Job description
WHAT YOU'LL DO
BCG’s Digital Products organization is a cross-functional internal organization with strong leadership alignment designed to enable the realization of the benefits of our digital transformation. The organization is set to transform our products, experiences, processes, technology, and ways of working to deliver our clients unrivalled experience of exceptional service, value and flexibility. We are looking for a person to provide the passion and the drive to coach and enable teams and groups to deliver high quality business and customer centric outcomes within our Digital Products organization.
The Scrum Master is change agent that can work with people and teams to help them improve and deliver their best work. You will work closely with Product Owners and be a key player in supporting the work of multiple Squads by partnering with them on effective backlog management, Scrum practices, empiricism, value of scrum roles/events/artifacts and making sure your Squads are practicing true Agile working practices. You will work directly in Squads to advise and oversee performance against KPIs, adherence to Agile practices and opportunities for continuous improvement to help the team work better and smarter. You will be a champion for Agile culture and behaviors, promoting “new ways of working” and Agile principles and practices both at the tribe level and in your squads.
As a Scrum Master, you will:
- Partner with Product Owner to prioritize work through the backlog and other scrum artifacts
- Reviewing sprint progress to ensure the latest work status is captured and updated as appropriate
- Ensuring teams manage work and priorities effectively, all team members are engaged, and all work is captured in the backlog
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Enable Squads to realize their mission and objectives and deliver on their OKRs/KPIs
- Driving members to anticipate and resolve potential blockers (e.g., technical/ people constraints), and ensuring impediments and blockers are removed or escalated as needed
- Ensuring that Squads and Tribes are interacting with dependent stakeholders effectively
- Challenging the status quo when needed and encouraging experimentation and innovation
- Measuring squad performance over time – e.g. value delivered, burn-down charts, cycle time etc.
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Identify continuous improvement opportunities and best practices to progress the work of the squad
- Engaging and partnering with Agile Coaches and Agile CoE to help identify and deliver against training needs to support Agile practices
- Observing and engaging with individual Squad members to identify opportunities to improve Agile performance and effectiveness, bringing a continuous improvement and "MVP" mindset to the Squad’s work
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Work with squads to embed and reinforce Agile practices and behaviors and ensure their maturity
- Working with senior leadership to facilitate and lead Agile ways of working within the squads
- Facilitating Agile sprint ceremonies as appropriate including Sprint Planning, Daily Standups, Sprint reviews, Sprint Retrospectives and backlog refinement
- Providing thought leadership and constructive feedback to team members to help drive Agile maturity, knowledge and effective communication
- Partnering with PO and Agile Coach in coaching the squad to identify practical ways to drive their progress and maturity
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Enable the Organization’s new ways of working and embed Agile principles in the day to day
- Modelling behaviors to support the organization’s transformation to a new way of working
- Assessing squad members and stakeholders in adopting agile ways of working
- Actively curate a culture supportive of continued learning, transparency and empowerment
- Collaborating with other leaders in the Digital Products organization and the Agile Center of Excellence (e.g. Agile Coaches, Scrum Masters) to further drive organizational change
YOU'RE GOOD AT
Living agile culture and values and spreading your passion for them among other teams
- Supporting people, regardless of seniority, to adjust to and embrace scrum ways of working
- Sharing and transmitting passion and in-depth knowledge about Agile principles and are excited to embed them across the organization
- Applying innovative and creative thinking to solve complex problems and get things done
- Bringing a data-driven approach to decision making, both in day-to-day management and in making strategic trade-offs
- Problem solving difficult and complex problems, typically within ambiguous and non-structured settings, and transforming obstacles into big opportunities
- Discerning what is and what is not, influencing others to follow the correct path, even if they want to experiment “different scrum”
- Developing relationships, engaging and influencing stakeholders broadly, including senior leaders, to direct business outcomes
