In recent years, organizations across industries have ramped up efforts to become “agile”—not just in IT, but across entire enterprises. Yet, many of these initiatives fall flat, not because agility itself is flawed, but because the coaching structures and strategies designed to enable agility are deeply broken. One of the most common patterns is fragmented coaching.
The Root of the Problem: A Misunderstood Agile Coach Role
The modern confusion around Agile coaching stems from a long-standing misunderstanding of what an Agile Coach is meant to do. Historically associated with IT departments and team-level delivery mechanics (e.g., Scrum, Kanban), Agile coaching has often been confined to technical practices. This early mischaracterization led organizations to split the role in unnatural ways. As a result, we now see a variety of narrowly-scoped roles:
- Agile Coach
- Business Agility Coach
- Product Coach
Each one is often optimized for a particular domain or department, ignoring the holistic systems view that true agility requires.
A Competitive, Lose-Lose Game
Instead of collaboration, these coaching roles are often pitted against each other in a tug-of-war over budgets, influence, and metrics. It’s a game of local optimization:
- The Agile Coach focuses on delivery flow and ceremonies.
- The Business Agility Coach pushes strategy and leadership maturity.
- The Product Coach zeroes in on discovery and customer-centricity.
Each role claims a slice of agility, often with conflicting priorities, incompatible goals, and overlapping responsibilities that read like a Venn diagram gone wild. Even worse, it’s not uncommon to see title relabeling used as an exit strategy for underperforming Agile Coaches. When outcomes falter, the solution isn’t upskilling or realignment—it’s a rebrand:
“I’m not an Agile Coach anymore. I’m a Business Agility Coach.”
“Actually, I’m now a Product Coach.”
This relabeling, while cosmetically appealing, often hides the lack of deep, multi-domain expertise needed to guide real transformation.
Enter the “Agile PMO”: An Oxymoron That Makes Things Worse
To add another layer of dysfunction, many organizations introduce a centralized structure—often called an Agile PMO—to oversee all types of coaching.
The term “Agile PMO” is an oxymoron. PMOs are traditionally rooted in command-and-control governance, stage gates, and compliance. This DNA is fundamentally at odds with the values of agility: emergence, decentralization, continuous feedback, and learning.
Yet, the Agile PMO attempts to:
- Allocate coaching assignments
- Standardize metrics
- Control the transformation
This leads to micromanagement of coaching, misalignment with teams, and erosion of trust.
What Gets Lost: ROI and Business Value
The tragic result of this fragmented, competitive, and bureaucratically managed coaching ecosystem is simple: Very low return on investment (ROI) from coaching.
Despite hiring multiple coaches across categories, companies are left unable to measure business value or articulate tangible outcomes.
Instead, the executive suite is fed a new narrative: “Now that we have Business Agility Coaches and Product Coaches, things will finally change.”
But this is just another iteration of the same problem. A false sense of hope. A reframed fad.
The Wild Goose Chase of “This Time It’ll Work”
This entire system of fractured coaching, mismanaged oversight, and title inflation spins agile transformation into a wild goose chase. Each cycle brings a new set of coaches, frameworks, and slogans—but rarely, if ever, results in sustainable change. Meanwhile, the real work of organizational change—business model shifts, role clarity, systems thinking, structural redesign—gets postponed or entirely ignored.
Call to Action
If your company is stuck in this pattern—cycling through coaching titles, battling role overlaps, and failing to see business value—it’s time to pause.
Instead of chasing more coaching fads, bring in a seasoned, multi-faceted organizational design consultant. Someone who can:
- Diagnose systemic dysfunction
- Consolidate fragmented efforts
- Simplify the coaching strategy
- Realign efforts to actual business outcomes
True agility doesn’t come from hiring more types of coaches.
It comes from strategic clarity, structural integrity, and intentional change.
References
- Repercussions of a False Dichotomy Explained
- Fair & Critical Review of “Becoming a Product Coach” by SVPG
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