Agile Coach

Job Opportunity: Agile Coach

Genesis Consulting has an immediate opportunity for an experienced, forward thinking Agile Coach with a passion for growth and business transformation for a Federal client in the Washington, DC area. Join our team and work on challenging, complex solutions that are driving innovation and technology advancement in the local community. Work with teams that are rapidly delivering value to their customers leveraging concepts of Lean, Agile, Kanban and SAFe. Our clients are some of the world's leading companies and the candidate will be a part of challenging projects to build and support technical solutions for their needs.

Duties and Responsibilities: The Agile Coach is responsible for ensuring that the Agile development practices are followed and adjusted as required. The Agile Coach works with the teams and the organization to establish and adapt to Agile practices that help to ensure high quality results and a high level of customer satisfaction. Coaches may be required to work at the team level to ensure that delivery teams are adopting agile and performing effectively; at the portfolio or program level, to help agencies to establish the appropriate processes for managing a portfolio of work in an agile way; at the organization level, to drive strategic change across the organization and ensure that adoption of agile techniques is embedded from the most senior levels of the organization; or across all levels to ensure that organizations adopt a pragmatic approach to the way in which they govern delivery and continuous improvement of digital services. Duties include but may not be limited to:

• Embedding an agile culture using techniques from a wide range of agile and lean methodologies and frameworks, but be methodology agnostic
• Helping to create an open and trust-based environment, which enables a focus on delivery and facilitates continuous improvement
• Assessing the culture of a team or organization and delivery processes in place to identify improvements and facilitate these improvements with the right type of support
• Showcasing relevant tools and techniques such as coaching, advising, workshops, and mentoring
• Engaging with stakeholders at all levels of the organization
• Developing clear lines of escalation, in agreement with senior managers
• Ensuring any stakeholder can easily find out an accurate and current project or program status, without disruption to delivery
• Working effectively with other suppliers and agencies
• Applying best tools and techniques to team roles, behaviors, structure and culture, agile ceremonies and practices, knowledge transfer and sharing, program management, cross-team coordination, and overall governance of digital service delivery
• Ensuring key metrics and requirements that support the team and delivery are well defined and maintained
• Equipping staff with the ability to coach others
• If organization level, providing executive coaching on the fundamental considerations of digital service delivery design
• Improving continuous integration and delivery while enabling the production of working quality software
• Providing services to develop, document and implement agile practices that are situationally appropriate
• Providing mentorship and education as well as developing/delivering guidance and instructions documentation to enable program personnel in defining the organization's Agile processes
• Leading release planning activities, including developing capability maps, feature maps, and story maps that support rapid releases of minimum viable products and incremental delivery of enhancements
• Leading retrospectives and process improvement efforts to improve overall throughput and decrease lead time from prioritization to delivery/release
• Supporting senior decision-makers with plans, reports, metrics, analyses, and recommendations
• Leading the planning for agile transformation and coaching activities, including schedules and coaching implementation plans that incorporate the Coaches' approach of guidance, instruction, and direction provided to ensure implementation and sustainment of the Agile approach
• Delivering workshops and training as required on topics such as Lean, Agile, DevSecOps, Lean UX, Design Thinking, and related topics
• Reviewing current business practices, principles and processes and conducting business gap analysis on programs to define current 'as-is' business practices and outline path toward 'to-be' agile practices
• Assisting program personnel in applying and adapting agile processes throughout the programs, identifying and reporting risks and issues that constrain programs and agile teams from effectively and quickly delivering business value, and leading coaching meetings with branch and division managers to support business improvement practices within the organization

Requirements Minimum Qualifications/Experience: 5-10+ years of IT experience and/or complex systems development; 5+ years' experience using Agile principles, practices, and methodologies such as Scrum, XP, Lean, SAFe on technical projects 5+ years of progressive accomplishment managing and implementing large, complex information systems 5+ years in an agile delivery leadership, management, or coaching role Proven leadership ability in dynamic agile environment working with executive and senior-level stakeholders Impeccable professionalism and strong communication skills Humble and results-oriented servant leader with team-first mentality who follows through on commitments Background in process improvement, business process reengineering, and Comfortable leading and facilitating backlog refinement, release planning, retrospective, demos, and project status meetings Experience planning strategic initiatives including developing operating models, plans, associated communications and graphics, and related supporting documentation Comfortable consulting with and coaching senior management and executives Real-world experience that demonstrates use of advanced practices and principles of Scrum and successful guidance/coaching of organizations through agile transformation challenges Experience in leadership coaching, organizational transformation, and Agile practices at the teams (Program and below) and at the enterprise level Experience with assisting leadership and working-level team members with removing barriers and embracing transformation by assisting each organization to customize its own path, approach and solutions to becoming Agile Leading Agile transformation by leveraging best practices Experience guiding Agile transformation and execution of Agile lifecycle via Agile application lifecycle management tools Experience in coordinating large solutions Minimum Education: Bachelor's Degree and 5-10+ years' experience, or a Master's Degree Required Certifications: Must hold an Agile certification such as ICAgile, PMI, CSM, SAFe, etc. SAFe Certification Preferred Additional SAFe Certifications Preferred Other: Must be US Citizen Willingness to be on-site in New Carrollton (Lanham), Maryland Willingness to travel and/or telecommute on occasion depending on customer needs