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Agile coach jobs aren’t coming back, and most of us already know it. What we haven’t done is accept what that means.
Agile coach jobs went away (so we hid from the change)
The irony of this profession is that agile is an approach to change, and we practitioners are as frightened of change as anyone we’ve ever coached. So when the roles went away, a lot of capable people did the predictable thing. They shrunk themselves. Back to project manager, program manager, product owner. Work that uses a fraction of what they know.
I understand it. There’s a job description for those. But there isn’t yet one for what we actually do.
No new job title is coming to replace agile coach jobs
Don’t wait for it. If it does show up, it will have been written by someone who had nothing to do with the rebellion.
That’s the part people forget. Agile was a rebellion, and rebellions are loosely organized and risky. With the economy and the geopolitics doing what they’re doing, nobody is volunteering for more risk. So nobody is going to stand up, announce the new category, and hand you a good rate for it.
There are two kinds of change
One is patching the bridge. I drove past a thirty-year-old overpass recently and you can see the repairs in the concrete. We know this kind well. Inspect, improve, carry the learning forward.
The other is the forest fire. The forest gets too old, too dry, too crowded, too untenable, and the whole thing has to go. Some species of tree only drop their seeds in a fire.
Vinyl got better for forty years. Better pressings, better styluses, better amplifiers. Then the CD arrived and none of it mattered. We had the BlackBerry with half its face given over to a keyboard. Then the iPhone. Show me a BlackBerry now.
Notice what didn’t change. People still wanted to listen to music. People still wanted to reach each other. The problem stayed exactly where it was, and the thing built to solve it burned.
Delivery will always have problems. What we built to solve them is what has to go.
What to do instead of chasing agile coach jobs
Stop waiting and start listening.
Once or twice a year I export my LinkedIn connections, go through the spreadsheet, and highlight the people I enjoyed working with. Then I reach out. How are you doing, what have you been up to, here’s what I’m seeing, what are you seeing?
They’ve changed jobs since we last spoke. Their companies have changed strategy. They know things.
Have ten of those conversations in the next two weeks and patterns start showing up. Check them against Reddit, Quora, Substack, wherever people complain out loud. When you stop asking someone to hand you a solution, they describe their pain instead.
Then propose something. This is where the iteration belongs, and it’s the part people get backwards. You don’t iterate on the bridge. You iterate on the offer. Maybe the price is wrong. Maybe a CEO doesn’t care and a VP does. Tweak it and go again.
Eventually somebody says let’s get together and talk about what you’ve been up to. That’s your signal.
This takes real courage and it isn’t for everybody. But the rate on an agile coach job is a cap, and you won’t raise it using that title.
Forge Genesis is where I teach this. Link below, cohort starting soon.
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