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Is Agile coaching a natural evolution from Scrum Mastery?

It can be, and it often is a natural progression for many scrum masters.

It was for me personally too.

As a Scrum Master, you’re working on helping teams embrace Scrum to solve complex problems and build products and services that truly delight customers.

As you become better at doing that, you may find that you are working with more than one Scrum team. You may find that over time, you are working with junior Scrum Masters to help them become more effective in their roles.

That’s already straddling the line between Scrum Master and Agile Coach.

As your knowledge of the business grows and as you develop your skills for working with multiple individuals and teams throughout the organisation, you’re already in the domain of Agile coaching.

You’ll be having conversations with people around how to remove impediments to progress and helping others understand how their contribution can assist the team in creating products and services that truly delight customers.

Again, Agile coaching territory.

Many people love working at the team level and choose to simply progress as a Scrum Master rather than follow the Agile Coach trajectory and that’s great. We need more of that.

Scrum Alliance have created a certification path for people who choose to remain Scrum Masters and become the best version of that through the Advanced Certified Scrum Master and Certified Scrum Professional Scrum Master courses.

The longer you persist as a practitioner of Scrum and practice your Scrum Master skillset the more valuable you are going to be to the organisation. It does, also, give you the option to make the transition to Agile coach down the line if that does appeal to you.

If you want to expand your skillset to enable you to work with multiple teams across the organisation, there is a Certified Enterprise Agile Coach certification available from Scrum Alliance that validates your skills and capabilities.

If you prefer working at the team level and want to validate that skillset, Scrum Alliance have the Certified Team Coach certification that does exactly that.

IC Agile also have the Certified Agile Team Coaching course and certification to help you make the transition from Scrum Master to Agile Coach.

The majority of Agile coaches started out as Scrum Masters and simply found that transitioning to an Agile coach was a natural progression from the role of Scrum Master.

As they worked with teams and individuals, the coaching element became a stronger requirement of their skillset and as they helped other Scrum Masters move through their apprenticeship, they naturally developed those skills.

So, if you are a Scrum Master and would like to explore the opportunity of transitioning to an Agile Coach over time, visit our Advanced Certified Scrum Master and Certified Scrum Professional Scrum Master course pages followed by the IC Agile Certified Agile Team Coaching course page.

If you value the idea of coaching and mentoring throughout the transition to Agile Coach, visit our Agile Coaching Academy page.

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