Meet the Job
In your role as Senior Agile Coach, your primary objective is to enhance the effectiveness of the teams in your Ecosystems unit within Backbase by promoting the application and adoption of an Agile mindset along with Agile product and engineering methods. You collaborate with Ecosystems leadership to identify challenges, and alongside them and the team, you adopt an outcomes-focused approach to drive improvements. This includes elevating events, processes and practices that facilitate successful stakeholder and delivery outcomes.
Furthermore, you are the owner of the Agile community of practice within Ecosystems, and participate in the larger Agile community in Backbase where you are involved in nurturing innovation, ensuring sustainable product delivery, and promoting alignment of practices. Where suitable, you are collaborating with the other Agile Coaches to ensure consistency and alignment on agile practices, workshops, and training materials.
As a champion for agile culture, you will play a pivotal role in Ecosystems in advancing the overall delivery of value by promoting collaboration and a customer focus. To suit our dynamic environment, you will introduce techniques that promote self-sufficiency, autonomy, adaptability and flexibility in the face of unpredictable circumstances. Across the teams in the value stream and to other Backbase departments you provide insights, take initiatives and steer the engagement level as well as overall effectiveness.
You will proactively advise on resolving challenges related to the adoption and application of agile, product and delivery management methodologies, in Ecosystems, with a focus on the squad level. As a catalyst for change, you are promoting agile principles and values across Ecosystems. Through coaching, mentoring, and teaching, you inspire Engineering Managers, Product Managers, and other squad leadership roles in the value stream to embrace Agile, product- and delivery management methodologies as well as people-centric practices in order to improve towards a high engagement. You work to smoothen cross squad dependencies and enable teams and other roles in the value stream to remove blockers and uncertainty.
Within your Ecosystems you define and optimize agile strategy guidelines with the Engineering Managers (e.g.team operating models, agile practices, etc.) and collaborate with other agile coaches across the value streams to build scalable improvements .You are an essential part of the checks and balances and take responsibility keeping the squads in your value stream running smoothly. You support changes and initiatives across the organization and engage with the agile guild, other guilds, or other Backbase departments to address emergent challenges.
Qualifications:
- At least 7 years experience as an Agile Coach or Scrum Master within a software development delivery organization;
- You’re a pro when it comes to defining, designing, and improving processes using agile values and principles across teams;
- You have experience and understand the importance of also coaching product management on the best agile practices;
- You’ll have in-depth experience and in-depth knowledge of Scrum, Kanban, and Agile scaling frameworks (Spotify, LeSS, SAFe, etc);
- You have a proven track record when it comes to developing teams (bonus points if you have professional coaching and/or mentoring certs);
- You possess the relevant agile certifications (eg. PSM, KMP);
- You can wear a recruiter hat when it comes to ensuring an effective recruitment & onboarding process for new Scrum Masters and Agile coaches;
- Needless to say, you’re capable of taking on the role of becoming an important pillar in the Backbase Agile community.
Desirable Traits:
- Strong Communicator: Has the ability to convey ideas effectively and establish meaningful connections with diverse stakeholders;
- Pragmatic Problem Solver: Balances ideal best practices with the practical compromises demanded by real-world situations;
- Self-Starter: Demonstrates a proactive and self-driven approach, identifying and tackling issues without waiting for external direction;
- Innovative Thinker: Draws upon experience, learning, and research to navigate and address novel challenges effectively;
- Sharp Analytical Mind: Exhibits a keen ability for critical and analytical thinking in a variety of situations;
- Dedicated Self-Improver: Demonstrates a proactive and introspective approach to personal growth;
- Collaborative Team Player: Emphasizes teamwork and collaborative approaches in all endeavors, fostering unity and shared success.
Competencies
Knowledge & Application
- Embodies Agile Values and Principles: Can demonstrate and promote Agile values and principles, facilitating their adoption by others;
- Versatile Knowledge Application: Can proficiently apply various frameworks and methods in diverse scenarios, assessing their value in each context;
- Scaling Framework Familiarity: Possesses a solid understanding of scaling frameworks, including SAFe, Nexus, and LeSS;
- Continuous Learning: Ideally, has participated in formal training programmes such as PSM II, SAFe, LeSS, ICP-ACC, etc., to strengthen Agile knowledge;
- Advocates for Technical Excellence: Effectively communicates the benefits of robust technical practices within a multi-team environment;
- Inter-Team Collaboration: Can apply diverse techniques to foster improved collaboration between teams;
- Product & Delivery management knowledge: Experience with, and good understanding of agile product management methodologies and agile delivery management methodologies;
- Technical Competency: Has a strong grasp of the context in technical discussions pertaining to software delivery. Possesses exceptional knowledge of the commonly used tools for organizing and evaluating the performance of your value stream.
Complexity & Problem Solving
- Effective Meeting Facilitator: Can proficiently lead meetings and workshops, fostering collaboration and productive outcomes;
- Conflict Resolution: Demonstrates the ability to navigate and resolve conflicts within teams and across stakeholders;
- Analytical Thinking: Can utilize analytical skills to assess complex problems, breaking them down into manageable components;
- Root Cause Analysis: Can enable the identification of root causes of issues and impediments, developing strategies for effective resolution;
- Innovative Solutions: Proposes innovative and practical solutions and approaches to overcome challenges and improve processes.
Collaboration & Interaction
- Clear Communicator: Can communicate complex concepts clearly, tailoring explanations to the audience's level of understanding;
- Teaching: Facilitates the transfer of Agile knowledge and practices to team members and stakeholders;
- Coaching: Can provide coaching support to individuals focused on continuous improvement, problem-solving, and applying Agile practices;
- Effective Stakeholder Collaboration: Can collaborate effectively with stakeholders across various levels of the value stream to ensure alignment of Agile practices with organizational goals.
