Agile Coach-Scrum Master (French;dutch): Brussels 6-12-18 Month Contra

AGILE COACH - SCRUM MASTER FRENCH/DUTCH AN ADVANTAGE.

Contract 6-12-18 months, Brussels:

Pay 700e day, more or less.

EXPERIENCE & EXPERTISE

- background knowledge of gas flow management domain is an asset
- proven experience (MINIMUM 2-3 YEARS) IN AN AGILE SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT CONTEXT
- KNOWLEDGEABLE IN CHANGE MANAGEMENT TECHNIQUES
- CERTIFIED SCRUM MASTER, PRODUCT OWNER
- experience in guiding agile teams through agile transitions
- experience with improving customer satisfaction and the reduction of product defect rates
- general knowledge of architectural techniques and structures
- Solid technical affinity, able to think along bottom-up reconstruction of application functionalities, starting from technical documentation or even codebase.
- Problem solving skills: analytical and synthesizing skills to clearly recognize issues and requirements and determine solutions for them

FUNCTION DESCRIPTION

For its development teams working on in-house developed products, is actively looking for an agile coach with IT analyst/development background who will be able to:

- Work with software development teams to help improve their effectiveness and get the benefits of applying agile principles to their work
- Blend in with an agile software development team, developing business products in short development cycles (using scrum)
- Ensure scrum is implemented correctly, while realizing a proper fit with the existing development practices: work out what agile practices will help to solve the team challenges rather than to convert teams to an ideal agile process
- Coach and mentor new or existing scrum masters and roles in the product team. Ensure that the ways of working are consistent across the teams
- Explain and promote scrum and agile principles, practices and values to team members, management and stakeholders
- Assist the teams to focus on the timely delivery of high quality products, in line with the priorities of the product backlog
- Participate in estimating and prioritizing development activities required to address the business requirements
- Contribute to the definition of enhancements for applications and team operations

RESPONSIBILITIES

- Act as scrum master for 3 or more scrum teams with a focus on guiding the teams towards improving the way they work.
- Facilitate team meetings (eg, sprint planning, sprint demo, retrospectives, decision making meetings, etc.)
- Assist the Proxy product owner with keeping the backlog groomed. Ensure that user stories and tasks are effective, very clear and concise, and are easy to understand and implement by the scrum teams
- Coach the team in understanding and translating customer business needs into user stories (and a further breakdown in tasks and activities) for the relevant roles in the scrum teams
- Ensure cross-team coordination and communication
- Identify impediments (blocking issues) that may prevent teams from delivering. Use influence skills to remove impediments
- Help the team see their own process and improve their processes. Maintain relevant metrics that help the team see how they are doing
- Liaise between the developers, analysts and testers. Foster better communication between the disciplines.
- Apply project management skills when necessary. Take responsibility for managing dependencies between teams and 3rd parties, or between teams and other scrum teams.
- Transfer knowledge and skills to team members so the team becomes more self-sufficient

TECHNICAL SKILLS

- fluency in the use of the following tools:
- documentation-communication tools (Microsoft Office or equivalent)
- project reporting tools
- MS TFS (or similar)
- General knowledge of technical IT matters like databases, SQL, .NET architectures and tools, code sourcing
- the ability to participate in the analysis of functional problems and the selection of the most appropriate solution

COMMUNICATION SKILLS

- Active listener & motivational speaker (treat team and stakeholders as the experts by showing that you are listening to them)
- Rather than telling people what they should do, ask questions to encourage the team to think for themselves
- Be the approachable go-to expert for all scrum and agile questions and advise. Ability to explain the why behind agile practices

PERSONAL SKILLS

- Goal directed attitude
- Find satisfaction in helping others succeed
- Initiative, flexibility, optimism, determination and resilience
- Working in a team environment, supportive, not cowed by authority
- Able to navigate conflict
- Ability to work relatively independently and proactively following the priorities and timing of the product backlog and sprint planning
- Analytical skills allowing rapid learning of various and new businesses or technical matters in the context of multi products maintenance.
- Advantage: to communicate in Dutch (spoken) or French (spoken) and English (written).
- Customer, solution and improvement minded
- Elimination factors are: preference for directing others, defensiveness, judgmental attitude, low threshold for frustration