Agile Coach - Johannesburg at IQbusiness

Minimum Requirements

Qualifications:

A relevant Scrum Master certification in at least one of the following:

• Certified Scrum Professional (ScrumAlliance) or
• Certified Scrum Master (ScrumAlliance) or;
• Certified Scrum Product Owner (ScrumAlliance) or;
• Agile Certified Practitioners (ACP) - PMI or;
• Professional Scrum Master Certification Level 1 / 2 - Scrum.org
• Relevant coaching certification or training advantageous including Certified Scrum Coach (CSC) or general coaching outside of Agile
• Advantageous, but not a prerequisite - Prince2 Certified (Foundation or Practitioner) or PMP certification.

Experience:

• Experience playing the Scrum Master role for at least 3 years for a software development team that was diligently applying Scrum principles, practices, and theory.
• Exposure to work within the governance structures of a large corporate will be an advantage.
• Consulting experience in a variety of industries will be an advantage.
• Experience with the implementation and adoption of Agile in an organisation
• Background in project management either through project experience or as a practising project manager.

Job Specification

Duties and Responsibilities:
To play the role of an Agile Coach to assist our clients in adopting Agile values, principles and practices. As most of our clients are new to Agile, the role will also require leading and assisting teams to deliver projects in an Agile manner.

• The role of the Agile Coach within IQbusiness has the following job objectives:
• The overall objective or goal for the Agile coach is the pursuit of creating sustainable, high-performance teams and organisations. This is enabled by creating motivated teams to build the right product. This is achieved by creating autonomy, mastery and purpose at the individual level that translates to the team level 

This role will interact with the following parties:

• Technology Enablement Management
• Clients and stakeholders at various levels
• IQbusiness practices

Agile-Lean Practitioner

• Ensuring that the agile manifesto - values and principles are understood and accepted by the team
• Deep knowledge with regards to the selected Agile framework or method (Scrum, Kanban etc.) - process focus
• Understanding of the practices, tools and techniques that are appropriate for the context

Teaching

• The ability to train people on Agile concepts, practices, tools and techniques
• Specific training for the roles that the individuals within the team will be playing as well as the necessary education to the wider organisation required to adopt Agile
• Provide a reference point to the correct body of knowledge
• Impart experience to the individuals and teams

Mentoring

• Providing a soundboard to individuals and teams with regard to key concerns and issues
• One-on-one mentoring of the different roles within the Agile team
• Expert in conveying the required message

Professional Coaching

• Not about telling people what to do, but asking leading questions and allowing the teams to figure out solutions to specific impediments
• Coaching needs to address the different levels within the organisation
• Coaching upwards to middle management and senior management
• Coaching at the team level
• Coaching at the individual level
• Ensure sustainability of the team - engage initially over a period of time, and ensure that the team is in a position to continually improve
• High levels of engagement up front with facilitation and involvement, moving to observation and guidance
• Helping the team be accountable for delivery
• An agile coach is not part of the team and typically is not accountable for delivery. This is for the Scrum Master. Not getting involved in the content

Facilitation

• Facilitation of ceremonies at the beginning of the engagement with a transition to ownership of facilitation to Scrum Masters and Product Owners
• Impart professional facilitation skills to key team members
• Facilitate difficult conversations to deal with team and organisational impediments
• Create a collaborative team environment - promote collaboration

Mastery

• Technical mastery - Embedding engineering principles and practices (e.g.) Continuous Integration, Refactoring, Test Driven Development and other XP practices
• Business mastery coach - understanding of the business domain and focusing the team and organisation on building valuable products
• Transformation mastery - Agile transformations may lead to resistance to change. It is important for the Agile coach to actively facilitate the change in the teams and organisations. This should address the question to the individual "What's in it for me?" This is typically a transitory change management approach.