I had the pleasure of speaking with Allison Bacher, also known as the Agile Angel, one of the most thoughtful voices at the intersection of coaching, data and AI. Allison has spent years working with CTOs and product leaders, helping their teams perform at a high level while staying human-centred and commercially grounded.
She is also the co-creator of Performalise, an AI-powered coaching platform that shines a light on what she calls the “silent data” behind team performance.
I am excited to share her insights on blind spots in coaching, how AI can help at scale and what it really takes to prove the value of agility in the boardroom.
Seeing the Blind Spots Coaches Cannot Avoid
Most Agile coaches work across several teams. Different locations, different time zones, different levels of maturity. It sounds normal, but Allison is very clear about what this means in practice.
“Agile coaches do not scale,” she told me. “We are not in every meeting. We do not hear every comment. By the time something shows up in a retrospective, the moment for a real intervention has already passed.”
Those missing moments create blind spots. Teams may share curated metrics or filtered feedback, and important patterns stay hidden.
This is where Allison sees AI as a partner rather than a threat.
“We can use AI to look for patterns in flow, churn, rework, stakeholder satisfaction and even team confidence,” she explained. “It picks up the behavioural signals we would never see in real time on our own.”
Instead of relying only on what teams choose to report, coaches can work from a richer picture of how the system actually behaves.
At scale, the challenge becomes even sharper. A few coaches. Many teams. A lot of pressure to tell leadership what is really happening.
Allison is careful about the role of metrics here.
“A single metric is a very blunt instrument,” she said. “Velocity on its own does not tell you anything useful. What matters is clusters of metrics that show trends. We do not want to become the metrics police. We want to be the people who see the patterns.”
She emphasises that the intent is never to compare teams or name and shame. Instead, AI can highlight where refinement is weak, where work repeatedly rolls over, or where stakeholder engagement is low.
“If I have 5, 10, even twenty teams, I do not need to look at everyone every day,” she said. “With the right metrics and dashboard, I know exactly which five I need to see today and why.”
The result is more focused coaching and less noise for teams.
Proving That Agility Is Working
Sooner or later, every coach hears the question: “Is this Agile thing working?” Often very early, sometimes after the very first sprint.
Allison’s advice is to start in the executive’s world, not ours.
“We have to get in their shoes first,” she said. “What do they actually care about? Time to market. Risk. Customer outcomes. If we answer with story points and velocity, it does not land.”
Instead of promising that things will be faster, cheaper and better, she suggests using “rich data” that connects directly to outcomes.
“Show them that quality is improving. Show that cycle time is coming down. Show how better stakeholder engagement is reducing rework,” she explained. “When you have trends and leading indicators, they relax. They can see that we see the risks early and that we are on it.”
AI helps by turning thousands of small data points into readable patterns. Coaches no longer have to spend hours assembling spreadsheets. They can spend that time explaining what the data means and what needs to change.
Of course, AI brings its own fear. Some coaches ask her directly whether tools like Performalise are meant to replace Scrum Masters. Allison does not hesitate.
“No!” she said. “AI is there to do the work humans cannot do at scale. It handles repetitive analysis so we can focus on the human conversations. It moves us from reactive, after the car crash, to proactive, seeing that a crash is coming and going there now.”
“But AI is not taking away the judgement or the relationship. It is taking away the parts that machines are better at, so the humans can do the work that only humans can do.”
Silent Data and Performalise
Toward the end of our conversation, Allison introduced the idea of “silent data”.
“It is the data that tells the real story. The comments people make in daily scrums, the sentiment in reviews, the small signals that never make it into a slide deck.”
Performalize sits on top of tools like Jira or Azure DevOps and focuses on these human aspects of performance. It helps coaches see patterns across teams and gives leaders a more truthful picture of what is happening.
If you would like to explore Performalise, you can visit performalise.com or go to performalise.com/partner if you are a coach interested in working with the platform.
Allison’s insights are a powerful reminder that real agility is not just about boards, backlogs and ceremonies. It is about seeing what is really happening, telling the truth with data and keeping the human conversation at the centre of change.
I wish you a productive day, and I will see you next week, same time and place, for more managerial insights. Bye for now.
