Lead Scrum Master

Lead Scrum Master

Purpose: Leads like teams/squads toward delivery of value while managing risk.

PLANNING, CONTROL AND DELIVERY

• Responsible for using Agile principles to design, with the team, the work plan. Drives alignment on scope and work schedule within the team and across dependent teams as needed. Accountable for ensuring the process is adhered to.
• Facilitates work intake within team or teams. Ensures prioritization conversations are based on facts and influences team-level trade-offs where capacity is constrained.
• Responsible for working with teams and across teams to identify, manage and communicate dependencies that may impact timely business value delivery.
• Responsible for working with the team to assess delivery risk and implement counter-measures in order to reduce negative impacts to business value delivery.
• Responsible for assessing impacts of changes to program scope and priorities on team(s). Facilitates team change process and balances team sprint stability against change priority.
• Identifies the tools and resources the teams need to perform work effectively. Tracks resource pool/skills and communicates resource gaps/requirements to ensure team/output stability. Responsible for ensuring trade-off conversations occur where resource capacity is constrained.

BUSINESS INSIGHTS AND ORGANIZATIONAL EFFECTIVENESS

• Advanced Agile mindset. Responsible for facilitating cross-functional team and multi-team ceremonies. Performs basic Agile training and brings new ideas to the team. Expected to engage the support of organizational agile coaching where needed.
• Fluent with team operational metrics. Responsible for measuring meaningful metrics. Able to present and interpret team's data and results to identify issues and remove team impediments.
• Responsible for driving continuous process improvement in the team's value stream and champions a continuous improvement mindset and culture.
• Demonstrates and operates with an Agile mindset, committing to the role of developing their team's Agile capabilities that lead to high performance.
• Highly knowledgeable in a particular team(s) area. Responsible for quickly ramping up with new teams and stakeholders to existing team processes.

COMMUNICATION AND PARTNERSHIPS

• Responsible for effectively communicating the right level of information about the team's progress and processes at the right time to all business partners and stakeholders.
• Demonstrated ability to communicate and present complex ideas in a concise manner with confidence and clarity at the manager level.
• Strong understanding and grasp of team structure to facilitate work and ensure collaboration of stakeholders and partners.
• Serves as a neutral arbitrator between roles, individuals and teams during conflict. Anchors on Agile principles and values as well as demonstrate ability to coach teams toward resolution resulting in shared purpose and positive outcomes.
• Responsible for facilitating all team ceremonies (planning, refinement, retrospectives) and keeping teams focused on achieving their goals and objectives.

DEMONSTRATED EXPERTISE AND CAPABILITIES

• Serves as an advanced-level resource for Agile thinking and process. Responsible for teaching and advancing the Agile capabilities of the team.
• Responsible for cultivating diverse teams. Builds a culture of inclusion across the organization.
• Able to drive results and influence others towards a business objective regardless of reporting structure.
• Competent at leading and ramping-up undefined teams from inception and facilitating team inter-dependency communications.
• Has successfully instilled an Agile mindset and team practices for one or more teams requiring some integration across systems, and potentially geographies, with diverse stakeholders.
• Through collaboration with product and engineering team members, able to unearth and understand technical risks and guide toward mitigation/resolution. Ideally has written code or has taken training in the computer science field.
• Excels at successfully working with team members to own and solve team level problems. Builds team alignment by asking concise questions that focus on outcomes that steer teams towards collective solutioning.