Iteration Manager

DIRECTLY REPORTS TO:

Head of Agile Project Management

MAIN AREA OF RESPONSIBILITY:

The Sprout Iteration Manager focuses inwardly on the Agile software development team. He or she is responsible for holding the team together and keeping processes running smoothly. They help them to understand what it means to be both Agile (understanding the Agile best principles, practices, and frameworks) and agile (understanding how to operate and respond quickly as a team). The Iteration Manager enables cooperation across all roles and functions, including collaborating with the product owner and stakeholders, to align team efforts with business objectives to best serve Sprouts customers.

TASKS:

• Tracks and ensures visibility of historical team metrics and progress of the Iteration and release

• Emphasizes the need for incremental releases, iterative work and prioritization by value and risk

• Assists with internal and external communication by transparently radiating information, especially relative to historical team metrics, progress towards Iteration and release goals, and team capacity

• Partners with project leads to ensure the team is producing a solution that meets established standards, procedures and practices

• Collaborates with project leads to aggressively address issues, risks and mitigation plans

• Instills a sense of urgency reflecting the goals for the current iteration, upcoming release, and project vision, while passionately emphasizing the importance of meeting these goals

• Optimizes, increases and sustains throughput; ensuring prioritization of work by value and risk

• Is collaborative in driving decisions and team behavior, guarding against making decisions and assignments for the team and instead creates and environment where teams have the context needed to make the best decision

• Ensures iteration-based meetings are effectively facilitated, the outcomes are achieved and their cadence is maintained

• Assists team with making appropriate commitments through story selection, sizing and tasking

• Proactively identifies and removes blockers, limits work in progress and prevents distractions

• Facilitates frequent retrospectives, sharing metrics to identify and implement improvements

• Identifies, creates and defends opportunities for expediting feedback throughout the iteration

• Participates proactively in developing and maintaining team standards, tools, and best practices

• Applies comprehensive knowledge and a thorough understanding of concepts, principles, and technical capabilities to perform varied tasks and projects

• Contributes to the development of policies and procedures

• Participates on a delivery team with Engineers, Product Owners, Product Systems Analysts and others.

• Perform other duties as assigned by the company

QUALIFICATIONS | COMPETENCIES:

• Must have 2+ years of hands-on Iteration Manager/Scrum Master experience utilizing Agile as the primary methodology

• Must have experience overseeing development teams from 4 - 12 team members

• Must have exceptional written and verbal communication and time management skills

• Must be self-motivated, organized, self-confident and self-directing with a proven ability to identify priorities and mobilize initiatives in an orderly fashion to achieve desired results with minimal supervision

• Must be effective and efficient in identifying and proposing creative, innovative solutions to complex, time-critical challenges

• Must possess excellent situational awareness and an ability to remain calm under pressure and be cognizant of how you are perceived

• Bachelor's in Computer Science or any related course

• 4+ years experience working in a software development role

• Proficiency in Agile development techniques

• Preferred to have direct experience in a .NET, Java, SQL development environment