Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for Enterprise Agile Coach

🎯 Role Definition

As an Enterprise Agile Coach, you are a strategic partner and a catalyst for profound organizational change. You will operate at all levels of the organization—from the C-suite to individual delivery teams—to implement and mature our agile capabilities. Your mission is to foster a resilient, adaptive, and high-performing culture by embedding Agile principles and a Lean mindset deep within our corporate DNA. You will not just teach Agile; you will embody it, inspiring leaders and teams to embrace new ways of working that deliver exceptional value to our customers and drive sustainable business results.

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

Senior Agile Coach / Team Coach
Senior Scrum Master
Agile Program/Portfolio Manager
Management Consultant (Agile Transformation)

Advancement To:

Director/Head of Agile Transformation
Head of Agile Center of Excellence (CoE)
VP of Product, Engineering, or Operations
Chief of Staff

Lateral Moves:

Organizational Change Management Lead
Transformation Consultant
Director of a Value Stream or Product Line

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

Act as a trusted advisor, coaching and mentoring senior leadership, executives, and management on agile principles, mindset, and their critical role in championing and sustaining enterprise-wide change.
Design, implement, and continuously refine the enterprise-wide Agile transformation strategy and roadmap, ensuring alignment with overarching business objectives and strategic goals.
Establish, launch, and mature a thriving Agile Center of Excellence (CoE) or Community of Practice (CoP) to cultivate a network of internal agile champions and standardize best practices.
Develop and deliver tailored, high-impact training and workshops for diverse audiences, covering topics from foundational Agile/Scrum to advanced concepts like Value Stream Management and Lean Portfolio Management.
Facilitate large-scale, cross-functional planning events (e.g., SAFe PI Planning, LeSS Overall Retrospectives) to align multiple teams and ARTs on a shared mission, vision, and set of objectives.
Guide the implementation and optimization of scaled agile frameworks such as SAFe, LeSS, or Scrum@Scale, customizing them to fit the unique context and culture of our organization.
Partner directly with C-level executives and portfolio leaders to establish and facilitate Lean Portfolio Management (LPM) practices, including strategic alignment, capacity planning, and lean budgeting.
Conduct comprehensive organizational agility health assessments using both qualitative and quantitative measures to identify systemic impediments and create actionable improvement backlogs.
Mentor and develop a team of Scrum Masters and Agile Coaches, fostering their growth and ensuring consistent, high-quality coaching is delivered across all teams and portfolios.
Champion a culture of relentless improvement by introducing and facilitating powerful inspect-and-adapt cycles at the team, program, and portfolio levels.
Drive the adoption of modern engineering practices (e.g., CI/CD, TDD, DevOps) by partnering with technology leadership to remove bottlenecks and enable true business agility.
Mediate and resolve organizational conflicts and impediments that exist outside of a single team's control, requiring skilled negotiation and influence across departments.
Define and implement meaningful, outcome-based metrics and KPIs to measure the progress and impact of the agile transformation, moving beyond simple output-based vanity metrics.
Coach Product Management and Product Owners on lean-agile product discovery, customer-centricity, hypothesis-driven development, and effective backlog management at scale.

Secondary Functions

Guide HR, Finance, and other business support functions on their journey to adopt agile principles for their own operations and to create policies that support an agile enterprise.
Act as a compelling storyteller, sharing success stories and lessons learned throughout the organization to build momentum and inspire further change.
Stay at the forefront of agile and lean methodologies, continuously bringing new tools, techniques, and thought leadership into the organization.
Support the selection and configuration of enterprise Agile lifecycle management tools (e.g., Jira Align, Azure DevOps, Planview) to ensure they support, not dictate, our ways of working.
Facilitate complex, high-stakes workshops and problem-solving sessions with cross-functional groups to tackle the most challenging business and technology issues.
Create and maintain a repository of agile training materials, playbooks, and best practice guides that are easily accessible to the entire organization.
Participate in external industry events and forums, representing the company and bringing back external perspectives to enrich our internal practices.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

Expertise in Scaled Agile Frameworks: Deep, hands-on implementation experience with SAFe (SAFe Program Consultant - SPC certification is highly preferred), LeSS, and/or Scrum@Scale.
Lean Portfolio Management (LPM): Proven ability to establish and facilitate LPM, including lean budgeting, value stream funding, and portfolio Kanban systems.
Agile Lifecycle Management Tools: Advanced proficiency with enterprise tools such as Jira, Jira Align, Azure DevOps (ADO), or similar platforms for managing work at scale.
Value Stream Mapping: Skill in facilitating value stream identification and mapping workshops to analyze and optimize the flow of value from concept to cash.
Agile Metrics & Analytics: Ability to define, instrument, and interpret advanced agile metrics (e.g., Flow Metrics, CFD, Lead/Cycle Time, Throughput) to drive data-informed decisions.
Business Agility Concepts: Strong understanding of how to apply agile principles beyond IT to functions like HR, Finance, and Marketing.
Technical/Engineering Practices: Familiarity with modern software development practices like DevOps, CI/CD, Test-Driven Development (TDD), and Trunk-Based Development.

Soft Skills

Executive Presence & Communication: The ability to confidently and credibly engage, influence, and advise senior executives and C-level leaders.
Masterful Facilitation: Expertise in designing and leading engaging, productive, and inclusive workshops and events for groups of any size.
Influencing Without Authority: A proven track record of driving change and gaining buy-in from stakeholders across all levels and departments without formal power.
Systems Thinking: The ability to see the organization as a complex, interconnected system and to identify and address root causes rather than just symptoms.
Conflict Resolution: Superb interpersonal skills and the ability to navigate and mediate complex organizational and interpersonal conflicts.
Servant Leadership: A deep-seated commitment to empowering others and putting the needs of the teams and the organization first.
Resilience and Patience: The tenacity to navigate the slow, often frustrating pace of enterprise change with a positive and persistent attitude.
Emotional Intelligence (EQ): High self-awareness and the ability to perceive, understand, and manage the emotions of self and others.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

Bachelor's Degree in a relevant field or equivalent professional experience.
One or more advanced Agile certifications (e.g., SPC, CEC, CTC, LeSS Practitioner).

Preferred Education:

Master’s Degree in Business Administration (MBA), Organizational Psychology, Leadership, or a related discipline.

Relevant Fields of Study:

Computer Science / Information Technology
Business Administration & Management
Organizational Leadership & Development

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range:

10-15+ years of professional experience, with a minimum of 5-7 years in a dedicated Agile leadership role (e.g., Agile Coach, RTE, Agile Transformation Lead).
At least 3+ years of specific experience as an Enterprise Agile Coach, directly supporting a large-scale transformation in an organization of 1,000+ people.

Preferred:

Experience coaching and influencing at the VP/C-suite level.
Verifiable experience leading a transformation using the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) and holding an active SPC certification.
Background as a practitioner in a technical or product role (e.g., Software Developer, Product Manager) before moving into coaching.
Experience in a variety of industries (e.g., finance, healthcare, retail) to provide a broad perspective.