Scrum Master

Title: Kanban Masters

Job Description:

• The SAFe Kanban Master/Team Coach (KM/TC) is a servant leader and coach. The ideal candidate will work at the team level to ensure the successful implementation of lean-agile values, principles, and team practices while fostering a culture of kaizen, continuous improvement, and flow within a SAFe 6 Agile Release Train (ART).

ESSENTIAL FUNCTIONS

• Coach self-organization, cross functionality, and coordination of effective ART events.
• Strong passion for Kanban and SAFe frameworks guiding development teams to higher team maturity through relentless improvement practices and principles.
• Support the team with empathy by displaying an authentic understanding and concern for a team member’s beliefs or feelings. In turn, the team is more likely to build relationships with others, resulting in higher levels of collaboration and performance.
• Persuades rather than use authority as servant leaders, KM/TCs focus on the needs of team members and those they serve, intending to achieve results aligned with the organization’s values, principles, and business objectives.
• Conflict navigator – Supports team members in resolving interpersonal conflicts, problem-solving, and decision-making.
• Mentor – Supports the personal development of team members, helping them gain a continuous learning mindset. They guide the team to find solutions to their problems independently instead of being given the answers.
• Help the team provide transparency by ensuring artifacts are inspected, identifying significant differences between expected and actual results, and detecting anti-patterns.

KANBAN KNOWLEDGE AND EXPERIENCE

• Highly experienced with the practices and principles of Kanban and able to explain the differences between Kanban, Scrum, and SAFe.
• Facilitate the adoption and effective use of Kanban principles, practices, and techniques at the team level.
• Facilitate effective SAFe Kanban team events, including stand-ups, backlog refinement/ queue replenishment and kaizen/retrospectives focused on flow improvement
• Good knowledge of Kanban techniques and SAFe 6 practices including, but not limited to definition of done, user story refinement, automated testing, backlog refinement and replenishment, PI Planning,
• Collaborate with team members, Release Train Engineer, product owner, and product manager to establish and maintain Kanban boards, Work In Progress (WIP) limits, pull policies/agreements and classes of service.
• Coach bottleneck identification and flow efficiency strategies.
• Educate team members on key Kanban metrics (e.g., cycle time, lead time, throughput, CFD) and use them to drive data-informed decision-making

SAFe 6 KNOWLEDGE AND EXPERIENCE

• Participate in the ART Events with the team, ART Syncs, PO Syns, Coaching Syncs, Inspect and Adapt helping the team identify kaizen opportunities across the team/ART
• Foster alignment between team-level Kanban practices and PI level objectives within
• Act as a change agent to promote SAFe 6 Lean-Agile principles and values, ensuring a focus on delivering customer value.
• Guide the team in identifying and addressing bottlenecks, dependencies, and risks. Support the team in building a culture of continuous learning and improvement.
• Collaborate with PO, RTEs, PMs, and other stakeholders to share SAFe 6 and Kanban best practices and remove team systemic impediments.

MINIMUM QUALIFICATIONS

• Typically, a minimum of 8 years as an agile Kanban teams and a bachelor’s degree or equivalent combination of related work experience and schooling in lieu of degree; Advanced degree and 5 years related work experience.
• Proven experience as a team Kanban Coach in a SAFe 6 environment
• Demonstrated understanding of Kanban, Scrum, agile methodologies and SAFe
• Ability to prioritize and make data-driven decisions
• Strong problem-solving and analytical skills
• Experience with Jira Software, Confluence, Lucid Charts, Jira Align, Agility Health

MINIMUM KNOWLEDGE, SKILLS, AND ABILITIES

• Valid Active Certification in Kanban (e.g., KSD, TKP or equivalent)
• Valid/Active SAFe Scrum Master (SSM 6)
• Strong analytical skills and experience in Kanban and data-driven coaching
• Background in coaching teams transitioning from Scrum to Kanban

COMMUNICATIONS AND INTERPERSONAL SKILLS

• Exceptional interpersonal and communication skills, with the ability to influence and coach at team level. Must have excellent oral and written communication and presentation skills.
• Demonstrated ability to foster collaboration, transparency, and trust within and across teams.