21 Oct
University of Birmingham
United Kingdom
Job description
Summary
The primary responsibility of the role is to coach and facilitate Agile within their team by ensuring the Agile framework is implemented and followed.
They are committed to Agile values and practices, remaining flexible while continually seeking opportunities to improve the team’s workflow.
To be successful the post holder will be knowledgeable in Agile methodologies such as Lean, Scrum, Kanban and DevOps and can educate others on how to implement them.
Agile is characterised by flexible roles and adaptive practices, with this role helping facilitate the team's process by coaching and guiding them through the Agile principles.
The aim is to help the team work effectively and meet their goals.
The role is key to the successful delivery of the team’s work through ensuring that daily scrums, sprint reviews, and planning meetings are effective with a focus on full team engagement as well as managing the interdependencies between teams.
The role will be responsible for supporting both feature planning and refining the backlog. They will undertake proactive escalation of issues of concern or risk related to sprint goals, and work with Stakeholders and Development Managers to address or mitigate such issues.
They will recognise when to move from one stage of a product life cycle to another.
The post holder will anticipate and make decisions to resolve impediments to delivery, champion an inclusive and continuously improving culture, and work with stakeholders to proactively address or mitigate issues enabling the effective delivery by the team.
Main Duties
- Act as a coach, mentor, teacher and leader to Agile teams.
This will include the mentoring / coaching of the team members on Agile practices with the goal of increasing productivity.
- Oversee Agile processes and coach team members on how to effectively apply Agile practices and methodologies. This role is responsible for helping the team understand their current capabilities while applying a continuous improvement approach to making the team more efficient over time.
- Monitor Agile process and meetings to increase team efficiency, advocate for self-organisation, and encourage problem solving.
- Influence and collaborate with others to drive continuous improvement.
- Communicate effectively within the Agile team and to business stakeholders to improve transparency.
- Ensuring that the daily standup, planning sessions, reviews,
and retrospectives are running effectively with a focus on full team engagement.
- Manage interdependencies between teams.
- Partner with the Product Owner to support short and long-term feature planning while keeping the backlog healthy and prepared for execution.
- Shield the teams from external interference to enable optimal productivity.
- Anticipate and address potential or actual impediments to team delivery (cultural barriers, logistic challenges).
- Report on team progress each sprint through defined metrics with a specific focus on working solutions.
- Proactive escalation of issues of concern or risk related to sprint goals, able to work with Stakeholders and Development Managers to address or mitigate such issues.
- Able to work with multiple teams and is focussed on the successful processes and outcomes related to those teams.
- Act as a lead contact for contracted suppliers.
- Is an active member of the community of practice to drive continuous improvement across the discipline.
- Provide the expertise needed to influence and bring on board stakeholders across the wider University helping them to understand how to effectively apply Agile principals.
- Support line managers by contributing to the management of any concerns raised regarding performance within the Agile Team.
- Actively manages equality, diversity and inclusion through monitoring and evaluation and actively challenging unacceptable behaviour.
- Supports the University’s sustainability agenda through resource-efficient working.
- Any other duties commensurate with the grade.
Required Knowledge, Skills, Qualifications, Experience
- Educated to Degree level (or equivalent qualifications) plus significant relevant practical experience where no equivalent qualification is held substantial practical relevant experience and expertise in a series of progressively more demanding roles will be required;
- Evidence of literacy and numeracy, with the ability to write clearly for a variety of audiences, and to produce and analyse source material, information and data.
- Authoritative knowledge of the work practices, processes and procedures relevant to the role, including broader sector / commercial awareness;
- Relevant experience within an Agile Delivery Manager or Scrum Master role / Up-to-date Certified Scrum Master certification (CSM) or the intention to study towards this;
- Good working experience in an Agile environment, preferably in Scrum and / or Kanban;
- Knowledge and in-depth advanced use of JIRA or similar tooling;
- Ability to ensure Agile teams meet their commitments and deliver their goals consistently and efficiently;
- Experience of working with a multitude of stakeholders / customers in the context of organisation change and agile delivery;
- An inquisitive personality that is always looking for continuous improvement opportunities including deepening knowledge around topics such as DevOps, scaled agile, and agile organisations;
- Strong mentoring and leadership skills;
- Skilled in conflict resolution techniques dealing with disagreements early and positively;
- Experience working across multiple creative, technical, software, or business unit teams to develop software solutions;
- Ability to understand business and technology concepts quickly and able to facilitate those conversations;
- Evidence of literacy and numeracy;
- Experience of championing Equality, Diversity and Inclusion in own work area;
- Ability to monitor and evaluate the extent to which equality and diversity legislation, policies, procedures are applied;
- Ability to identify issues with the potential to impact on protected groups and take appropriate action.
Please remember to attach your current CV / Resume to your online application