Article

What Is an Agile Coach? Responsibilities, Salary, and Interview Prep

January 24, 2025

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Emily May

Are you passionate about teaching, mentoring, and coaching others? If so, a career in agile coaching may be right for you. 

What is an agile coach? This article examines agile coach responsibilities, salary potential, certification options, and interview preparation.

What Is an Agile Coach?

An agile coach supports individuals, teams, and/or organizations in adopting and improving agile practices to increase customer value and business impact. They act as mentors and facilitators, enhancing collaboration, streamlining processes, and improving performance. The responsibilities of an agile coach depend on the scope of their role and whether they are providing agile coaching at the team or enterprise level.


Responsibilities of an agile coach at the team level include:

  • Teaching and implementing key agile principles & processes
  • Coaching and facilitating effective communication & collaboration
  • Identifying and addressing impediments in service of continuous improvement
  • Mentoring teams to maximize value delivery to the customer 


Responsibilities of an agile coach at the enterprise level include:

  • Applying a systems coaching perspective to help organizations thrive in complexity
  • Coaching and facilitating agile transformation at multiple levels within organizations
  • Inviting and facilitating leadership development through advising, teaching, and mentoring
  • Co-designing organizational change strategies with leadership


According to ICAgile’s Agile Coaching learning outcomes, an agile coach makes “conscious choices about their actions in the service of teams.” A primary aspect of being an agile coach is maintaining a deep understanding and knowledge base of coaching, facilitating, mentoring, and teaching skills. Based on the unique situation, an agile coach will utilize one or a combination of these skills to support team needs. 

5 Agile Coach Responsibilities

cartoon have an agile coach displayed as a super hero

Agile coach responsibilities depend on the scope of the role and whether you’re coaching at the team or enterprise level. However, this section provides an overview of typical responsibilities you will come across in an agile coach job description. 

1. Facilitate an Agile Culture

An agile coach reinforces an agile mindset within an organization or team. Agile coaches must lead by example and embody agile values and principles to facilitate an agile culture. 

Individuals and teams turn to the agile coach for guidance on agile behaviors, including collaboration, learning, and continuous improvement. With an agile role model, groups can more quickly experience the collective benefits of having an agile mindset. 

2. Coach Individuals & Teams

Given the title, it’s no surprise that coaching is a significant aspect of the agile coaching profession. An agile coach hones and applies their coaching techniques with individuals and teams to help them:

  • Identify goals
  • Overcome challenges
  • Seek personal development
  • Improve performance
  • Adhere to agile principles

Agile coaches need five foundational coaching skills to perform their duties effectively. These coaching skills include:

  • Emotional intelligence
  • Presence
  • Active listening
  • Powerful questioning
  • Giving and receiving feedback

Given the personal nature of the coaching role, it’s also imperative that agile coaches follow a code of ethics.

3. Provide Mentorship

Mentorship is another key aspect of agile coaching. An agile coach seeks to help those around them improve, whether an individual, team, or organizational leader. 

Broadly, agile coaches mentor team members on applying an agile mindset, practices, and frameworks. On a granular level, an agile coach will help individuals apply these principles within the context of their role for maximum performance. 

An agile coach can help their mentee improve their skill set, adopt new perspectives, transform their professional relationships, develop a plan for career progression, and more. 

4. Promote Collaboration

An agile coach focuses on creating a team environment that empowers collaboration. Collaboration is essential for agile teams to maintain high performance, healthy communication, and alignment. 

For example, an agile coach may organize cross-functional teams, facilitate regular workshops and discussions, and help address and resolve team conflict. These techniques strengthen team relationships and promote cohesive work toward a better organizational culture and product. 

5. Guide Organizational Change

cartoon of a person leading a team with a graph of showing increase in the background

Implementing and scaling agile methodologies within an organization is not easy. An agile coach helps guide teams through this change by aligning the organizational culture and internal processes with agile principles. 

An agile coach plays a pivotal role in supporting individuals through the agile transformation process. As teams and leaders navigate the change, the coach helps individuals and groups adapt to an agile mindset, frameworks, policies, and procedures.

Agile Coach Salary

Agile coach salaries depend on various factors, including the hiring organization, company size, experience, geographical location, and unique responsibilities.

It’s important to note that each country has its own average agile coach salary. According to Glassdoor’s salary estimation tool, global pay averages include:

How to Increase Your Agile Coach Salary

Person climbing a bar graph towards a target with currency behind them

Industry professionals earn agile coaching certifications to increase their earning potential. The benefits of this learning are two-fold: 

  1. Agile coaches display certifications on their resumes to demonstrate their knowledge in the field.
  2. Agile coaches have concrete knowledge to implement within their teams.

When choosing an agile coaching certification, consider course quality. As an accreditation and certification body for agile training, ICAgile holds our course materials and class instructors to the highest standards. Do your research, and be sure the class material is peer-reviewed and industry-recognized. 

Secondly, make sure the course meets your learning objectives. ICAgile provides comprehensive learning outcomes for each agile coaching course, outlining the skills and knowledge you will gain.

Explore the featured learning outcomes for our two agile coaching tracks:

Agile Team Coaching Track

Enterprise Agile Coaching

Agile Coach Interview Questions

cartoon of two people talking in an interview

In addition to learning and improving your resume, interview prep is essential for maximizing your chances of a job offer. Indeed recommends preparing answers to a variety of agile coach interview questions, such as:

  • What agile processes are you familiar with?
  • What's the difference between a scrum master and an agile coach?
  • What is your approach to managing a team?
  • What does agile coaching mean to you?
  • How do you motivate your agile team?
  • What are some challenges you've faced as an agile coach?

Prepare to answer questions about your background, why you’re interested in the company, your experience and certifications, and your expertise in agile coaching. 

Pro tip: use ChatGPT to brainstorm interview questions based on the company and job description.

Next Step

The agile coach career path offers rewarding opportunities for professionals to leverage their agile, coaching, and mentorship skills at the team and enterprise levels. Preparation is key to obtaining an agile coach role, including acquiring agile coaching knowledge, practicing interview answers, and understanding salary expectations. 

Are you ready for the next step in your agile coaching journey? Consider becoming an Agile Coaching certified professional with ICAgile. You’ll learn the foundational skills to mentor, teach, and coach teams and individuals.

Build a career you love. Find a class today. 

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TAGGED AS:
Agile Team Coaching, Agile Coaching, Enterprise Agile Coaching, Systems Coaching

About the author

Emily May | ICAgile, Marketing Specialist
Emily May is a Marketing Specialist at ICAgile, where she helps educate learners on their agile journey through content. With an eclectic background in communications supporting small business marketing efforts, she hopes to inspire readers to initiate more empathy, productivity, and creativity in the workplace for improved internal and external outcomes.

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