Scrum Master at Hollard Insurance

• The Scrum Master will be required to work on multiple projects and teams concurrently and manage his/her time effectively. They will be responsible for enforcing the rules of Scrum, removing impediments from their team while promoting self-management and constantly improving our standards of work. A friendly outlook on life with a can-do attitude.

General

• Facilitating getting the work done without coercion, assigning, or dictating the work;
• Facilitating discussion, decision-making, and conflict resolution;
• Ensure all deliverables are delivered on time, within budget, scope and quality (meeting Hollard’s quality guidelines and standards).

Stakeholder Engagement & Communication

• Serve as liaison between product owner, technical and non-technical departments;
• Communicate with other teams e.g. developers, product owners and technical support specialists on product issues;
• Escalate unresolved impediments to IT Management/Project Office to gain traction;
• Communicate Sprint Retrospective actions to management when needed.

Development

• Organize and facilitate project planning, daily stand-up meetings, reviews, retrospectives, sprint and release planning, demos and other Scrum-related meetings;
• Plan and run the various sprint ceremonies for multiple teams;
• Track and communicate team velocity and sprint/release progress;
• Ability to find opportunities and makes recommendations for Process Improvements, maintain Jira/Dev Ops Boards;
• Ensure the development teams are practicing the core agile principles of collaboration, prioritization, team accountability, and visibility.

People leadership

• Participate proactively in developing and maintaining team standards, tools, and best practices;
• Identify and remove impediments or guiding the team to remove impediments, prevents distractions;
• Facilitate discussion and conflict resolution;
• Empower the team to self-organize;
• Assessing the Scrum Maturity of the team and organization and coaching the team to higher levels of maturity, at a pace that is sustainable and comfortable for the team and organization;
• Building a trusting and safe environment where problems can be raised without fear of blame, retribution, or being judged, with an emphasis of healing and problem-solving;
• Guiding the team and organization on how to use Agile/Scrum practices and values to delight customers;
• Guiding the team on how to get the most out of self-organization.

Teamwork

• Build and maintain meaningful relationships with stakeholders;
• Coach and mentor peers/juniors;
• Assisting with internal and external communication, improving transparency, and radiating information;
• Supporting and educating the Product Owner, especially with respect to grooming and maintaining the product backlog;
• Providing all support to the team using a servant leadership style whenever possible and leading by example;
• Guiding the team on self-organizing to fill in the intentional gaps left in the Agile/Scrum frameworks.

Required Knowledge and Experience    
Required Experience

• 3 years Scrum Master experience preferably within Financial Services/Insurance Industry;
• Experience playing the Scrum Master role for at least 3 years for a software development team that was; diligently applying Scrum principles, practices, and theory;
• 3 or more years within a mature PMO environment;
• Must have working experience with cross-functional teams spread across multiple products and locations;
• Experience in the Life Insurance industry preferred.

Required Knowledge and Skills

• Thorough understanding of Agile software development methodologies, values, procedures and SDLC;
• Strong leadership, conflict resolution, analytical and problem solving skills;
• Self-motivated and capable of managing multiple priorities and tasks as delegated;
• Team-player with the ability to work within a collaborative environment;
• Excellent communication & interpersonal skills, ability to work with diverse personality types collaboratively;
• Ability to coach the team to reach their highest potential;
• Creative and efficient in proposing solutions to complex, time-critical problems;
• Ability to deal with multiple projects and deadlines;
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills with a high attention to detail;
• Good skills and knowledge of servant leadership, facilitation, situational awareness, conflict resolution; continual improvement, empowerment, and increasing transparency;
• Good presentation skills.

Educational Requirements    

• Matric;
• Certified Scrum Master;
• First level Scrum Master certification (CSM, PSM I);
• Project Management qualification an advantage;
• Bachelor’s Degree in Information systems, Computer systems design, Computer science, or equivalent.

Closing Date    
2023/05/12