Senior Scrum Master

Senior Scrum Master

Location: Richfield MN Duration: 5 Months (with long term possibility)

Embrace the agile mindset, advocate and champion agile across the Technology organization by challenging, coaching, and guiding teams using agile and lean principles. Provide creative solutions to agile transformation issues: resistance to change, limited resources, conflicting priorities, lack of accountability. Ability to utilize agile methods in a flexible manner that often includes traditional project management which can include hard deadlines/fixed dates at times. Understand the various agile frameworks, events and artifacts (i.e. scrum, Kanban), where they are fit for purpose and how to implement/apply with new and existing teams. Manage and facilitate team ceremonies including quarterly product planning, product owner syncs, backlog grooming, estimating and sizing efforts, release planning, sprint planning, standups and retrospectives. Facilitate and coach to draft, track progress and continuously improve on Objective and Key Results (OKRs). Coach teams and leaders in agile principles and practices, roles and responsibilities, and frameworks. Foster a continuous improvement environment in order to build high-performing, agile teams. Track and report on metrics for teams to measure progress, effectiveness of agile adoption, and agile maturity of the teams. Guide product management teams in their role, defining MVP's, developing product charters, product community maps, product roadmaps and release plans, story mapping, writing stories and backlog prioritization and management. Train and mentor other scrum masters on the role of the scrum master and build communities of practice for scrum masters to share, learn and grow.

Basic Qualifications: Bachelor's degree in computer science or related field, or equivalent work experience. Three or more years of experience in Agile technology delivery. Five or more years of experience in Software Delivery Life Cycle (SDLC) teams. Three or more years of experience as a Scrum Master.

Preferred Skills/Experience: Strong knowledge of Agile values, principles and practices and capacity to understand specific needs or requirements to apply skills/knowledge. Certified Scrum Master (CSM) certification a plus. Experience as a Scrum Master managing multiple teams simultaneously. Knowledge of scrum, Kanban, Lean, XP, and other Agile frameworks Comfort with agile tools such as JIRA, Confluence, MURAL. Experience with distributed teams, in multiple time zones. Demonstrated ability to partner and communicate effectively with non-technical team members, resolving contending or contradictory objectives, and unifying disparate ideas into a homogenized solution. Possess the ability to influence others, implement change, and standardize processes in a complex business environment. A passion for mentoring and growing the potential of others. Great teammate - should be ready to go beyond to help the immediate team and do not be averse to not shy away from asking for help if needed. Eagerness to learn new technologies and bring new ideas to the table. Demonstrated growth mindset. Positive attitude and ability to inspire the team toward continuous improvement. Experience with outcomes-based planning and delivery (i.e., OKR). Ability to partner with Product, Tech, UX and Data disciplines. Experience with Design Sprints and/or Product Discovery tactics. Direct experience with big room planning and cross-team coordination. Understanding of basic fundamentals of iterative and incremental development. Experience successfully delivering solutions on an aggressive schedule. Excellent presentation skills. Ability to work in ambiguity and iterate to a solution – can estimate and solve basic business problems without explicit direction. Creative, flexible, and willing to continuously change, evolve, and improve software development processes. Demonstrated technical leadership and direction. Demonstrated program-level collaboration and system architecture understanding. Strong communication, collaboration, leadership, conflict resolution, budgeting and time management skills. Experience in business analysis, product management or product development.