Scrum Master

Job Summary

The Scrum Master role is critical to the adoption, implementation and maintenance of Agile processes, principles, and practices. The Scrum Master works closely with multiple teams, acting as servant leader by ensuring clear communication and helping the team reach its goal by focusing on transparency, predictability, and quality to drive continuous improvement. This individual will lead by example, is knowledgeable about Agile methodology, and is driven to promote an environment of experimentation, innovation, and continuous improvement.

Key Responsibilities

• Serves as scrum master for two or more teams.

• Facilitates discussions of complex, high value IT delivery projects.

• Works closely with team to identify and act on opportunities for to improve team execution and process efficiency.

• Works closely with product owners and other team members to ensure vision, roadmaps and personas are well defined, dependencies are understood and priorities are adhered to.

• Coaches internal stakeholders in best ways to interact with assigned teams.

• Proactively identifies impediments and works to remove them by communicating with team members, stakeholders, or leadership, escalating if required.

• Acts as an advocate for Agile and Scrum methodology.

• Acts as mentor/coach to leadership, Agile team members, and stakeholders.

• Promotes and leads continuous improvement initiatives across the organization, including but not limited to communities of practice, hackathons, improvement communities and design sprints.

• Drive delivery and continuous improvement by applying metrics to identify areas of improvement.

• Promotes Change Management - Scaling Agile, release planning and dependency management.

• Participates in special projects and performs other duties as assigned.

Competencies

Planning

• Develop work plans, establish timelines, and set goals for assigned work including special projects or assignments.

• Assign resources as needed.

• Meet commitments on deadlines.

Communication

• Communicate project or assignment results and recommendations to all levels, internally and externally.

Cost Management

• Drive innovation by improving existing business processes and developing new processes.

• Perform work thoroughly in a cost-efficient manner and at a high productivity level.

• Responsible for developing and accountable for project budgets.

Business Controls and Policies

• Comply with all corporate policies and procedures.

• Report any breakdown in controls to management.

• Conduct all activities in a safe manner.

• Ensure all the above are followed by assigned project team members.

People Management

• Does not generally have people management responsibility but may lead or direct special projects.

• May assist with the review and evaluation of personnel.

Education

4 Year / Bachelors Degree in a related field, or the equivalent education and/or experience.

Certifications, Licenses, and Designations

First level Scrum Master certification (PSM 1, CSM)

Experience

5 Years of relevant and progressive experience as a Scrum Master for a software development team that is diligently following Scrum practices.

6 Years membership in a high functioning Scrum team, in any role

8 Years working in an enterprise IT environment

Other

• Effective in servant leadership, facilitation, situational awareness, conflict resolution, continual improvement, empowerment, and increasing transparency

• Knowledge of numerous well documented patterns and techniques for implementing Scrum (example: numerous Burndown techniques, numerous Retrospective formats, handling bugs, Spikes, etc.)

• Excellent mentoring skills

• A good sense of humor and a desire to have fun in a professional environment

• Prefer experience being on multiple Scrum teams in a variety of different contexts (different team sizes, different organizations, different cultures, co-located vs. distributed, etc.)

• Track record of continued and recent education in Scrum, including training, conferences, user groups, self-study, etc.

• Knowledge or experience with techniques such as Continuous Integration, Continuous Testing, Continuous Deployment, Automated Testing, Agile Games