In an organization where quality is whole team responsibility and developers write and maintain tests. What is your opinion about the roles of Quality coach, Scrum master and Agile coach. They are all leadership roles which are non formal but depend on the team to do their job well. Where do they intersect and differ? In what way can they collaborate?
What are your views on this ? @amcharrett
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Hey Shalini, some of my best outcomes have resulted from working with delivery leads and scrum masters. They have the ability to incorporate rituals into the delivery process that impact quality. So a hearty yess from me. Its worth exploring how to work together, and where you might overlap. You don’t want to cross boundaries and take on work that others can do better. So lots of conversations and figuring out where a quality coach can come in, and where a delivery lead can drive.
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Great question!
I’ve worked in organisations as a quality coach where there’s both been a dedicated Agile coach and where there hasn’t been. So I can also speak to this somewhat 
For me, each of these roles bring a unique and different set of deep knowledge to the team (or organisation) which helps them to develop.
- Quality coach, a specialism in testing and quality engineering.
- Agile coach, a specialism in tailoring collaborative working and iterative product development.
- Scrum Master, a facilitator of ceremonies (might also be an Agile coach).
Where, as you’ve said, these tend to be leadership roles people in those roles are generally T-shaped (having one specialism but skills in other areas). Meaning that your Quality coach might have skills in Agile facilitation and setting up Agile teams… or that your Scrum master has seen good testing practices before. This means that these roles can sometimes support & pick up supporting teams in other areas.
But usually not at a deep level / they cannot solve for complex issues outside of their specialism.
So as a quality coach, I would find it hard to solve for issues where Product Owners cannot drive out iterative milestones for a new product. I also might not know the art of the possible for what training / workshops to run that’d be the best for a team to solve for a specific communication dysfunction like siloing. An Agile coach will likewise probably not be able to pair with an engineer to implement outside-in TDD.
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Good Question!
I think all coaches across aim to improve productivity and performance of team , build that trust upon each, and support them without actually owning their work.
These coaches can be supporting each other.. Agile Coach mentors scrum master in facilitation.
scrum master helps Quality coach integrate quality checks into team’s workflow.
Quality coach helps agile coach help assess and improve in delivery through quality metrics.
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