Three coaching modes. One powerful platform. From quick answers to deep personal growth.
No credit card required • All 3 modes included • Start in 30 seconds
You don't need another generic guide. Expert mode understands your specific context — your team size, your experience level, your role — and delivers precise, actionable guidance tailored to your exact situation. Stop bouncing between the Scrum Guide, half-relevant blog posts, and colleagues who are just as busy as you are. Ask your question, share your context, and get a clear answer you can walk into the room with today.
"I was about to facilitate my first sprint planning with a team I'd just joined. I got a full session structure, timing for each part, and the one thing I actually needed to hear — don't change anything on day one, build trust first. I went in confident."
— Evita, Scrum Master
"How do I run sprint planning? This is going to be the first time I'll facilitate such an event with my new team!"
Before I tailor this for you, a couple of quick questions: How large is your team, and do they have any prior experience with Scrum or sprint planning?
"They have previous experience with Scrum. I just joined their team as Scrum Master. Their size... with the Product Owner and myself we are 7 people."
Great context, thank you. So you have 5 developers plus a Product Owner, and the team already knows Scrum—that makes your job as a new facilitator much easier. You're not teaching them the process; you're stepping in to lead a ritual they're already familiar with.
Here's how to run an effective sprint planning session with this team:
Start with the sprint goal (~15 min) - Collaborate with the Product Owner to articulate a clear, meaningful sprint goal. "Users can complete checkout without calling support" is a sprint goal. "Work on checkout bugs" is not.
Story review (~40 min) - Product Owner walks through highest-priority items. Your role: facilitate, watch the clock. If a story takes more than 5-7 minutes of discussion, it needs more refinement—note it and move on.
Estimation and breakdown (~25 min) - Team selects stories and breaks them into tasks. Don't change their estimation method on day one. Observe first, adapt later.
The one thing you need to hear: Observe before you change anything. Build trust first, understand why they do things the way they do, then suggest experiments.
How are you feeling about the session? Is there a specific part you'd like me to go deeper on?
"We're merging two departments into a 100-person Agile organization. What scaling framework should we use?"
What's the current Agile maturity of each department coming into the merge? Are both teams already practicing Agile, or is one more traditional? And do you know yet how the new org structure will be shaped—are you starting from scratch on team design, or inheriting existing team boundaries?
That context matters a lot for which patterns will be most relevant here.
"Both teams already practicing Agile and organized in teams. We might need to rethink the overall structure and team redesign."
Great context—two Agile-practicing departments merging into ~100 people with a potential team redesign. That's actually a better starting position than most organizations face, but it comes with its own specific risks.
The Core Pattern: Merges Create "Fake Alignment"
Matthew Skelton and Manuel Pais document this in Team Topologies: when two organizations merge, there's often a period where people look aligned—same ceremonies, similar terminology—but the underlying team structures and ownership boundaries are mismatched. The antidote: be deliberate about how teams are structured, what they own, and how they interact.
Three Approaches Worth Considering:
1. Team Topologies (Skelton & Pais) - At 100 people, you're looking at stream-aligned teams, platform teams, and enabling teams. The key question: what are the long-lived team structures that minimize dependencies?
2. Flight Levels (Klaus Leopold) - His insight: most Agile problems at scale aren't team-level—they're coordination problems between teams. Focus on Flight Level 2 (coordination) before assuming team practices will sort themselves out.
3. Temporary Coordination Structure - Establish lightweight coordination during transition (3-6 months) that isn't your permanent structure. Prevents chaos without locking you into something you'll regret.
Which resonates most given your situation?
Mentor mode doesn't just tell you what works — it helps you understand where your real problem lives before recommending how to fix it. Drawing on documented wisdom from thought leaders and the broader Agile community, Mentor mode shares 2-3 distinct approaches for your specific situation — with full citations, so you know exactly where the thinking comes from and can go deeper on your own. No generic advice. No made-up stories. Every pattern cited, every source named — and always the failure mode worth avoiding before the solutions worth trying.
"We were about to pick a framework and start rolling it out. Mentor mode stopped me before I got there — helped me see I didn't even know which level the problem was living at yet. That diagnostic question alone saved us months of going in the wrong direction."
— David, Head of Engineering
The toughest problems aren't technical — they're human. Coach mode doesn't give you answers. It asks the question that makes you realize you already had one. Through deep listening, honest reflection, and questions that cut to the core, Coach mode helps you see what's really happening — then turns your insight into a specific, time-bound action you'll actually follow through on.
"I came in thinking my retrospectives were broken. Forty minutes later I had a specific plan for Friday, I knew exactly why it would work — and I'd figured it out myself. That's the difference."
— Nikos, Agile Coach
"We do retrospectives every sprint but I feel nothing ever changes..the team has basically given up on them."
What does "given up" look like in the room?
"People go through the process, they add sticky notes but nobody really believes anything will happen."
What do you think broke that belief?
"I think its related to the fact that we have the same action items for three sprints running….no actions follow up.."
Let me make sure I understand. The retro format isn't the problem — the problem is that actions disappear after the meeting, and the team has learned not to trust the process. Is that it?
