Development Practice Lead at The Shoprite Group of Companies

Purpose of the Job

As a recognized software engineering authority with effective leadership capability, the Development Practice Lead is responsible to lead and drive software engineering practices across all of Shoprite’s design and development teams, continuously improve software engineering standards, and lead agile ways of working and setting, and enforcing software engineering standards for design and development work products. The Development Practice Lead role is responsible to create, lead, manage, and mentoring a practice of highly skilled Software Engineers across the delivery organization.

Job Advert Details

Job Category

IT

Job Objectives

• Lead the definition and continuous improvement of solution delivery methodologies, standards and tooling from ideation through to production:
• Lead the definition and implementation of a modern solution delivery strategy.
• Keep abreast of new and evolving solution delivery frameworks, methods and strategies and evaluate international SDLC best practice processes on a regular basis for adoption.
• Define the SDLC frameworks and methodologies such as Waterfall, Agile, Product management, SAFe, DevOps, etc. required to enable multi-modal software delivery and develop agile software development process all the way from ideation through to production.
• Define standards and guidelines with templates for SDLC artifacts in alignment with upstream and downstream disciplines.
• Define the required SDLC environment standards (e.g. Dev, QA, Sandbox, Prod, etc.) required per solution type (custom, Package, etc).
• Be accountable for effective communication between discipline structures and delivery structures
• Drive the adoption of the new ways of working including SDLC standards, processes and tools with both IT and Business stakeholders: Providing thought leadership to senior executives on new development methodologies.
• Identify individuals and forums that will constantly communicate the defined and SDLCmethodologies to all stakeholders and drive adoption Influence and steer teams to adopt the new ways of working.
• Providing expert coaching in Agile practices (i.e. Lean, Scrum, Kanban, SAFe).
• Create a single source of truth to provide transparency, and measure progress. Implement tools and processes that enable adoption of new practices and rapidly deliver on outcomes.
• Identify individuals and forums that will conduct quality reviews to ensure adequate adoption of defined SDLC methodologies.
• Collaborate with stakeholders to ensure quality reviews are scheduled and executed in line with agreed processes and deliverables.
• Identify adoption issues and escalate to governance team where necessary
• Produce review reports where required.
• Provide oversight and guidance to artifacts consumers to ensure high-quality solutions are created that conforms to the set standards.
• Manage the end-to-end integrated Devop toolchain and the associated portfolio of SDLC solutions required to enable the defined SDLC methodologies and to facilitate the automation of SDLC processes (JIRA, ARIS, Sparx, Swagger, Bitbucket, QC, Jenkins, etc.):
• Define a DevOps strategy for Shoprite. Work closely with a variety of internal stakeholders to ensure the execution of the DevOps strategy.
• Design, develop and implement a DevOps capabilities by overseeing the design, development, and implementation of processes, tools, data and people required for a DevOps capability. Oversee the lifecycle of the DevOps product portfolio
• Build and mentor teams of SDLC tooling specialists to effectively build, manage, and use the SDLC tool chains:
• Be the primary contact and point of escalation for SDLC stakeholders and collaboration with other Practice Leads to ensure that cross-discipline ways of work are cohesive.
• Drive a culture of technical curiosity, sound SDLC fundamentals, and agility.
• Establish Communities of Practice and as required for effective SDLC practices and ensure CoPs operate effectively with sustained participation.
• Facilitate knowledge sharing between and across the various discipline streams to nurture best practice and help us get to the next level of SDLC excellence.
• Identify all the skills required to manage the SDLC tools and help to create Job Descriptions for each role.
• Identify all the roles required to effectively create and manage the required SDLC framework and tooling.
• Define KPAs and KPI for SDLC Specialists.
• Mentor and coach SDLC Specialists in their practice, helping them grow in expertise and experience new areas.
• Identify skills gaps and training needs and manage the development of SDLC Specialists to ensure the availability of quality resources.
• Identify training courses to enable adoption of SDLC tools, identify appropriate training providers and negotiate pricing for training.
• Create appropriate learning opportunities to develop talent.
• Ensure recruitment of appropriately skilled staff to implement and support SDLC tools.
• Create recruitment strategies that include identifying recruitment partners and/or consulting companies to ensure we are able to provide appropriately skilled SDLC tool administrators.
• Conduct performance reviews

Qualifications

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Management Information Systems or a related field, or equivalent work experience or 3-year tertiary qualification in a relevant discipline, e.g. computer science or engineering or computer science related technical certification with 2+ years’ proven people management experience.

Experience

Essential:

• 10+ years of working experience within the IT industry.
• 5+ years of Microsoft .NET and C# programming experience in a mainstream programming language like Microsoft.Net, C#, JAVA, ABAP, etc.
• 3+ years of Experience in Cloud Services (Azure, AWS, Google).
• 2+ years of Experience with recruiting talented team members.
• 5+ years of Experience with Agile software development life-cycle principles.
• 2+ years of Experience with creating career development paths and managing the career development of individuals.
• 3+ years of Experience in the Identification and formulation of Language, Standard, Artifacts, Tools, and Processes.
• 5+ years of demonstrated expertise in a variety of application development methodologies and practices (including agile and waterfall).
• 5+ years of demonstrated expertise in a variety of application Design methodologies and practices for medium to large enterprises.
• 5+ years of Excellent technical development and design skills with the ability to be able to mentor others to improve their skills. Desirable
• 3+ years of experience with all aspects of IT projects from business analysis, architectures, system analysis, and design through development, testing, implementation, and production (SDLC) and how DevOps interact with this in the Cloud.
• 2-3 years of Retail industry experience with an understanding of retail business processes would be advantageous.

Knowledge and Skills

Essential:

• In-depth knowledge of the Systems Development Life Cycle
• Advanced influencing, interpersonal and communication skills are required to contract with, engage and influence senior leaders and technical specialists, as well as coordinate complex initiatives across a number of teams.
• Proven ability to establish and manage relationships with various individuals at differing levels of the business. These include, but are not limited to senior leaders, technical specialists, and support staff.
• Ability to build effective relationships and build a strong and positive team.
• Developed people management skills that are critical to service a number of cross-functional needs, including people with strong academic backgrounds and technical skills.
• Strong analytical, problem-solving, and logical skills with attention to detail.

Excellent team-working, interpersonal skills.

• Delivery of compelling presentations to all levels of stakeholders and excellent communication and relationship-building skills.
• Develop proposals and excellent written communication & presentation skills.
• Excellent organization and facilitation skills.
• Strong conflict management skills.
• UI Design design methodologies.
• Experience using and managing a wide range of software development languages, databases, tools, and methodologies.
• Design and Development for Cloud solutions in AWS or Azure or Google Cloud.
• API integration (on-premise and cloud).
• Ability to manage multiple initiatives simultaneously.
• Focused on doing things correctly rather than quickly.