Agile coaching in Norway and the USA: The role of the agile coach in teamwork, organisational culture and leadership

Agile coaching is a recently-emerged activity that is meant to promote successful implementation and use of agile methods of software development. However, agile coaches address issues that also lie within the field of organisational psychology, such as interaction in teams, organisational environment and leadership. The purpose of this study is to describe how agile coaching is practiced in Norway and the USA. Fifteen qualitative interviews with current agile coaches were analysed through an inductive thematic analysis and three overarching themes were identified: teamwork, enterprise agility and better products. The resulting thematic structure is compared across the informants from Norway and the USA. The thesis applies organisational psychology literature to discuss what role agile coaches play in teamwork, organisational culture and leadership in their organisations. It is suggested that agile coaching has the potential to improve teamwork by facilitating coordination mechanisms within teams. Moreover, it appears to transform organisational culture in line with agile principles. In addition, agile coaching seems to promote transformational leadership that is argued to be compatible with agile software development methods. The comparative analysis indicated that Norwegian agile coaches pay more attention to the quality of organisational environment than their American colleagues, while at the same time being less focused on coaching managers and customers. Companies who wish to successfully apply and use agile methods are recommended to give their agile coaches sufficient authority to influence context of the teams. Norwegian agile coaches are recommended to increase the amount of attention they pay to managers and business partners.