Scrum Master

Overview

Scrum Master – Junior

Ministry

No Clearance Required

8 month contract

Toronto – 2 days in office

Must haves

• Scrum Master certified
• Experience in working on Agile developed projects
• Demonstrated experience using Azure to manage backlogs and sprints
• Demonstrated experience with and knowledge of Java and Oracle projects
• Demonstrated experience with and knowledge of IBM's BPM
• Demonstrated prior experience leading project teams, facilitating interactions with clients and among the project team, especially in a complex, multi-stakeholder environment

Nice to have

• Demonstrated experience with the MOE Modernization of Approvals platform, or similar

Scrum Master Responsibilities

The Scrum Master will help with the introduction and adoption of Agile Development and facilitate the team's work to accelerate delivery of an acceptable work item by leveling Scrum events and to manage the project backlogs for one or more projects within the Permission Enterprise Platform (PEP).

General Skills

• Leads organizational development, strategy development, business planning, and Ministry funding requests.
• Gathers and develops requirements in order to create and maintain a detailed project schedule and/or integrated plan.
• Ability to monitor and forecast project costs and provide reporting and input to ensure targets are met
• Experience developing and managing project schedules, deliverables, and scope
• Ability to promote I&IT project management best practices and adherence to standard methodologies
• Demonstrated experience directing project teams to ensure project deliverables are delivered on time and adhere to government and ministry standards
• Extensive experience coordinating and monitoring project processes, and developing/communicating guidelines and procedures
• Sources, selects and on-boards team members in various disciplines, clarify roles and responsibilities and set task/deliverable/performance expectations for resources that are both OPS unionized employees as well as fee for service (FFS) consultants.
• Resolves resourcing and inter-personal conflicts, negotiates changes to resourcing, ensures knowledge is shared among team members such as project objectives and deliverables are met.
• Develops complex project budgets based on multiple funding channels and cross ministry dependencies.
• Effectively manages large project budgets and ensures a high level of fiscal control and accountability including estimates, forecasts and reconciliation/confirmation of actual.
• Proactively identifies potential risk events and issues before they occur so that proper mitigating strategies can be developed.
• Articulates and prioritizes issues and risks at senior executive levels and recommends mitigation strategies for decision makers.
• Establishes and participates in steering committee and stakeholder forums.
• Provides, project, program, and/or portfolio reporting to multi-stakeholders at senior executive levels.
• Uses appropriate strategies and actions to overcome resistance to change and capitalize on forces in support of change during all stages of projects - concept, definition, planning, implementation and close-out.
• Promotes OPS I&IT standards and best practices for project management to facilitate control of system quality, adherence to standard methodology and the control of the use of I&IT resources.

Desirable Skills

• Knowledge and understanding of PMI’s PMBOK
• Knowledge and understanding of Agile Scrum principles, concepts, policies and practice
• Knowledge and understanding of Information Management principles, concepts, policies and practices
• Knowledge and understanding of Azure Devops to create user stories, run Kanbans and monitor pipelines
• Knowledge and understanding of Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA) and related regulations and standards
• Ability to make recommendations on the acquisition of software, hardware, and technology resources
• Experience managing and coordinating project monitoring, anticipates and troubleshoots issues, provides ongoing expertise, resolves problems and provides project effectiveness
• Ability to identify conflict between project and functional areas and develops responses to successfully address conflict
• Ability to handle client relationships to manage expectations, provides updates as required, identifies potential conflicts between project and functional areas

Experience and Skills Requirements

• Experience in playing the Scrum Master role for at least 5+ years for a software development team that was diligently applying Scrum principles, practices, and theory.
• Strong verbal, written, interpersonal communication and negotiation skills.
• Familiarity with common Agile practices.
• Understanding of basic fundamentals of iterative development as well as backlog tracking and task definition.
• Experience working with development products and teams.
• Ability to rapidly prioritize competing requirements.
• Act as a champion of the Scrum framework both internally and external to the team work across multiple scrum teams and help to coordinate efforts
• Ensure the delivery team practices the core agile principles of collaboration, prioritization, team accountability, and visibility
• Assist team with forecasting their Sprint Goals through story selection, task definition
• Facilitate Scrum Ceremonies including (daily stand-ups, sprint reviews, planning, backlog refinement, retrospectives and customer journey/story mapping)
• Work with Product Owner for Backlog Refinement
• Create queries to create report from Azure Devops
• Resolving resourcing conflicts and negotiating changes to resourcing needs.
• Proactively planning and prioritizing tasks effectively to respond to numerous and diverse challenges and demands
• Managing internal and external expectations in line with project critical success factors
• Ensuring issues are identified, tracked, reported and resolved in a timely manner
• Identifying, analyzing, prioritizing, mitigating and communicating project risks throughout project lifecycle.
• Making recommendations based on the technical evaluation of risks and issues along with an understanding of the business implications.
• Ensuring documents are maintained in a shared repository and that knowledge is shared among team members.
• Assisting in the facilitation of team, vendor, and client meetings
• Communicating effectively to identify needs and evaluate solutions to complex business and technical issues
• Working collaboratively to resolve inter dependencies between other projects/work streams
• Reporting on progress and provides timely status updates on assigned projects.
• Experience with Azure, including generating burn-down reports across projects using Azure
• Proficient with Azure or Azure certified
• Experience in generating burn-down report across various projects using Azure
• Good Java and Oracle technical knowledge as well as IBM's BPM
• Experience leading technical teams
• Direct experience in the creation of project schedules, project plans, issue & risk logs, status reports, and associated artefacts (Change Management Plan, Risk Management Plan, etc.)
• Demonstrated experience managing multiple simultaneous Application Development projects involving cross-functional product teams within budgetary and schedule constraints
• Demonstrated experience managing projects with external and internal clients and external vendors
• Good understanding of both the traditional System Development Life Cycle as well as Agile development concepts
• Strong technical and business aptitude
• Persistent attention to detail
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills (clear & concise)
• Self-motivated leader with strong interpersonal skills
• Advanced skills in Microsoft Project, Microsoft Office, and Visio
• Proven ability to handle multiple tasks and deliver within extremely tight deadlines
• Project rescue/project triage experience is an asset
• Previous government experience is an asset, but not mandatory

Evaluation Criteria

Scrum/Agile experience - 45%

• Scrum Master certified and/or demonstrated experience in managing Scrum projects in sprints
• Experience in working on Agile developed projects
• Scrum Ceremonies including (daily stand-ups, sprint reviews, planning, backlog refinement, retrospectives and customer journey/story mapping)
• Demonstrated experience using Azure to manage backlogs and sprints
• Defect management using Azure on active sprints

Technical and Project Management Skills - 35%

• Demonstrated experience with and knowledge of Java and Oracle projects
• Demonstrated experience with and knowledge of IBM's BPM
• Experience managing projects on Azure with continuous delivery.
• Advanced skills in Microsoft Project, Office and Visio
• Demonstrated experience managing multiple simultaneous Application Development projects involving cross-functional product teams within budgetary and schedule constraints

Leadership, facilitation, interpersonal and Presentation skills - 15%

• Demonstrated prior experience leading project teams, facilitating interactions with clients and among the project team, especially in a complex, multi-stakeholder environment
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills (clear & concise)
• Proven ability to handle multiple tasks and deliver within extremely tight project deadlines

Public Sector Experience - 5%