How to progress in your agile career?

I am an agile coach for many years, what should I do next? If this question has ever popped up in your mind, or you have been asked this question by someone, read on.

In the recent past, I have been contacted by various people from the agile fraternity with some common questions – how do I progress in my career? I have been an agile coach for several years, what’s next? I see some people in my organization at various seniority levels, what should I do to progress? I have job offers from multiple companies, how do I decide which one to pick. …. and so on.

Trust me, the answer is not simple, but if we understand the landscape of profiles and opportunities available, it provides reasonable clarity on the next steps. While I guided these people with the best of knowledge I possess, I thought of penning down the recommendations for sharing with everyone.

Disclaimer: These are my own personal views and have no correlation with the organizations I am currently associated with or have been associated in the past.

Dimensions of Agile Careers

To understand the career options, it is important to understand the eco-system the opportunities exist in. As the field has matured over the past 2 decades, there are 3 dimensions we need to understand.

1)?????Coaching Profile – This represents the area of focus of coaching you provide in an organization. Largely, there are 3 different coaching profiles you can pick and be successful in any of them.

Important considerations:

• None of them is bigger or smaller than the other, just different areas of focus of coaching.
• Depending upon your area of interest and exposure, you may pick one or more of these profiles in your career.
• It is not necessary that you work only on one profile. People shift their focus time to time from Team to Program to Leadership or otherwise depending on assignments or organizational needs as well.
• All 3 profiles are equally important and required in any organization to succeed in it’s transformation program.

2)?????Organizational Role – This dimension represents the type of role you may get to play within the organization. Different organizations are structured differently, so are the roles and titles people are given to function and perform their duties. Largely, there are 2 types of roles in the space of Agile Transformations:

Important considerations:

• It is not necessary that you will see both types of roles in all organizations. Sometimes, these are fused into one role.
• In many cases, Change and Program Management roles are picked up by the old time employees of the Organization who are looking for change in roles, or trying to fit in the transformation program while utilizing their strong Project and Program Management experience. These roles provide opportunity to interact with all roles of the organization due to the nature of responsibilities.
• Both of these roles may further specialize into Guild Lead, Chapter Lead, COE Lead etc. however, these specializations are mostly taken by the SMEs.

3)?????Type of engagement – This dimension represents the stakeholders and type of project or engagement you pick to work on. There are 2 types of engagements with their own advantages:

Important considerations:

• Usually, internal facing roles have limited exposure as compared to external facing as they provide a “stable culture” that doesn’t change over time due to being within the same organization – therefore presenting limited set of problems to be solved. But they provide steady and rich learning experience as you get to see the results of your transformation efforts due to longer association with the same transformation program. Depending upon the stage in your career and personal life, you may pick such roles if you feel content with the learnings and knowledge gained so far, and want to avoid client pressure (this doesn’t mean internal stakeholders are easy to handle!).
• External facing roles provide rich exposure to various types of challenges from multiple client projects and use cases. This provides tremendous opportunities to learn and expand your knowledge, not just on transformations, but also “consulting skills”. However, client pressure, deadlines, and switching multiple projects in short periods of time may not be the first choice for many. Additionally, due to multiple client projects, association with one project is shorter as compared to internal facing projects. Due to this, you don’t get to see the results of transformation and coaching efforts in the long run.

So what's the next move in your agile career?

Do you want to be an SME/Coach and be recognized across the industry as a highly knowledgeable person in the field? Keynote speaker of conferences? How about turning into an author and penning down your hard core coaching SME knowledge and become a best seller? How about becoming a highly reputed consultant who is recognized and endorsed by clients for exceptional services and knowledge?

Or would you rather be a Change and Program Manager to manage these programs? How about Director of Agile Transformation, or a Chapter or COE Leader?

Are you still looking for more exposure and pick up challenging client engagements to address different types of problems from different contexts and cultures? Or would you rather work on internal initiatives to help mature your organization’s agile practices?

There is no straight choice, but all choices are correct. It depends, what you want to do next. The decision has a large bearing on the stage you are at in your professional and personal life as well.

These dimensions are not intended to be an exhaustive list of all possibilities, but to provide guidance into your thought process to make the next best move in your career.