Purpose of Job

 

The Principal, Scrum Master supports application development activities across cross-functional teams in coordination with business and technical roles, and third party providers to deliver high quality products by adopting agile values, principles and practices.

 

Accountabilities & Responsibilities

 

• Responsible for building well-oiled delivery machine, continually feeding it User Stories, and “fine tuning the machine”
• Organiser of Sprint / Increment ceremonies such as: stand-ups, estimation sessions, backlog refinement and prioritisation, showcases and retrospectives
• Work closely with Product Owners, Business Analysts, Quality Analysts, Experience Design and tech team members to ensure the timely creation and refinement of user stories according to INVEST principles
• Ensure the teams are able to respond effectively to changing requirements, bringing an understanding of how scope changes affect the size and complexity of teams’ backlogs and delivery timescales
• Responsible for ensuring the estimation of User Stories in current and next Sprint in alignment with the agreed Definition of Ready
• Experience in estimation techniques, for example the use of Story Points, T-Shirt sizes, Cycle Time to establish repeatable allows for release/project planning and reporting (see below)
• Ensures that the correct User Stories are in the agreed Sprint (on a physical Story Wall and/or via the designated EBRD Agile enterprise toolsets, based on priorities
• Responsible for guiding the team to remove blockers through empowerment and accountability. Actively work to remove blockers and mitigate their impact on team productivity and impact on delivery
• Responsible for monitoring team health, velocity, capacity and availability of team members
• Ensures that the team is focused on the highest priorities by working closely with the Software Delivery Manager and Product Owner
• Ensures that teams members maintain backlogs and User Story statuses up to date in physical and/or electronically
• Ensures a trusting and safe environment is developed where problems can be raised without fear of blame, retribution, or being judged, with an emphasis on continuous improvement and problem solving
• Coaches project team members (including Product Owner) to understand Agile values, principles, practices, self-organisation, cross-functionality and project delivery
• Works collaboratively with stakeholders and Product Team members to facilitate and positively influence solution development and sustainable operations
• Ensures that key dependencies are understood and managed
• Does whatever is necessary to help the teams and programmes deliver successful outcomes in line with constraints and challenges set.
• Organises recruitment of contract and third party resource where necessary.

 

Knowledge, Skills, Experience & Qualifications

Essential

• Scrum Master experience running multiple software development teams.
• Development and software engineering knowledge and experience will be an advantage.
• Demonstrable evidence of facilitation, situational awareness, conflict resolution, continual improvement, empowerment, and increasing transparency.
• Knowledge of numerous well documented patterns and techniques for filling in the intentional gaps left in the Scrum approach (example: numerous Burndown/Burn Up techniques, numerous Retrospective formats, handling issues/bugs)
• Experience of Agile Enterprise toolsets, i.e. AzureDevOps, JIRA, Confluence.
• Experience of being on multiple Scrum teams in a variety of different contexts (different team sizes, different organizations, different cultures, co-located vs. distributed)
• Track record of continued and recent education in Scrum, including training, conferences, user groups, self-study, etc.
• Knowledge of other agile delivery approaches, such as XP, Kanban, LeSS, SAFe, etc.
• Knowledge and experience with widely successful Agile and Lean techniques: User Stories and story maps, BDD, TDD, Continuous Integration, Continuous Testing, Pair programming, Agile Testing, Innovation Games, etc.
• Experience of delivering software in a formal regime using source control management and controlled gates with relevant artefacts to support design, quality and support.
• Experience of working in a mid-sized corporate environment, successfully aligning solutions appropriately with wider roadmaps, architecture and other initiatives
• Previous experience as a collaborative leader
• Excellent communication and mentoring skills

Must be “self-motivated”, efficient and innovative