There's a recent trend in having generalists on the software team—there are no developers or testers, only "team members." The idea of the two roles learning from each other is a good one, but it's usually a one-way street: Testers learn to write production code or test tooling, but no one focuses on deep testing.

Successful agile teams often have a coach driving continuous improvement. While some coaches are effective initially, many eventually succumb to pitfalls that inhibit their team’s growth and fail to compel any lasting changes. Here are five common pitfalls of agile coaches in most projects that fail to improve.

For agile and DevOps teams to succeed, there must be a common vision that strives for detailed customer-focused outcomes. There’s never a magic bullet to address goal misalignment, as the challenges are context-specific, but here are some approaches that help move organizations and teams toward better alignment.