Sr Agile Coach / McLean VA, 6+ Months Contract

Enterprise Agile Coach

Client is building a culture based on modern software delivery practices to support the secondary mortgage market through rapid technology and best practice innovation.

Enterprise Agile Practice, the Agile Coach is embedded within the organization to provide thought leadership on transformation across initiatives along with other Team Coaches and Scrum Masters on Agile Product Development, Scaling Agile Teams/Programs, DevOps Implementations, Servant Leadership, and modeling behaviors to enable teams to deliver high value results against the most complex business and technology initiatives. Responsibilities include:

• Delivery of consulting, coaching, mentorship, facilitation, and training at the line of business, portfolio, program, and team levels in an emerging Agile Product Delivery practicing Scrum/Kanban at team and Scaling teams to Program levels.
• Acting as a collaborative partner and coach, participate in real-time to provide advice or assistance to teams and team members as they tackle and overcome difficult challenges and enabling people to fulfill their respective Agile responsibilities, including Scrum Master, Product Owner, and RTEs.
• Driving continuous improvement through examples and practical experience, taught in a non-academic delivery style that encourages the adoption of agile technical practices, improving execution, communication and concurrently building group skills and capabilities.
• Coaching Agile engineering best practices such as Test-Driven Development (TDD), DevOps, Continuous Integration (CI) and Test Automation
• Foster a collaborative, yet disciplined culture within the Agile team and help them embrace the 'whole team' concept
• Assess the Agile maturity and skill-growth for IT Lines of Business, programs, teams and provide training, coaching and feedback as required
• Encourage the consistent use of relevant metrics that help teams see how they are doing
• Ensure that your Coaching, practices and responses are consistent across the teams (and other Coaches) and therefore aligned with the Enterprise Agile Transformation Office
• Identify Agile people, process and technology issues and communicate to leadership and the Enterprise Agile Transformation Office, as necessary
• Work peer-to-peer with a team of other experienced Agile Coaches to create consistency between key coaching messages and to improve coordination between Agile teams

Required Skills / Qualifications

• Bachelor's Degree preferably in Information Science/Technology, Business, Computer Science or equivalent
• 8+ years of direct experience in one or more aspects of Information Technology (Software design/ development, IT Architecture, Technology or Product Owner/Management, Business Analysis Software Testing and Quality Assurance)
• 1+ years of explicit experience as a Program Level Agile Coach supporting large Program(s) / Agile Release Train(s) with multiple Agile/Product Development Teams
• 2+ years of explicit experience as a Team Level Agile Coach for Agile/Product Development Teams
• 2+ years of explicit experience on standing up Agile/Product Development Teams, focused on trainings, coaching and enabling team and key roles on their roles and responsibilities.
• 3+ years of explicit experience as a Scrum Coach (Scrum Master), Product Owner or in a Leadership role with Agile/Product Development Teams
• 1+ years of hands-on experience coaching, implementing, and enabling transformation of Agile / Product Development Teams to DevOps Teams, including use of CICD and Automation/Continuous Testing.
• Hands-on Experience implementing and delivering on improvement objectives for Agile/Product Development Teams and/or Programs / Agile Release Train(s)
• Hands-on Experience scaling Agile/Product Development Teams from individual teams in Program/Agile Release Trains.
• Hands-on experience working on ALM / Workflow Management tools such as JIRA, Rally, Version One
• Hands-on experience implementing Test-Driven Development (TDD), Behavior-Driven Development (BDD)
• Hands-on experience and deep understanding of flow-based metrics such as Cumulative Flow Diagrams, Lead Time Distribution, Establishing WIP limits, etc.
• Hands-on Experience implementing flow-based concepts/ideas/experiments in teams to help balance work-item demand with team capacity, improving lead time, cycle time and throughput
• Ability to operate independently within established methodologies, procedures, and guidelines
• Ability to thrive in a highly ambiguous, fast paced environment with shifting priorities
• Ability to establish immediate credibility with clients, build consensus, and achieve goals through influence
• Strong problem-solving skills and ability to identify and drive towards consensus
• Mastery in Facilitation skills, including coaching to Scrum of Scrums, Product Owner Sync, Inspect and Adapt Workshops
• Effective Coaching and Mentoring skills, including Program/Agile Release Train and Agile/Product Development Team level roles
• Proven ability to drive results, including through cross functional teams and other non-traditional or matrixed reporting structures
• Proven ability to collaborate, negotiate and positively influence management and staff across all levels of the organization
• Excellent oral and written communication skills
• Foster a culture of Continuous Improvement
• Ability to handle stressful situations in a calm, objective, and professional manner
• At least one of Certified Scrum Master (CSM) or Advanced Certified Scrum Master (ACSM) or SAFe Scrum Master or Agile Certified Scrum Coach (PMI-ACP) certifications

Preferred Skills:

• 1+ years of hands-on experience standing up transformation teams
• Background leading and supporting practical Agile Transformation activities and Organizational Change
• 1+ years working as a Release Train Engineer supporting multiple Agile/Product Development Teams within a Program / Agile Release Trains
• 1+ years of hands-on experience coaching and instilling Lean/Design Thinking and Customer Centricity, including Problem Exploration, Experimentation, Prototyping, developing Test & Learn mindset to enable faster feedback loops with the end user and customers
• 2+ years of experience with Agile Engineering (DevOps) tools such as Git, Cucumber, Selenium, Jenkins, Ansible, Kubernetes and Docker
• Certified Scrum Professional (CSP) or Agile Coach certifications (ICP-ATF, ICP-Client) or equivalent
• SPC certification and experience with Scaled Agile Framework
• Product Management and Lean/Design thinking /LUMA certifications
• Hands-on experience with Atlassian Suite tool preferred (JIRA, Confluence, Bitbucket)
• Experience working in financial and mortgage industries
• Experience working in variety of backgrounds/industries/corporations.
• Master's Degree in Business Administration, IT Management or similar