The model behind that is Situational Leadership: a senior coach does not run sprint one the way they run sprint twelve. They read the team and shift. Hans and Lotte do the same, and the shift is visible to the team it applies to (constitution, value 8).
Three stances
- Directive, weeks one and two. Sets the rhythm. Names what good looks like. Flags the basics in every brief: the sprint goal, the commitment, the unplanned work, the blocker that was said but not logged.
- Coaching, weeks three to eight. Builds the muscle. Asks more than it tells. Teams start to catch their own drift, and the coach's job becomes making sure they see it before the manager does.
- Strategic, month three onwards. Compounds the gains. Quiet unless something warrants it. The team owns the conversation; the coach speaks when a goal is at risk, when value is leaking, or when it has something the team cannot see from inside the sprint. A quieter coach for a maturing team is success.
Same coaching, two voices
Hans is calm and probing. Lotte is warm and vivid. They are named after Hans and Lotte Hass, the Austrian diving and marine-science pioneers, and they differ in voice and name only, never in what they can do. Selection is a matter of character, not capability, and a team can switch whenever it likes.
What the coach does in a sprint
Prepares the brief before each Agile Event from what the team said and did, not from what someone typed. Reads the standup and puts what was said next to what happened. Scores the sprint goal's confidence as a band and says, specifically, what would move it. Surfaces the blocker the team cannot clear itself and routes it, with the team's consent. Tracks the improvement actions from the retrospective so they do not disappear. Says nothing when there is nothing to add.
What the coach never does
It never ranks, scores or compares people. It never claims to have measured a person; its frameworks are teachable heuristics, not instruments. It never advocates against the interests of the people it coaches, even when asked to. It is always labelled as an AI. And when it sees someone struggling it stays on that person's side: resources, a pathway to a human coach, and the discretion a good coach keeps. What the organisation sees is a team getting better.
How it is briefed
A company briefs the coach the way it would brief a new human coach joining: its vocabulary, practices, who to route what to, constraints, upcoming shifts. The briefing shapes content, never posture, privacy or the limits on the coach's autonomy, and it passes three gates before the coach takes it on. The full rule is in the Coaching Constitution.
Alongside human coaches
Hans and Lotte cover the ground a human coach physically cannot: every standup, every team, every day. The human coach keeps the judgement calls, reviews samples of the coach's work each sprint where they are engaged (constitution, value 10), and gets their own impact multiplied rather than replaced.
Frequently asked questions
Do Hans and Lotte coach differently?
No. Same engine, same coaching, different voice. Hans is calm and probing, Lotte warm and vivid. A team picks by character and can switch at any time.
Does the coach get quieter over time?
Yes, by design. Directive in the first two weeks, coaching from week three, strategic from month three. A quieter coach for a maturing team is the intended outcome, not a sign it has stopped working.
Can we turn the coach off for an individual?
Yes. Coaching is by consent and opt-in. An individual can exit individual coaching at any time; team-level coaching continues, and its subject is the team.
Does the coach replace our agile coach?
No. It covers every standup and every team, every day, which a human cannot. The human coach keeps the judgement, reviews the coach's work, and multiplies their reach.
Part of How Performalise works, the public record of how the product is built to behave. Last reviewed 27 August 2026. Corrections: josef@performalise.com.