and techniques, like Mantis (are you complaining about Jira?), TestLink (do you remember the V model? Do you remember the user’s case test? lol), Selenium UI, and others. You can find those items in your way nowadays but they are not in the same way or with the same adopters as they used to be.
I learned in some conferences, blogs, and talking to my colleagues that my role as a QA — that time — will be depreciated in a few years. And they were right — in some way! You can find the QA role nowadays is it not in the same way as that time. Most of developers are doing the QA steps during the development and a dedicated QA professional is not necessary — at least for them.
I heard them, and tried to learn some new skills in a new position, so, in 2012, I decided to become a Requirements Software Analyst. You know, writing some Users Cases, creating some prototypes, talking with internal customers, and using a lot of UML and RUP concepts to translate that customer needs to a software engineering language it’s nice and enjoyable — at least to me.
I was so successful with that and could you believe I did a certification test in Requirements Engineering? Yes! And in 2013, I was a Certified Professional for Requirements Engineering (CPRE) by IREB and I will share my feeling at that time: I was so confident with my skills, happy with my job position, and thought that was everything I needed in my career.
I was working at a health company at that time and some changes started in there: the IT director was replaced by another one. This new guy, during his presentation to the team, share a book called “The Lean Startup” and how we could use some techniques to improve and create a new environment work in our company.
“You should build-test-learn continuously”, “delivery your features to the customer as soon as you can”, and “fail fast”. I read that book a few months after his presentation and, in a Portuguese version a guy share his story related to a company failure because he spent almost 2 years getting requirements, building the software, and, when everything was done, he could not find a customer to pay for that. The new delivered system was born obsolete. Ok…I concluded that I was the guy that would be obsolete soon. Reading it was so helpful, and, here in Brazil the Agile Community was growing up and you could find Scrum and Kanban in every blog post discussion or IT conference.
Again, I started to learn about Agile Methodologies like Scrum, Kanban, eXtreme Programming, Agile Mindset and tried to find myself in a new position. Should I be a Product Owner (PO)? Should I be a Scrum Master? Most of my colleagues from Requirements Engineering was split among those job position. And I took the most time to decide what would be my next step career choice. I didn’t believe those positions were IT positions, so I invested my time studying managers’ and coordinators’ positions.
Well… I really tried to pick up a manager position as IT Coordinator or Project Manager, but, the most I read about responsibilities, skills and knowledge needed the more I figure out I was not shaped enough to work with it. At that time, I still working with a System Analyst getting some requirements from our customers, helping my manager with a project managing mix using Scrum and Waterfall (yes, together…), managing the project budget, and helping the team with my IT knowledge and customer support.
So, I made my choice: I will work as a Scrum Master! So, in 2016 I decided it and started my journey to go really deep dive into it, get together with others professionals to talk about the role, go out to some Agile conferences, and so on. I was happy and I had success working as a Scrum Master since then, so in 2017, I got the Profissional Scrum Master certificate by Scrum.org! I really was a good Scrum Master! I could see my work helping some companies, people, and teams changing the way they were doing the work and improving them to get more outputs, and outcomes and being more agile in the way they were discovering and delivering products and software.
With my experience, so, in 2021 I could participate in some Agile Conferences, and courses and read some blogs here on Medium or Linkedin’s posts: they were saying that Agile discipline — or someone doing only Agile things — will be not necessary for the near future. Digital transformation is done (most of them were saying that the result was not reached and it was a total disaster in some companies). Again, I was in the same thing: should I think in change my job position to another one? Which one? What the hell is happing here? Why some unicorns are firing their professionals around the world?
Again, I could see the same steps as I’ve been doing: let’s see the market, get some signals of the future, read a lot and change my role. You could think: yeah, the market is not so good, you know, inflation is a global problem as well as recession, the war in Ukraine, and so on. But, I’ve never been part of any company layoff and I haven’t any skin in the game with it. But, I can imagine it and whether it happens (because it’s part of the professional game), I want to be prepared to be employable as soon as it happens.
In my point of view, the Agile Coach role is not dead and it not will be: you can find it in your way nowadays but it is not in the same way as it used to be a few years ago. Let’s see the market again and find a new position (I just finish my post-graduation in Leadership and Human Development). This has been my career since I started it in 2008: follow the market signs, study to be prepared and qualified, make a job role choice, work with it and be prepared to start the same cycle again in a new position. It’s my virtuous cycle nowadays.
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