Programme Delivery Scrum Master

Background:

Launched in September 2019, SHARE is Majid Al Futtaim’s Group loyalty programme in the UAE.

Building on two years of strong customer acquisition (2.2m members) and engagement (CES of 82%), SHARE is poised to enter a new and rapid phase of programme growth, driven through strong proposition enhancement, market expansion and the development of new product verticals. We seek to recruit an associate level programme delivery scrum master to support the delivery of Agile teams in a SAFe value stream ensuring the fulfilment of SHARE’s 5-year ambition.

Role Purpose:

The Programme Delivery Scrum Master will be required to play a leading role in multiple Agile teams (that have different cadences). This is a role within a very large programme of work with multiple value streams, many Agile teams and cross-functional alignment with many businesses across the Majid Al Futtaim Group.

The Scrum Master will support the programme delivery manager, who is over overseeing the end-to-end delivery, through running and improving (semi-)autonomous Agile teams, unblocking impediments to delivery, reporting on RAIDs on a timely fashion, maintaining team data health on delivery and enabling team delivery through clear and concise management. 

The strategic programme delivery function of the loyalty business manages the vast programme delivery across the Group, accountable for the delivery of complex products, services and platform enhancements, improving the ways of working and leads in the design, implementation and oversight of the target state business operating model.

Continuous improvement of SHARE’s ways of working, a passion to innovate and a positive energy towards working with many different teams across complex value stream delivery, through adherence to sound governance, is key.

Role Details – Key Responsibilities and Accountabilities:

Programme / Agile Team Delivery:

• Lead various scrum teams through the iteration process and enable them to become more self-organised and autonomous against the sprint plans
• Ensure that sprint backlog grooming and planning is optimized by also having the backlog aligned 2-3 sprints ahead against the PI plan set at the start of the quarter
• Lead all four types of Agile ceremonies, optimising their internal workings and ensure alignment on showcases with key stakeholders. Oversee iterations of the Scrum process through to completion.
• Ensure that all deliverables and milestones are tracked against the PI schedule and any deviations are communicated with the RTE, PO, PMs and programme delivery manager
• Check deliverables against requirements to ensure compliance to functional specification and expectation(s) of stakeholder
• Guide the teams in implementing the Agile methodology and scrum practices, also acting as a knowledge broker on the adoption of SAFe
• Help the scrum team achieve higher levels of scrum maturity
• Remove impediments and coach the scrum team on removing impediments
• Help the scrum and development teams to identify and fill in blanks in the Agile framework
• Focus on developing high performing, long-lived teams for many of the core products and services teams. Work closely with the RTE and other scrum masters to ensure cross team and value stream alignment, especially with dependency hand-odds from sprint to sprint through each PI cycle.
• Support the product owner and provide education where needed on Agile practices, from backlog grooming, story point estimating, and t-shirt sizing in PI
• Help your product owner and development teams to achieve an increasing or high-level of customer satisfaction from the regular market research on CSat
• Facilitate the preparation and readiness of the teams for participate in PI planning, driving increasing actual value each quarter against the value proposition.
• Supports SAFe adoption – The Scrum Master supports the overall adoption of SAFe across the enterprise by coaching stakeholders and other non-agile teams on effective interactions with agile teams, participating in the Scrum Master Community of Practice, and supporting the organization’s SPCs.

Governance

• Governance Framework Champion: Function as the prime conduit within the Agile teamns for adherence to the programme’s governance framework for the loyalty business, which acts as an enablement and assurance function for the business, its knowledge base and processes.
• Cross-Functional / Inter-Departmental Coordination: Continuously improve the communication across teams and departments, especially with inter-department, cross-functional Agile teams. Participate or run the SoS on a regular basis to ensure alignment, clarity and transparency of delivery.
• Support knowledge sharing: Plan and facilitate knowledge sharing / coaching sessions with a focus on creating collaborative experiences and reinforcing best practices to enable and support business delivery teams
• SHARE Risk Register Data Health: Ensure that sprint RAIDs for each team are updated on the central risk register and the details are clearly escalated to the correct key stakeholders, usually a business owner, architect or product manager.

Innovation

• Evangelist for improving processes: Act as a servant-leader to the project/functional teams through always thinking of ways to improve, enhance and change the way that teams and the programme itself functions. Promote a spirit of transparency, collaboration and open-mindedness.
• Innovation guardrails: Encourage teams to push their boundaries in their strive to increase performance, and yet keep them within the bounds of capability, function and of the initiative on which they are working.

Definition of Success

• Execution of projects to a high quality, on time and to budget
• Promoting and inculcating Lean-Agile practices across the teams, ensuring that teams adopt the new way of working
• Efficiency of the team working on delivery through use of advanced tools and methodologies
• Teams run an efficient sprint of work through the use of standard or improve Agile and SCRUM methods
• Sprint estimation is increasingly more accurate and team velocity climbs to a high performing level
• Accurate and transparent tracking of delivery activities, status, risks and blockers on a timely basis and with the right stakeholders.
• Hold to a lifecycle perspective of all aspects of programme delivery, enabling the teams to add value through their sprint backlog delivery
• Participate in and help coordinate successful PI planning workshops
• Positive feedback from internal stakeholders on loyalty cross-functional and cross-business units, interaction
• Performance and personal development of the team

Functional/Technical Competencies

• Advanced Microsoft Office skills
• Project management tools and process skills
• Wide experience with cloud tools and able to implement change using new platforms and technologies

Personal Characteristics and Required Background:

Personal characteristics

• Excellent team collaborator and coordinator skills with experience leading high performance teams
• A problem-solver, able to analyse and think quickly to resolve delivery problems and balances inter-personnel issues well to maintain an upbeat and positive attitude through delivery cycles
• Ability to work in a diverse, international company and able to work with multiple stakeholders and matrix managed teams
• Able to adapt to a changing environment, self-motivated and a person the team seek out for help and mentoring
• Good written and verbal communication skills in English; Arabic also is a benefit
• Track record of driving results through cross-functional collaboration.
• Very good emotional intelligence

Minimum experience

• 3+ years’ experience in a similar role as a Scrum Master in a large programme of delivery
• 7+ years work experience in projects and/or programme delivery; loyalty experience preferred
• Demonstrable experience managing cross-functional stakeholders

Minimum Qualifications/education

• Bachelor’s degree
• Certified SCRUM master qualification
• Additional role related, industry qualification preferred, i.e. Agile, Lean, CI, PMP, etc.