Location: WFH – Toronto
Contract Duration: 4 months
Story Behind the Need
• Project Summary : The ScrumMaster is responsible for driving team effectiveness by identifying and removing impediments, supporting the team, and encouraging practices in accordance with agile principles. The ScrumMaster is empowered to introduce better ways to drive team productivity. They guide the team by embodying agile values, facilitating ceremonies and supporting a culture of continuous improvement and shared practices. The incumbent will actively participate in developing and maintaining a high performing, self-organizing team.
Job Responsibilities:
1. As a ScrumMaster you will ensure the team enacts the agile principles, values and framework:
– Coach the development team and help lead and insure the agile mindset is fully adopted and understood
– Inculcate core agile values of focus, commitment, respect, openness and courage into the teams ground rules through leading by example
– Assess and coach the team to higher levels of performance, tracking acceleration metrics
– Guide the development team on how to integrate agile ceremonies and values into daily work
– Encourage an environment where open communication and collaborative problem solving can pave the way for faster removal of any impediments and where the impact of mistakes can be minimized through early detection, making them into learning opportunities
– Engage with the team and technical SMEs to identify technical debt risks and develop approaches to remediate.
2. Implement and promote use of agile methodology within the team:
– Facilitate agile ceremonies including iteration planning, iteration review, retrospectives, and daily standups
– Create a forum for discussing vision, goals, and Product Backlog items amongst the team – Apply techniques for effective workflow visualization and management (e.g. Kanban or Scrum Boards) – Identify, manage, and help mitigate issues and risks, with particular emphasis on timely removal of impediments for the team and/or directing obstacles to appropriate owners for quick resolution- Facilitate identifying and enacting improvement strategies to increase the productivity of the team and quality of deliverables
– Ensure team execution and delivery to committed sprint work- maintaining the momentum of the initiative and upholding a sustainable pace of delivery; track agile metrics to provide statistical proof of momentum and sustainability
– Understand long-term product planning/ roadmap and help inform development teams to create quicker gains for the benefit of the end user
– Ensure that proper lightweight documentation (captured in artifacts such as program vision statement, program backlog, program roadmap, release plan, sprint backlog, and increments) is prioritized and added to the teams backlog of work
– Compliance with bank policies and procedures for project delivery
– Develop and nurture strong partnering relationships with Product Owner/Business Sponsor and stakeholders:
– Develop strong partnership with the Product Owner to gain strong understanding of objectives, sustain open dialogue to manage product backlog efficiently
– Influence a wide range of stakeholders (business, compliance, Legal, IT, etc.) to remove impediments and maximize team output- Support and educate the Product Owner on agile principles and practices to preserve the team from external pressures which may inhibit its productivity
– Contribute to building organizational capability and expertise on agile adoption:- Lead and coach the organization in its agile adoption, sharing successes, artifacts, and experience to accelerate transition to new delivery models
Qualifications of Must have Skills:
1. 2-5 years of prior work experience as a Scrum Master within IT
2. Scrum Master experience with a strong understanding of agile project management principles and practices
3. Preferable computer science or computer engineering background
4. Prior work experience applying techniques for effective workflow visualization and management (e.g. Kanban or Scrum Boards) – Able to Identify, manage, and help mitigate issues and risks, and derive to appropriate resolutions techniques.
Nice to have Skills:
1. Certifications- Individual may have ScrumMaster Certification (CSM)
2. Prior FI or Banking experience
Education- Bachelors Degree in computer engineering, business, Information sciences or other related field