Working with one of the top financial clients, this role calls for a Scrum Master who will be responsible for the improvement of the agile team (e.g., pod) in Agile Release Train and champion the methodology, provide guidance on its application and associated processes, protects the team from outside distractions, conducts ceremony facilitation, removes impediments and is dedicated to the agile team or pod. The successful candidate has a solid understanding of understanding of ARTs and helps stakeholders work according to the method for the benefit of the team and the committed work.
Responsibilities:
- End-to-end facilitation of the agile processes in ART Scrum teams.
- Drives continuous improvement and change, acting as a change agent to adapt processes to maximize productivity across work efforts
- Engages appropriate stakeholders to identify and manage impediments to achieve outcomes of work commitments
- Identifies agile team improvement opportunities and looks externally for best practices to increase team productivity
- Makes sure there is no hidden work, ensuring that everything the agile team (e.g., pod) is working on is acknowledged and accounted for in the Product Backlog, protecting the team from distractions
- Owns championing of agile practices and ceremonies
- Provides advice and guidance to the agile team (e.g., pod), as required, regarding best practices in agile
- Ensures the team adheres to ‘Work In Progress Limits’ established by the Product Owner, making sure the team is not working on too many stories/tasks at once and helps them get into a flow of starting and completing work in a predictable manner
- Encourages the Team to look for opportunities to support each other (e.g., focus on higher priority Stories that team members are struggling with)
- Ensures a collaborative culture exists within the Team, promotes team building and ensures team engagement
- Coordinates and facilitates ceremony logistics and ensures all Agile ceremonies/processes are held, and all team members are present and on time, in particular, the daily stand-up meeting
- Ensures engagement of appropriate control partners
- Works across the agile team (e.g., pod) to ensure required assessments and information are accurate and updated to date
- Adheres to enterprise frameworks and methodologies that relate to activities for our business area
- Ensures respective policies/practices are well executed, meet business needs, comply with internal and external requirements, and align with business priorities
- Facilitates work execution that is aligned with established cost, timing, deliverable and scope objectives
- Adheres to enterprise governance to ensure that deliverables meet all the performance, quality and compliance standards and follow the approved methodology
- Works directly with key stakeholders to remove impediments, help manage cross-team dependencies, and represent the teams in ART sync.
- Collaborates with Product Owner(s), Technology Lead(s) and Team(s) on Sprint planning, impediment removal, and Team execution
- Keeps abreast of emerging issues, trends, and evolving regulatory requirements and assesses potential impacts
- Maintains a culture of risk management and control, supported by effective processes in alignment with risk appetite
- Protects the interests of the organization – identify and manage risks and escalate non-standard, high-risk transactions/activities as necessary
- Participates fully as a member of the agile team (e.g., Agile Release Train, Product Group (as applicable), Product Family), supports a positive work environment that promotes service to the business, quality, innovation and teamwork and ensures timely communication of issues/ points of interest
- Provides thought leadership and/ or industry knowledge for agile execution and participates in capability building for the team and business unit
- Keeps current on emerging trends/ developments and grows knowledge of the business and agile-related tools/techniques
- Participate in personal performance management and development activities, including cross-training within own team
- Keeps others informed and up-to-date about the status/progress of committed work and/or all relevant or useful information related to day-to-day activities
- Contributes to team development of skills and capabilities through mentorship of others by sharing knowledge and experiences and leveraging best practices.
- Leads motivates and develops relationships with internal, cross-team within ART and external Agile teams to develop productive working relationships
- Contributes to a fair, positive and equitable environment that supports a diverse workforce
- Acts as a brand ambassador for the bank, both internally and/or externally
- Experienced Scrum Master capable of supporting 1-2 simple to complex pods/agile teams
- Comprehensive knowledge / expertise in own domain/field of specialty and working knowledge of broader related areas and supporting a small team of professionals assigned to agile teams
- Requires full understanding of the client’s processes, procedures and systems
- Can transition to Agile Coach I coaching role with appropriate training
- Uses best practices and knowledge of internal or external business issues to improve the efficiency of own and other teams
- Helps resolve complex problems and can identify viable and often innovative options
- Understands scaling characteristics
- Begins to influence outside of immediate work and/or agile team
- Shares knowledge, information, skills, and subject matter expertise among and across agile teams and ensures the timely communication of issues and encouragement of good working relationships with other functions and teams
- Supports an environment where the team freely escalates challenges; facilitates change through positive reinforcement of successes
- Generally reports to Practice Lead and contributes directly to assigned Journey or Platform
Desired Skill Set:
- 2 years of experience as an IT/Technical Scrum Master
- 2 years of experience in Product Increment Planning
- Hands-on experience with Confluence & Jira
- 2 years of experience in Scaled Agile
- 2 years of experience working with Technical/IT teams
Nice To Have:
- Experience in the Banking / Financial Industry
- Experience in Business Systems Analyst
- Working knowledge of JQL – experience creating dashboards
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