Scrum Master at Euromonitor International

Job Description
Brief Overview Of The Role

Reporting to the Agile Delivery Manager, the Scrum Master is responsible to lead Scrum teams working on various products and projects within Euromonitor. We anticipate that you appreciate the importance of Euromonitor culture and continue to foster this spirit in your teams. In this role, you will need to work closely with Scrum team, Product Owners, Business Analysts, Architects, other Scrum Masters, and managers against a common backlog to deliver the products. The core responsibility involves coaching and continuous improvement of agile process delivery and help the teams to be self-organised by enabling the three core pillars of Scrum as Transparency, Inspection and Adaptation as part of the technology department and wider enterprise organization. It is very important that the Scrum Master has a strong communication, collaboration and teamwork skills. You need to play the role of Servant Leadership within cross functional team(s).

Minimum Requirements

Certified Scrum Master

• At least 3 years Scrum Master experience
• At least 5 years in an Agile environment
• Experience with running multiple Scrum teams
• Experience in using industry tools such as TFS etc.

Key Responsibilities

• Maintain a working knowledge of different Euromonitor products and related integration points and, is able to understand business and technical changes in order to anticipate cross-system or cross-process impacts.
• Facilitate different Scrum ceremonies like daily stand-ups, sprint planning, backlog refinement, sprint reviews & retrospectives. Mentor on process and development practices and advocate with team for continuous improvement.
• Facilitate and coordinate with the wider stakeholders (PMBA, Dev, DB and QA team, respective leads and managers etc.) to do sprint planning for product delivery.
• Assist the team(s) towards achieving the day-to-day progress of sprint goals and release goals with regard to time, budget, scope and quality. By regularly monitoring and managing the metrics to meet release goals (Ex: Sprint, bugs and release burndown, team velocity…etc.)
• Work with Product Owner and business team to ensure product backlog is healthy and transparent and prioritize the list to generate higher business value. Co-ordinate with Product Owner for Product backlog management, concept grooming and continuous delivery of features.
• Facilitate the management of technical backlog (technical debts, refactoring tasks and POCs/prototypes needed etc.) and track progress of work against those backlogs. Work with architect, Dev. leads and scrum teams in distributed locations to drive technical refining, planning, issue resolution and development on those product specific technical debts.
• Facilitate the management of Bug/defect backlog by working with product management to prioritize and defer defects. Coordinate with other teams to identify risks and to clear roadblocks.
• Protect scrum team from outside distractions (like unnecessary communication, dependencies etc.), proactively identify and remove impediments raised by team to deliver the product goals, any team conflicts and maintain focus on product backlog and delivery timelines which could require cross-team collaboration and or escalation, possible up to senior management stakeholders.
• Interface with project teams (particularly project managers, product managers & BA’s) to make sure that stories and other project deliverables to the scrum team are of sufficient quality and provided in a timely manner.
• Coordinate with release management and other stakeholders (like Dev., QA and DB leads, managers, and product owners to do release planning for the product delivery. Ensure a smooth release process is maintained.
• Provide sprint wise reporting on scrum team delivery progress and team activity against release goals, product roadmap and strategical vision of technology department.
• Partner with the Dev. and QA leads and managers to provide leadership and mentorship to the team members.
• Ensure that sprint deliverables are adhering to the defined quality and best practice guidelines.
• Be responsible for defining standardized reports, liaison to establish report requirements/automation around scrum team delivery.
• Identify and control project risks by means of prevention, mitigation and contingencies.
• Maintaining relevant metrics that help the team understand how they are performing.
• Influence the Scrum team to increase productivity over a period of time by measuring and highlighting the opportunities areas.
• Be accountable to promote better vertical visibility of scrum teams in their agile delivery by different means.
• Build a community of agile champions, practitioners and enthusiasts that promotes learning by sharing.
• Be a very active member of Agile Workgroup and educate wider scrum teams and the wider business by conducting workshops and other means. Engage them in continuous learning in the application of agile and lean principles.
• Evangelize and preach agile principles and practices (like Scrum) across other departments in organization and help in building the bigger agile community by spreading it across verticals in enterprise.
• Build team cohesion and foster good communication between various scrum team members. Facilitate and enable transparent communication within and outside the team and with the key stakeholders.
• Encourage and support an open, learning, and progressive environment to allow the team to innovate and explore new creative solutions.

Coach Key roles such as other scrum masters, product owners and development managers to become more effective problem-solvers.Skills/Proficiencies required:

Technical skills/experience:

The Following Experience / Skills Are Highly Desirable

• Experience with Agile methodologies.
• A Scrum Master certification and/or presently practicing SCRUM.
• Strong experience in Agile Software Development Processes.
• Conceptual knowledge of the agile technical practices, such as TDD / BDD, Refactoring, CI, DevOps, and hands-on experience in few of them.
• Understands some of the popular industry tools (e.g. TFS, JIRA, etc.).
• Actively learning and regularly upgrading self-knowledge on the agile principles, Scrum and product management.
• Understand the value of commitments to delivery made by a development team.
• Understand incremental delivery and the value of metrics.Personal Skills
• Servant Leader - Must be able to garner respect from his/her team and be willing to get involved to ensure the work gets completed to schedule.
• Communicative and social - Must be able to communicate well within his/her own teams and the broader Technology teams through verbal and written skills.
• Facilitative - Must be able to lead and demonstrate value-add principles to a team.
• Assertive - Must be able to ensure Agile/Scrum concepts and principles are adhered to, must be able to be a voice of reason and authority, make the tough calls.
• Situationally Aware -Ability to think ahead and anticipate problems/issues and find solutions. Must be the first to notice differences and issues as they arise and elevate them to responsible roles.
• Enthusiastic - Must have a passion for all things Agile and demonstrate this through continuous learning and improvements initiatives.
• Conflict resolution - Must be able to facilitate discussions and facilitate alternatives or different approaches to resolving challenges.
• Attitude of transparency - Must desire to bring disclosure and transparency to the business about development and grow business trust.
• Autonomy - Ability to accomplish assigned tasks with minimal supervision.
• Coordinator - Building good professional relationship with cross-functional teams spread across different region/office of the organization.
• Critical thinking - Ability to apply sound logic and reasoning skills to facilitate decision making
• Culture driven - Dedicated to fostering a culture that is about creativity, communication, cutting-edge technology and the long-term development of staff.
• Mentorship - Proud to offer staff a range of opportunities to help them achieve their aspirations and grow, whether it’s conquering a new technology, learning about a new domain, speaking in public or moving into a leadership role.