Agile Coaching: From Bullshit to Success

Agile coaching sits at the heart of a growing paradox. Marketed as a key driver of organizational transformation, it is increasingly perceived as a bullshit job: vague, expensive, disconnected from reality, and often ineffective. In many companies, the title “Agile Coach” has become synonymous with jargon, post-its, and rituals performed without any tangible impact.

This perception is not accidental. It is the result of years of drift, opportunism, and a fundamental misunderstanding of what agility is actually meant to achieve.

When Agile Coaching Becomes a Scam

The agile coaching market has exploded. Along with it came a wave of self-proclaimed coaches who transitioned into the role after a brief exposure to Scrum, a single transformation experience, or a handful of certifications. Many simply replicate what they have seen elsewhere: the same frameworks, the same slides, the same workshops—regardless of context.

These are “copy-paste coaches.” They apply methods like recipes, without a deep understanding of the organization, the business, or human dynamics. Agility becomes theater: rituals are performed, velocity is discussed, but nothing fundamentally changes.

Worse, some coaches maintain ambiguity on purpose. The less clearly defined the problem, the more indispensable the coach becomes. Agile transformation turns into an endless initiative, with no clear accountability for outcomes.

A Systemic Problem, Not Just Individual Failure

Blaming a few charlatans is too convenient. The system itself encourages these behaviors. Agility has been sold as a product. Consulting firms have industrialized coaching, standardized approaches, and packaged transformation programs.

In this environment, the coach is no longer a change agent but an executor of predefined methods. Role, posture, and framework become conflated. Being an agile coach turns into “doing agile” rather than helping an organization think, decide, and learn better.

Why It Works Better in the United States

In the United States, agility emerged in a very different cultural context. Authority structures tend to be less rigid. Experimentation is valued. Failure is often seen as a learning step rather than a stigma.

Agile coaches there are more frequently perceived as temporary enablers, serving leadership and business outcomes. Their role is not to impose a framework but to help teams and managers solve real problems: time-to-market, quality, strategic alignment.

Most importantly, leadership is more willing to challenge itself. Without that prerequisite, no agile coaching can truly succeed.

The French Case: A Difficult Transplant

In France, agility is often introduced as a top-down mandate. Leadership decides to “be agile” without changing its own decision-making patterns. Teams are asked to be autonomous while controls and reporting increase.

The agile coach ends up trapped. Too close to teams, they are seen as agitators. Too aligned with management, they become carriers of hollow narratives. In both cases, legitimacy erodes quickly.

French organizational culture—more hierarchical, more intellectualized, and more skeptical of Anglo-Saxon management trends—amplifies this resistance. Agility is often perceived as a fad, or worse, as managerial manipulation.

What a Real Agile Coach Actually Is

A real agile coach is not a Scrum expert. They are a professional capable of reading an organization: its tensions, fears, power structures, and contradictions. Their value lies not in tools, but in posture.

They ask uncomfortable questions. They understand business as well as technology. They refuse cosmetic transformations. And they accept not being liked.

A good agile coach measures success by their ability to become unnecessary. When teams and leaders can learn and adapt on their own, the job is done.

From Bullshit Job to Game Changer

Agile coaching becomes a game changer only when certain conditions are met: genuine leadership sponsorship, clear business objectives, and acceptance of deep change—not just ritual adoption.

Impact is then measured concretely: shorter decision cycles, improved quality, real team ownership, and strategic alignment. Not by the number of boards, ceremonies, or certifications.

Conclusion

Agile coaching is at a crossroads. It can continue drifting into bullshit, sustained by empty discourse and opportunistic practices. Or it can redefine itself as a demanding, uncomfortable profession grounded in organizational reality.

In some cases, the best decision may be to stop talking about agility altogether—and start talking again about work, accountability, and results.