An agile coach guides teams through issues by facilitating discussions and considering different perspectives, while an agile consultant provides expertise and recommendations to solve specific problems. Coaches take a long-term approach to help teams improve, while consultants work on a short-term basis to address tactical issues. Organizations should hire consultants when they need outside expertise to identify threats or help implement agile frameworks, and coaches once agile processes are established to help teams improve performance over time. Both roles play important roles in helping organizations adapt agile methods.

1. Agile Coach Versus Agile
Consultants

3. There are various roles in agile that confuse newcomers. But even if many roles
in an agile sound similar to ears but they are different in their responsibilities. In
some cases, the roles are nearly the same when seen roughly but when
understand thoroughly you can watch the difference. Two similar sounding roles
in agile are agile coaches and agile consultants. Yes, they both are there to
help you! But when and where to choose and who, is where the question
arises.
In this article let’s seek an answer to this question. The difference between
Coaches and Consultants Coaching is a process where an individual known as
the coach works with people who have already achieved some success in their
path but are stagnant, coaches assist them to clarify their doubts and put their
best effort into achieving their goals and gaining high performance.

5. The coaching process involves effective listening, facilitating, and
supporting personal development. Coaching is done generally for a
longer time. Consulting whereas includes offering expertise,
recommendation, and analysis on the subject. Consultant with their
wisdom provides people with ideas to alleviate issues and advise
solutions that leaves people motivated. The primary job of a
consultant is to identify problems and provide the best available
solution on it, mostly tactical. The consultant work as freelancers and
short-term in any enterprises to provide advice when needed.

6. The Difference between Agile Coaches and Agile Consultants The agile coach guides
the teams in following the action plan for the issues that occurred. They follow the
indirect approach of identifying issues and facilitating them. Whereas the agile
consultant after identifying the issues creates an action plan and deals with providing
solutions to the problems in teams in his way. An agile coach will look the things in a
team’s way and will consider the team as his own by standing along with them and
helping team members achieve the project goals. Whereas, an agile consultant will
never get affected by a team's perspective as it is not his work. They will provide advice
based on their extensive experience with agile. Agile coaches many times change the
direction along with the team as per needs. They look after the issues with the big
picture and how it affects the project management strategies. The agile consultant will
never show any such flexibility and also will only deal with the solution of the issues that
occurred for which he/she is hired by the organization. The agile coaches help the
organization in building capacity and driving internal growth, an agile consultant works
for providing solutions working as outside expertise.

7. An agile coach helps in exploring possibilities that occur, the agile consultant is the one
who provides those possibilities.
The agile coach's role in any agile organization is for the long term as they lead and
guide them in every project. The agile consultants are on a contract basis or are hired
for the short term as they are for providing the recommendation to specific problems.
Who to Hire? If there are issues like cost reduction, improved innovation, and product
delivery this can be solved with business agility. Most of the time when there are bigger
issues with the organization while implementing agile consultants are the ones who can
help most but once set with the agile process and issues are occurring, then agile
coaches are required. In most cases, there are requirements, where agile coaches or
consultants both are required to be able to change hats. By changing the agile mindset
this can be easily obtained.
For example, when you are working with a team and improving their performance and
process acting as an agile coach but along with it, you are also helping the organization
improve and give a better performance which is an agile consultant’s job.

8. Main Reasons to Hire Agile Consultant
• When expert advice is needed considering that issue at hand is not possible to
be handled by a team.
• When you need to identify the threat that is for organizational success and
solutions to tackle them
• When an organization is unable to obtain the benefit available from agile
frameworks
Even though the job profiles are different for agile coaches and agile consultants
but they both are in agile organizations for facilitating change and overcoming
agile problems making them equally important for agile methodology.

9. About Advance Agility
We, at Advance Agility, are the new-age Agile Coaching, Consulting and IT services company.
We enable end-to-end Digital Transformation. Agile execution is integral to our being. We are
doing SAFe implementation with small, medium and large organization across the globe. Our
vision is to be the leading Agile execution player globally. To keep adding value at every
process stage. We are on a mission to empower our clients, move from concept to cash in the
shortest sustainable lead time by adopting human centric approach to business agility.
Embracing the change is in our DNA. Things that keep us apart are Quicker and Seamless
execution with End-to-end gamut of services. Our Global presence and Stellar Track Record
give us an edge over our competitor.
Connect with us at advanceagility.com to learn about SAFe and SAFe Implementation. We
provide various SAFe certification courses along with DevOps, Scrum, Agile Coaching and
more trainings. Write to us a contact@advanceagilty.com for any agile training or consulting
needs. We are always looking for competent agile trainers as well. So if you are a good trainer
or want to become one, do get in touch with us to that we can learn, grow and achieve together.