What are the responsibilities and job description for the Agile Coach position at American Century Investments?
About Us
American Century Investments® is a leading global asset manager with over 65 years of experience helping a broad base of clients achieve their financial goals. Our expertise spans global equities and fixed income, multi-asset strategies, ETFs, and private investments.
Privately controlled and independent, we focus solely on investment management. But there’s an unexpected side to us, too. We direct over 40% of our profits every year—more than $2 billion since 2000—to the Stowers Institute for Medical Research. Our ongoing financial support drives the Institute’s breakthrough work and mission of defeating life-threatening diseases like cancer and Alzheimer’s. So, the better we do for our clients, the more we can do for everyone.
All 1,400 of us across the globe are inspired every day by the unique difference our hard work can make in so many lives. It shows in the curiosity we bring to every initiative, the deep relationships we build with our clients, and the way we treat each other in the hallway. If you’re excited to learn more about us, we can’t wait to learn more about you.
Role Summary
The Agile Coach acts as a guiding leader and advisor within the organization. The role includes training and coaching at all organizational levels on the lean and agile approach, values, principles, and practices. Additionally, they oversee the development of value networks and agile teams to ensure effective outcomes. They are accountable for guiding new and existing teams through the implementation process and influencing leadership and teams to understand and adopt an agile mindset.
Additionally, the Agile Coach must possess outstanding communication and interpersonal skills and have experience working with senior executives in both business and technical functions. They must also demonstrate a strong understanding and experience in implementing various agile scaling approaches.
This hybrid position will be based out of our Kansas City, MO office.
How You Will Make an Impact
Employees are required to be in the office on a scheduled frequency. Adherence to this schedule is essential to fulfilling the expectations of the role.
American Century Investments is committed to complying with the Americans with Disabilities Act and all other applicable Equal Employment Opportunity laws and regulations. As such, American Century strives to provide a reasonable accommodation to any qualified individual under the ADA to perform essential job functions.
We encourage people of all backgrounds to join us on our mission. If you require reasonable accommodation for any aspect of the recruitment process, please send a request to HR-Talent_Acquisition@americancentury.com. All requests for accommodation will be addressed as confidentially as practicable.
American Century Investments believes all individuals are entitled to equal employment opportunity and advancement opportunities without regard to race, religious creed, color, sex, national origin, ancestry, physical disability, mental disability, medical condition, genetic information, marital status, gender, gender identity, gender expression, age for individuals forty years of age and older, military and veteran status, sexual orientation, and any other basis protected by applicable federal, state and local laws. ACI does not discriminate or adopt any policy that discriminates against an individual or any group of individuals on any of these bases.
American Century Proprietary Holdings, Inc. All rights reserved.
American Century Investments® is a leading global asset manager with over 65 years of experience helping a broad base of clients achieve their financial goals. Our expertise spans global equities and fixed income, multi-asset strategies, ETFs, and private investments.
Privately controlled and independent, we focus solely on investment management. But there’s an unexpected side to us, too. We direct over 40% of our profits every year—more than $2 billion since 2000—to the Stowers Institute for Medical Research. Our ongoing financial support drives the Institute’s breakthrough work and mission of defeating life-threatening diseases like cancer and Alzheimer’s. So, the better we do for our clients, the more we can do for everyone.
All 1,400 of us across the globe are inspired every day by the unique difference our hard work can make in so many lives. It shows in the curiosity we bring to every initiative, the deep relationships we build with our clients, and the way we treat each other in the hallway. If you’re excited to learn more about us, we can’t wait to learn more about you.
Role Summary
The Agile Coach acts as a guiding leader and advisor within the organization. The role includes training and coaching at all organizational levels on the lean and agile approach, values, principles, and practices. Additionally, they oversee the development of value networks and agile teams to ensure effective outcomes. They are accountable for guiding new and existing teams through the implementation process and influencing leadership and teams to understand and adopt an agile mindset.
Additionally, the Agile Coach must possess outstanding communication and interpersonal skills and have experience working with senior executives in both business and technical functions. They must also demonstrate a strong understanding and experience in implementing various agile scaling approaches.
This hybrid position will be based out of our Kansas City, MO office.
How You Will Make an Impact
- Coach and mentor business and technical collaborators, Product Managers, Product Owners, Scrum Masters, Agile teams, and team managers to improve value-based prioritization, backlog refinement practices at portfolio and product levels, Flow metrics, software engineering practices, release planning, and Agile ceremonies and practices.
- Mentor Agile teams, Leaders, and Collaborators on Agile values, principles, and practices with an emphasis on Kanban and Lean thinking.
- Develop appropriate improvement and coaching plans to empower technical leadership and managers to build and sustain self-organizing teams.
- Deliver Lean and Agile training to all levels of the organization.
- Facilitate continuous reflection and improvement among teams, growing their efficiency, predictability, collaboration, and quality practices.
- Cultivate Communities of Practice to strengthen skills and encourage knowledge sharing within the organization.
- Train and coach teams on various methodologies (Scrum, Kanban, XP, etc.).
- Establish and implement metrics to optimize team delivery and measure business agility in terms of predictability, reliability, and adaptability.
- Support an enterprise Agile COE with consistent training and coaching available across the organization.
- Bachelor’s degree or equivalent, or have related work experience.
- Deep knowledge of Agile software engineering practices.
- Certified Agile Coach (ICP-ACC).
- Certification in Kanban (e.g., Kanban Management Professional, Kanban Coaching Professional) or Lean practices.
- Strong communication, change management, and problem solving skills.
- Skilled in presenting to large groups and have the ability to hold the audience's attention.
- Deep experience in coaching and training Lean and Agile approaches for medium-sized organizations.
- Adaptive coaching style with the ability to work with individuals at various levels and in across different locations.
- Experience leading or developing solutions for change initiatives.
- Demonstrates the American Century Investments Winning Behaviors: Client Focused, Courageous and Accountable, Collaborative, Curious and Adaptable, Competitively Driven.
- A certification in Organizational Change Management (Prosci, Certified Change Management Professional (CCMP)).
- Competitive compensation package with bonus plan
- Generous PTO and competitive benefits
- 401k with 5% company match plus annual performance-based discretionary contribution
- Tuition reimbursement, formal mentorship program, live and online learning
Employees are required to be in the office on a scheduled frequency. Adherence to this schedule is essential to fulfilling the expectations of the role.
American Century Investments is committed to complying with the Americans with Disabilities Act and all other applicable Equal Employment Opportunity laws and regulations. As such, American Century strives to provide a reasonable accommodation to any qualified individual under the ADA to perform essential job functions.
We encourage people of all backgrounds to join us on our mission. If you require reasonable accommodation for any aspect of the recruitment process, please send a request to HR-Talent_Acquisition@americancentury.com. All requests for accommodation will be addressed as confidentially as practicable.
American Century Investments believes all individuals are entitled to equal employment opportunity and advancement opportunities without regard to race, religious creed, color, sex, national origin, ancestry, physical disability, mental disability, medical condition, genetic information, marital status, gender, gender identity, gender expression, age for individuals forty years of age and older, military and veteran status, sexual orientation, and any other basis protected by applicable federal, state and local laws. ACI does not discriminate or adopt any policy that discriminates against an individual or any group of individuals on any of these bases.
American Century Proprietary Holdings, Inc. All rights reserved.
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