Sr Scrum Master

Description: The Senior Scrum Master has primary responsibility of facilitating the formation, learning and growth of multiple cross-functional delivery teams in developing a Lean/Agile mindset, adopting, and continuously improving practices in their context, and guiding teams and leaders to enable the effective flow of delivery across the end-to-end value stream. As a servant-leader, the Senior Scrum Master plays a key role in planning, facilitation, supporting teams, removing impediments, providing team coaching and mentorship, visualizing the Lean value stream to optimize for flow, and working with other Lean/Agile practitioners to exchange learnings at scale.



Primary Responsibilities and Essential Functions:

• Facilitate contextual adoption of the Scrum Framework, including daily scrum, sprint planning, backlog refinement, sprint reviews & retrospectives, and other related team and intra-team meetings.
• Facilitate contextual adoption of Lean Thinking, including visualization and continuous, optimization of delivery flow using the Kanban Method.
• Facilitate and participate in scaled events, including cross-team planning, delivery synchronization, and systems-level inspect & adapt.
• Foster team collaboration and proactive, open communication.
• Encourage an experimental and fail-fast & learn mindset.
• Sustain and promote usage of information radiators for the teams and broader organization.
• Collect and share transparent team metrics with teams, recommend new metrics for the team's context, and foster continuous improvement conversations using metrics.
• Prepare and facilitate quarterly, release, and sprint planning with the product owner and the team.
• Guide Feature and Story-level refinement to the Definition of "Ready" in preparation for the next quarter and upcoming sprints.
• Work with the team and Product Owner/Managers to maintain a healthy backlog and rolling short and mid-term planning for upcoming releases.
• ble to put ego to the side and the "desire to control" the team by teaching and mentoring increasing levels of self-organizing behavior.
• Engage the organization to remove impediments to the team's ability to perform by working closely with the team and stakeholders, including product owners/managers, leadership, and other teams.
• Support communication of delivery progress and obstacles with a wide variety of stakeholders; coach product owners/managers to play an active role in stakeholder engagement.
• Facilitate cross-team orchestration, tracking and following up with internal and external.
• Works with team to co-create and refine team working agreement, definition of "ready", and definition of "done."
• Encourages brainstorming, creative thinking, open minds, equal voice, and perspective sharing. Encourages the team to be confident and courageous, thinking outside the box.
• Coaches the team on Lean, Agile, and Scrum principles with a goal of continuous improvement. Able to subtly observe team dynamics, recognize strengths and growth opportunities of individual team members and her/himself, and invite team members into coaching conversations to inspire learning and growth.
• Create a fun, open, and learning environment, experimenting with various methods to improve and grow.

Qualifications:

• BA/BS degree in related field and 4 years of related experience; master's with 2 years' experience; or an equivalent combination of education and work-related experience.
• 4 years' experience applying both the Scrum Framework and Kanban Method in growing high performing teams as a fulltime practitioner.
• Experience as a Scrum Master and/or Kanban Coach at an organization that is committed to Lean-Agile as its core approach for delivering business value.
• Experience working with Lean/Agile teams in the context of cloud infrastructure and DevOps.
• Experience working with teams applying test automation, continuous integration, and continuous delivery capabilities to achieve delivery speed and operational stability.
• Experience using Lean/Agile collaboration tools like Rally, VersionOne, Jir

Desirable:

• Experience influencing positive and impactful change in organizations working towards Lean/Agile adoption, learning, and growth.
• Experience and core values are our top selection criteria; however, certifications help represent one's desire to build knowledge. Some certifications to be considered include Lean Kanban University's TKP, Scrum.org's PSM, Scrum Alliance's CSM/A-CSM, CSP-SM, SAFe Agilist (SA), SAFe Scrum Master (SSM)
• Willing and able to provide and receive constructive feedback and advice with a growth mindset.
• Excellent written, verbal, and interpersonal communication skills, particularly in a virtual video and remote environments using tools such as Microsoft Teams, Slack, Zoom, MURAL, Trello, or other collaboration tools.
• Manages time extremely well, can quickly sense when an issue needs to be discussed or triaged.
• bility to dive into the details when applicable, ask probing questions with curiosity, and sense when and how to take action to enable the team's growth.

Top 5 Must Haves:

• ble to put ego to the side and the "desire to control" the team by teaching and mentoring increasing levels of self-organizing behavior.
• Facilitate contextual adoption of the Scrum Framework, including daily scrum, sprint planning, backlog refinement, sprint reviews & retrospectives, and other related team and intra-team meetings.
• Facilitate contextual adoption of Lean Thinking, including visualization and continuous, optimization of delivery flow using the Kanban Method.
• Facilitate cross-team orchestration, tracking and following up with internal and external.
• Works with team to co-create and refine team working agreement, definition of "ready", and definition of "done."