A coach’s job is not to impart knowledge. A coach enables others to find and pursue their own solutions. „Helping people to help themselves.“

I have always had a hard time with coaching without imparting knowledge. How are „the others“ supposed to find their own solutions if the knowledge of how to do it is completely missing? And even if they – the others – know the theory, should I let them make all the possible mistakes of practical implementation themselves first?

An experienced Scrum Master ….

… does not need an Agile Coach. At least that’s how we at GesAPro see it. Vice versa, a still inexperienced Scrum Master can in no way be harmed by the support of an experienced colleague. Whether the colleague has to be an Agile Coach or simply a very experienced Scrum Master remains to be seen.

Note: One can obtain the Agile Coach certification without ever having worked as a Scrum Master.

The GesAPro – Agile Coach is …

… an experienced Scrum Master who has already successfully completed several assignments. He is well versed in the method and also teaches practical approaches; both in terms of the method (Scrum, Kanban, SAFe) and in the optimized handling of the tools used (mostly JIRA or MS Azure DevOps and Confluence).

An experienced RTE …

… doesn’t also need a Coach. However, if the RTE – the Release Train Engineer – is still inexperienced, the SPC – the SAFe Program Consultant – would be a possible / useful coach for him / her. But of course this assumes that the SPC has also already gained sufficient experience in operational doing as RTE.

Note: One can obtain the SPC certification without ever having been a Scrum Master or RTE. Yes, one does not even have to be certified as a RTE.

Conclusion

An experienced Scrum Master has the ability to improve the performance of a Scrum Team. An Agile Coach can do the same. This via the way of coaching a still inexperienced Scrum Master.
Likewise, an experienced RTE has the ability to positively impact the output of an entire Agile Release Train (ART).