Job Summary
Our client in the Banking Sector requires a Release Train Engineer on a 12-month contract to facilitate Agile Release Train processes and execution, respectively and to escalate impediment, manage risk, help assure value delivery, and help drive continuous improvement. To participate in the Lean-Agile transformation, coaching leaders, teams.
Prioritise and plan program Increment as part of the Agile Release Train (ART):
- Facilitate nWOW adaption, standardizing and documenting practices.
- Guide the team, including facilitating programme level processes and execution and growing the nWOW methodology at the program level (yet still allowing the team to self-organise).
- Plan and obtain resources and tools.
- Organise, run, and facilitate the Program Increment (PI) Planning.
- Organise, run, and facilitate Release Management forum.
- Secure Shared Services commitments and accountability for release plans.
- Provide release plans that offer realistic means of achieving commitments.
- Establish program level cadence and drive program level ceremonies (e.g., PI Planning, Product Management Council, Scrum of Scrums, System Demo Inspect and Adapt Workshop).
- Manage and optimise the flow of value through the programme using various tools, such as the programme and value stream Kanban’s.
- Establish and communicate the annual calendars for iterations and programme increment cadence.
- Understand and operate within the Agile Release Train (ART) Budget.
Execute Agile Release Train based on agreed PI Objectives:
- Drive multiple release planning sessions.
- Facilitate the resolution of impediments within span of influence. Once an impediment is outside of a Scrum Master’s span of influence the RTE steps in to remove or escalate the impediment to someone that can remove the impediment.
- Work with other program leaders to drive the definition and refinement of the program backlog and execution alignment.
- Meet with all Delivery Engineers and Scrum Masters to track dependencies and risks, at the program level.
- Maintain metrics that provide visibility to stakeholders on program-level plans, progress, and quality.
- Support Product Owners with various requirements gathering and scrum activities as needed.
- Escalate impediments and manage risk.
- Help to assure value delivery.
- Aggregate team objectives into programme objectives and publish them for visibility and transparency.
- Assist with execution and feature/capability completion tracking (KPIs/metrics).
- Facilitate periodic synchronization meetings (Scrum of Scrums and PO Sync).
- Assist with economic decision-making by facilitating feature and capability estimation by teams and roll-up to the value stream level and portfolio level.
- Drive relentless improvement.
- Assess the continuum maturity level (SBSA Continuum Maturity Model) of the programme/value stream and help improve.
- Foster collaboration amongst and across ART
- Encourage cross-value stream coordination and collaboration.
- Facilitate intergroup communication and dependency resolution, specifically helping to keep information moving so that the teams can focus on delivery.
- Facilitate alignment of dependencies between the program team and third parties, release managers, or between the team and other Scrum Teams.
- Encourage the collaboration across Program and Team layer of SAF’e.
Ensure effective Coaching and Mentoring of the ART:
- Provide leadership, direction and coaching to Feature team and Scrum Masters.
- Develop, coach and mentor teams and scrum masters in lean/agile practices and mind-sets.
- Contribute actively to the Bank’s nWOW Community through participation in the internal Agile Community of Practice and Scrum Master Forums.
- Chair the scrum of scrums (SoS). As a leader and the scrum master of scrum masters, the RTE is perfectly positioned to ensure that teams interact and share cross-team issues and risks by facilitating the SoS.
Qualifications and Knowledge:
- Formal minimum qualification:
- Bachelors in IT qualification or related field
- Required Post graduate qualification:
- Senior post graduate qualification (Certified Scale Agile Program Consultant (SPC) or SAF’e Agile, Scrum Master/ Experience of Kanban/ Software Development Lifecycle)
Other required knowledge:
- 8 or more years of overall IT experience
- Experience working in a SAF’e Program/ Value Stream Layer
- 3+ years of experience as a Scrum Master, Product Owner, or Agile Coach
- Demonstrated experience in managing multiple Scrum teams.