- Communicating with empathy and influencing others broadly within your area of responsibility
- Being an agile role model: you work collaboratively, you show courage, you take responsibility, you have confidence, you speak out, you are creative, and you simplify
- Interacting with others with excellent people management skills: listening, motivating, observing, giving and receiving feedback helping individuals and teams grow
YOU HAVE THE ABILITY TO
- Embed and foster Agile ways of working at the Squad level by enabling effective teaming, and address dependencies and impediments impacting the Squad's work
- Proactively advise, facilitate, and coach your Squads
- Draw on substantial experience working with or as part of Agile teams and be viewed as a subject matter expert on core Agile methodologies and ways of working across the Tribe
- Draw on best practices and develop creative solutions to address challenges facing Squad
- Strategic understanding of how Squad priorities and output impact Tribe, function, and enterprise success; in depth understanding of relevant organizational processes, context, procedures, and systems; and strong understanding of core business and tech concepts driving the Squad's work
- Use experience and training to proactively and independently address challenges facing Squad, with limited support from Agile Coach
- Use data, observation, and analytical skills to proactively identify opportunities for continuous improvement in Squad teaming and delivery, develop proposed solutions, and share knowledge and best practices across Squads
- Devise creative and viable solutions to complex challenges facing Squad, including impediments and inefficiencies with ambiguous causes (e.g., identifying causes of perpetual delays), leveraging the Agile Coach as needed
- Develop relationships of trust with Squad members, Product Owner, and other key stakeholders (e.g., Chapter Leads, other Scrum Masters) to advance the Squad's work
- Proactively and effectively communicate, persuade, influence, and negotiate on behalf of Squad in dealing with Tribe stakeholders to address interdependencies and impediments
- Ability to navigate the wider organization to solve blockers and impediments to enable the Squad's ways of work
- Have developed exceptionally high emotional intelligence and people skills to be able to understand group dynamics and not be afraid to raise issues and drive change to remove impediments from Squads
- Mentor and guide Scrum masters as needed
- Own core accountabilities and decisions
- Refine existing and develop new processes to support the team
- Coach individual Squad members to drive continuous improvement and support new ways of working
- Drive change within Squad and be a top contributor to the Squad's success
YOU BRING (EXPERIENCE & QUALIFICATIONS)
Total 6+ years’ relevant Agile experience (e.g., Scrum Master, Agile Coach/ Mentor) in 1 or more organizations- Agile Certifications, preferably Scrum.org (PSM I + PSM II) or Scrum Alliance (Certified Scrum Master)
- Bachelor's degree in computer science, information technology, or a relevant field preferred
- Deep understanding of agile software delivery, the path to production and other operational aspects
- Deep knowledge of other Agile frameworks (Crystal, XP, DevOps etc.)
- Extensive Experience with JIRA / Confluence or other software to manage agile programs
- Practical knowledge of various coaching tools in team management
- Good understanding of technology enabled business transformation, Digital transformation, Organizational transformation, delivering enterprise-level IT and Digital projects
- Exceptional communications and stakeholder management skills
- Experience in consulting is a plus
YOU'LL WORK WITH
This scrum master role will be responsible for supporting two squads within the tribe/product team. These teams deliver key outcomes of end-to-end cross functional applications focused on a wide range of services. In this role you will work closely with:
- Product Owners and team members to support them in agile ways of working and how to make the most of this new framework
- Other Scrum Masters within BCG, to share best practices and ensure alignment between teams and a culture of sharing and collaboration
- Agile Coaches, with whom you will share passion about Agile ways of working and with whom you will shape promote business agility (within your teams and across the whole company)
Candidates should be aware that BCG currently maintains a policy requiring all US & Canada based employees to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19. Newly hired employees must be fully vaccinated prior to their employment start date. BCG is an equal opportunity employer and will provide a reasonable accommodation to those unable to be vaccinated for medical or religious reasons where it is not an undue hardship to the company to do so as provided under applicable federal, state, provincial and local law.