Scrum Master

Qualifications
Generic JQ:
- Years of Experience: at least 3 years of experience
• Experience playing the Scrum Master role for at least one year for a software development team that was diligently applying Scrum principles, practices, and theory.
• Good skills and knowledge of leadership, facilitation, situational awareness, conflict resolution, continual improvement, empowerment, and increasing transparency
• Knowledge of numerous well documented patterns and techniques for filling in the intentional gaps left in the Scrum approach(example: numerous Burndown techniques, numerous Retrospective formats, handling bugs, etc)
• Previous experience as a team lead
• Excellent communication and mentoring skills
Job Description
OVERVIEW
A scrum master is the role responsible for ensuring the team lives agile values and principles and follows the processes and practices that the team agreed they would use.Scrum Master is a servant-leader who doesn’t have direct authority over any of the other team members and isn’t involved in high-level decision-making. Instead, the Scrum Master facilitates the Scrum process and keeps the team on track.

The role will be responsible for the following:
1. Implementing Agile Ceremonies and Principles
● Support in evaluating the Scrum Maturity of the squad and prepare the squad to advanced stages of maturity, at a speed that is workable and easy for the team
● Lead the team on how to accomplish Agile/Scrum practices
● Scrum Master roles and responsibilities include to Lead and coach the team in its Scrum implementation
● Enable process activities of Agile development/scrum by inspiring and backing the teams to self-align their repetitions
● Scrum Master roles and responsibilities also include to support internal and external communication, improving transparency, and radiating information
● Program and enable consistent team retrospective meetings per the scrum framework
● Program, design and assist team work as per the Scrum framework, daily stand-up meetings, consistent iteration reviews and sprint planning meetings amongst the team, Product Owner, and stakeholders
● Assist sprint-planning gatherings, sprint review, and confirm that teams understand their ability (velocity) to meet sprint promises. Ensure team’s sense of responsibility to their obligations and to other team members.
● Warrant that any blockers are identified and excluded, adhere to agile process, and that an agile has a well-run escalation process in place for the changes that impact iteration
2. Managing Agile Teams
● Build a trusting and safe atmosphere where problems can be raised without distress of blame, or being judged, with an importance of growing and problem solving
● Improve people through schooling and by adopting a positive work culture
● Offer all support to the squad using a servant leadership style every time possible, and leading by example
● Ensuring that the team is providing software within the recognized quality standards by facilitating a working “definition of done” (DoD) for Agile stories within each team is another prime Scrum Master role and responsibilities.
● Eradicate obstacles or guide the team to remove obstacles by finding the right personnel to remove the obstruction.
● Enable getting the task done without pressure or dictating work assignments.
● Simplify discussion, conclusion making, and conflict resolution
● Remove blockades to team efficiency
● Guard the team from external tasks, scope growth or disturbances during the sprint so that they will remain engrossed in delivering their promises.
● Dare the self-organized team to apply team operational improvements, encourage and inculcate process developments – monitor, leads and coach
● Support team members to develop and deliver individual obligations to their squad. Assist squad members who are struggling to meet assurances through straightforward communication and feedback, providing the team with suitable support or transitioning them off the team.
● Detect and resolve conflicts
3. Product Owner Collaboration
● Function as communication link among the squad, Product Owner, and Stakeholders
● Scrum master roles and responsibilities work with the Product Owner to identify that the product backlog is in place and graded/ groomed to the suitable level to start and complete development iterations.
● Support Product Owner to find approaches for effective Product Backlog mentoring
● Help the Product Owner in conserving a product roadmap, holding competitive and market positioning
● Making definition of done and definition of ready clear to them
● Help them to plan sprint releases
4. Maintaining Artifacts
● Ensure that recognized agile software progress matrices (burndown charts, velocity, and defect metrics) are in place and that the team and Product Owner are equipped to input data for said metrics. Responsible for organizing and preparing metric data on a regular basis using repeatable methods.
● Track team capacity and velocity metrics for planning purposes
● Be active in the Agile Office and consult with other Scrum Masters and teams
● Excellent communication and mentoring skills
Others:
● Tracks and Monitors overall status of demands within their delivery teams and provides updates regularly.
● Coordinates and aligns with Release Train Engineer on release schedule/calendar and monitor status of sprint releases.
● Manages and clears impediments with the Delivery team and ensures that callouts are raised in a timely manner.
● Manages daily huddle with the team to address any callouts on the sprint.
● Ensures that all Scrum events are productive, done within the timebox, attended by the correct participants (POs, KBS, etc.)
● Coaches delivery team to apply Agile and Scrum practices, promotes team empowerment and self-management.
● Fosters a culture of inspection, collaboration, transparency, and improvement in the delivery team. Promotes a safe space/working environment
● Monitors delivery team utilization, and ensures that the delivery team works with their capacity to deliver sprint commitments with the highest quality. (this includes coordination of cross delivery team resources)
● Monitor resources within their delivery team and raise resource related concerns including performance, issues, or capacity related to their tribe lead.
● Ensures technical operations readiness by proper coordination with other teams such as operations team, support team on the demands that are released in Production.
● Ensures the timely delivery/deployment of features as aligned with Product Owner in release schedule/calendar
● Monitors work tasks/activities of the delivery team - through Daily Stand-up, JIRA status, JIRA burndown report
● Ensures that progress of the demands being handled by their delivery teams from other tribes are coordinated accordingly.
● Responsible for coordinating and aligning with vendor providers on sprint releases and updating on the progress regularly.
● Responsible in coordinating with partners in terms of deliverables they need to work on their end for each sprint and ensures it is being completed as scheduled
● Attends regular meetings specific for their role as SMs which includes but are not limited to SM Cadences, Retrospectives, Springboards and Pre-Springboards.
● Performs other functions within the group when it is needed which includes but are not limited to guild specific initiatives, facilitating meetings, brown bag sessions, sm of the week etc

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