Position Overview HAI Group is looking for a senior scrum master who combines strategic thinking with close team engagement, is an effective influencer and enjoys being integral in continuous improvement efforts. The senior scrum master serves as a coach with a focus on mindset and behaviors to help teams achieve increasing levels of success. The senior scrum master should be able to work upward and across teams to build rapport and partner with others to solve common problems. This position requires the senior scrum master to bring knowledge of Agile principles and ceremonies, experiences in collaboration across complex organizations, removing impediments, and ensuring team progress towards their missions and deliverables. The individual will be part of an IT team supporting a multi-value stream environment and highly visible strategic agenda for the organization. This senior scrum master embodies the departments core values, is team oriented, collaborates, and leads with excellence and innovation. This requires the senior scrum master to have high level of personal accountability, as evidenced by their commitment, resilience, ownership, and mindset toward continuous learning. Essential Functions
- Builds team collaboration and commitment towards achieving sprint objectives and viewing team needs above everything else
- Protects the team from outside influences to ensure the team remains focused on committed priorities
- Removes impediments, and foster an environment for high-performing team dynamics, continuous flow, and relentless improvement
- Performs evaluations of team progress, pain points, successes and new steps to guide teams in progressive improvements
- Effectively facilitates Planning and Sprint ceremonies to encourage team accountability, self-organization, and empowerment
- Facilitates Retrospectives which generate new ideas for process improvement
- Integral contributing member and active participant of Lean Agile Center of Excellence (LACE)
- Focuses on issues of diverse scope where analysis of situation or data requires an in-depth evaluation of variable factors
- Maintains effective information radiators that aid transparency, and encourage clear communication between the development team, the Product Owner, stakeholders and leadership
- Partners with SAFe POPM and development to ensure the backlog is prioritized based on business value and ready for the teams, manage progress and facilitate release planning
- Directly contributes to the success of the team in feature delivery and achieving commitments
- Must be comfortable communicating with development teams, Product Owners, Product Management, and Senior Management
- Meticulously tracks action items and drives them to closure
- Prepares project status reports, burn down, and provide visibility to management, project sponsors and project stakeholders on overall progress, impediments & mitigation plans
- Exhibits accountability for the overall planning, coordination, execution, and delivery of value for the agile team
- Supports IT Teams and Management to execute strategic agendas.
- Identifies and remediates risks, issues and dependencies
- Engages in Self learning and develops expertise in Agile practices while also educating the team on methods beyond Scrum, such as SAFe, Team Kanban, Flow, Built-in Quality to build high performing teams
- Networks with senior internal and external personnel in own area of expertise
- Self-motivated and able to work independently with day-to-day work and general instructions on new assignments
- Participates in a variety of learning opportunities to maintain knowledge of current and emerging developments/trends
Knowledge, Skills, Abilities:Knowledge
- Demonstrated experience with Scrum in addition to extensive knowledge of other Agile development approaches and practices like SAFe, Kanban , XP, etc
- Proficient with Agile Management tools; JIRA and Confluence preferred
- Well versed with Agile metrics & techniques to assess sprint health: Burn Down Metrics, Velocity, WSJF
- Good knowledge of software engineering processes and procedures including fundamentals of iterative and incremental development
- Demonstrates good judgment in selecting methods and techniques for obtaining solutions
- Experience in Insurance domain is helpful desirable
- MS Office applications: Excel, MS Project, Visio, Word, and PowerPoint
Skills and Talents
- Ability to support and facilitates generally 2-3 scrum teams and ensures that the Scaled Agile guiding principles are understood, utilized, and practiced
- Excellent interpersonal skills - ability to work with diverse personality types and distributed team Members across time zones
- Ability to provide effective coaching and constructive feedback to teams/individuals as well as influencing the team
- Strong analytical, oral and written communication, presentation skills
- Ability to navigate through ambiguity, set direction, and influence those not under direct line of management
- Possess solid skills for Active Listening, Consultative Skills and Communication Skills- written, verbal
- Excellent relationship management, communication, teamwork, and influence skills
Job Requirements
- Requires a minimum of 5 years of related experience with a bachelor's degree in related field; or 3 years and a Master's degree; or a PhD without experience; or equivalent work experience.
- Demonstrated experience working as a seasoned Scrum Master and guiding multiple teams with an agile framework utilizing Scrum Processes and at least two (2) years organizing, planning and executing large-scale projects
- Industry certifications such as Certified Scrum Master (CSM), SAFe Scrum Master (SSM), or SAFe Advanced Scrum Master (SASM) Or SAFe Agilist is highly desired
Work environment & Physical Demands
- Inside climate-controlled office building
- Ability to lift 25lbs