Scrum Master

About the Role

The Scrum Master is a seasoned subject matter expert, responsible for guiding and coaching teams in the use of Scrum / Agile practices. This role boosts team effectiveness by managing key projects, championing cross-team alignment, and operationalizing processes to ensure development teams hum effectively. The Scrum Master resolves impediments, monitors, and controls scrum processes and meetings.

Key Responsibilities

• Fosters a self-organizing and empowered environment for teams to deliver high-quality products on time and within budget.
• Facilitates and leads Scrum ceremonies, including sprint planning, daily stand-ups, sprint reviews, and retrospectives.
• Ensures teams adhere to the Scrum framework, follows agile best practices, and utilizes appropriate tools and metrics to track progress, identify bottlenecks, and drive continuous improvement.
• Fosters effective communication and collaboration between cross-functional teams, product owners, and stakeholders.
• Acts as a bridge between technical and non-technical stakeholders, ensuring a shared understanding of project goals, priorities, and timelines.
• Proactively addresses conflicts or challenges hindering team performance and delivery.
• Collaboratively identifies and synchronizes project interdependencies across multiple teams.
• Facilitates effective resource allocation across programs.
• Drives the continuous improvement of agile processes, methodologies, and tools across the organization.
• Identifies and implements process enhancements to optimize efficiency, productivity, and quality of deliverables.
• Encourages innovation to foster a culture of continuous leading and growth.
• Ensures program benefits remain viable, communicating status and date changes, and actively managing dependencies.
• Builds strong relationships with key stakeholders and manages expectations regarding project scope, timelines, and deliverables.
• Collaborates closely with product owners to prioritize backlog items and ensures alignment with business goals.
• Provides regular project status updates and communicates risks or impediments impacting project success.

Requirements & Tech Stack

• Ability to recognize the importance of working through others within the team, engaging and empowering them to use their capabilities, thereby fostering trust and high energy.
• Drive and energy to get the job done.
• Excellent communication skills, both written and verbal.
• Assertive with the ability to come up with solutions to critical situations.
• Ability to make timely decisions and take calculated risks.
• Seasoned knowledge of other Agile approaches such as XP, Kanban, Scrum, extreme Programming (XP).
• Seasoned knowledge of the technologies used by the team.
• Ability to coordinate large teams with cross-functional dependencies.
• Proactive and organized with the ability to work in a fast-paced, team environment providing consistent, high-quality output.
• Ability to facilitate discussions to allow the team to consider alternative solutions or approaches and manage disagreements collaboratively.
• Ability to stimulate and relish change, adapt quickly, and see change as an opportunity.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree or equivalent in Project Management or related field.
• Relevant certifications such as SAFe Scrum Master or SAFe Advanced Scrum Master preferred.
• Other related certifications and/or training (e.g., SAFe DeVos, Implementing SAFe).
• Seasoned Scrum Master experience in an ICT environment, managing software projects and working with software development teams.
• Seasoned experience in Scrum Management.
• Seasoned experience of Agile concepts and principles.
• Seasoned experience as a coach and mentor in agile practices (Scrum, Kanban etc.).
• Seasoned experience with contemporary software development methodologies.
• Seasoned experience with widely successful Agile techniques such as User Stories, ATDD, TDD, Continuous Integration, Continuous Testing, Pairing, Automated Testing, Agile Games.