"Exactly. The retro itself is fine. It's the follow-through that's dead."
What would need to be different for the team to believe their actions actually matter?
"Someone needs to own each action. And we need to open every retro by reviewing what happened to last sprint's commitments."
Which of those feels like the place to start?
"The review at the start. If nothing changed, at least we're honest about it."
Let's make it concrete. What exactly will you do, and when?
"I'll open this Friday's retro with last sprint's actions, who owned them, what happened, honest review. Five minutes maximum."
So your action is: open Friday's retro with a five-minute honest review of last sprint's commitments — who owned what, what happened. How does that land?
"Sounds good!"
That's yours. You figured it out.
Real coaching isn't one-dimensional. Start with quick facts, dive into learning, then explore the deeper "why"—all in the same session.
Direct, context-aware guidance. Share your situation and get a precise answer you can walk into the room with today — not a generic framework, but specific advice for your team, your challenge, right now.
Documented wisdom from the Agile canon and thought leaders who shaped the field. For every challenge, you get multiple approaches with full citations, the failure pattern worth avoiding, and sources to go deeper on your own.
Powerful questions that help you see what's really happening, generate your own alternatives, and commit to a specific action you'll actually follow through on. You find the answer — and own the outcome.
Most coaching ends when the conversation closes. pictor connects every session to your competency development across all eight dimensions of Lyssa Adkins' Agile Coaching Competency Framework — the gold standard the profession was built on.
Get unstuck right now. Expert answers, mentor guidance, or powerful coaching questions — whatever you need to move forward today.
Weekly competency analysis across all eight domains from Adkins' framework shows where you're growing and what to focus on next.
Turn insights into commitments. Track what matters. Build the habits that drive growth.
← Swipe to navigate between Insights and Actions →
Talk → Insights → Actions: Every conversation connects to your competency development and tracked commitments
Icons by Arief Mochjiyat and Kris.27 from Noun Project
Generic AI answers Agile questions. pictor coaches Agile practitioners. The difference is everything.
"When was the last time ChatGPT asked you what you'd tried first — and then held you accountable for what you committed to next?"
ChatGPT is a brilliant generalist. pictor is your dedicated Agile coach — and there's a difference between being answered and being developed.
Whether you're new to Agile or a seasoned expert, pictor adapts to your experience level and role.
Get clear answers about practices, ceremonies, and frameworks. Build confidence fast and start contributing from day one.
Get instant guidance on facilitation challenges, team dynamics, and ceremony design. Show up as the servant leader your team deserves.
Get proven patterns from experienced product leaders for the hard backlog decisions. Think through the stakeholder conflicts you can't discuss with your team.
Get a thinking partner for the complex cases you can't bring to a supervisor. The ones about people, politics, and organizational resistance.
Get practical guidance on engineering practices, technical debt, estimation, and team performance. Lead with confidence at the intersection of technology and people.
Deepen your practice, explore edge cases, and help others grow. Pictor meets you at your level. No basics, no hand-holding, just depth.
ChatGPT is a brilliant generalist. Pictor is purpose-built for Agile coaching. The three modes — Expert, Mentor, Coach — aren't just different tones, they're different coaching methodologies. Expert gives you precise, context-aware answers. Mentor shares documented wisdom from the Agile canon with full citations. Coach asks the questions that help you find your own way forward.
But the real difference goes beyond the conversation. Pictor tracks your growth over time. Every week, your sessions are analyzed across all eight dimensions of Lyssa Adkins' Agile Coaching Competency Framework, showing you where you're developing and what to focus on next. Every coaching session can end with a specific, time-bound action you've committed to — saved with context, tracked over time, feeding back into your weekly insights.
ChatGPT answers your question and moves on. Pictor remembers where you've been, shows you where you're growing, and helps you become the practitioner you want to be.
Think of tokens as your monthly coaching budget. A typical conversation uses roughly 10,000 to 20,000 tokens, depending on depth and complexity.
The Free tier (20k) gives you one or two coaching sessions to explore. Ripper (200k) supports 10-12 conversations a month — perfect for weekly coaching. Big Wave (500k) is built for daily use, entire teams, or ambitious practitioners navigating complex organizational challenges.
You always see your usage in real time. No surprises.
Yes. Your conversations are encrypted in transit and at rest, never sold, and never used to train AI models. Only you can access your own data. Full stop.
Yes, and that's one of the things that makes pictor feel like real coaching. You're not locked into one approach.
You might start with Expert mode to get a direct answer, switch to Mentor mode to understand the deeper pattern behind it, then move into Coach mode to explore how it fits your specific context. All in the same conversation. All building on each other.
The conversation flows. The mode adapts. Just like working with a human coach who knows when to teach, when to explain, and when to ask.
Your tokens reset monthly on your billing anniversary. You can see your usage in real time in the dashboard — no surprises, no guessing.
If you need more before the reset, upgrade anytime. The change is instant. The new tokens are available immediately.
And if you're consistently running low, that's a signal. It means pictor is working for you. Move up a tier and keep the momentum going.