Position Overview

We are looking for an innovative and experienced Scrum Master (Associate Advisor) to join our Individual and Family Plans engineering team.

Serves as the “servant leader” of the Scrum team by removing impediments and helping the team remain successful and on schedule. Must have a sufficient understanding of technology to enable them to lead team members and help them overcome their development roadblocks; they must also understand business strategy and objectives and be able to ensure that development work is prioritized by business value and results align with objectives. The incumbent provides expert content/professional leadership on complex assignments/projects. Exercises considerable creativity, foresight, and judgment in conceiving, planning, and delivering initiatives. Uses deep professional knowledge and acumen to advise functional leaders. Focuses on providing thought leadership but works on broader projects, which require understanding of wider business. Recognized internally as a subject matter expert on Scrum.

Responsibilities

• Serves as the “servant leader” of the Scrum team by removing impediments and helping the team remain successful and on schedule.

• Provide expert content/professional leadership on complex assignments/projects.

• Exercise considerable creativity, foresight, and judgment in conceiving, planning, and delivering initiatives.

• Use deep professional knowledge and acumen to advise functional leaders.

• Focus on providing thought leadership but works on broader projects which require understanding of wider business. Recognized internally as a subject matter expert

• Exhibit Lean-Agile Leadership and the behaviors of a Lean-Agile Leader with a Lean-Agile mindset.

• Help the team embrace SAFe Core Values, adopt and apply SAFe Principles, and implement SAFe practices

• Facilitate the team’s progress toward the goal and is constantly engaged in challenging the old norms and roles while keeping the team focused on the goals of the iteration

• Monitor and analyze key team performance metrics such as velocity, sprint burndown, and cycle time to identify trends, optimizing processes and drive continuous improvement opportunities in their team’s agile practices.

• Familiarity with product-centric team structures and the product operating model, with an ability to support teams aligned to customer value and product outcomes.

• Help the team focus on daily and iteration goals in the context of the current PI objectives.

• Facilitate all team ceremonies, including the daily stand-up, iteration planning, system demo, and iteration retrospective

• Eliminate Impediments:many blocking issues will be beyond the team’s authority or will require support from other teams.The Scrum Master actively addresses these issues so that the team can remain focused on achieving the objectives of the iteration

• Communicate with Management and outside stakeholders.Helps protect the team from uncontrolled injection of work

• Agile Coach. Coaches and supports the team and those supporting the team in pragmatic, standard, best agile practices

• Work with to identify process improvement opportunities to deliver business value faster.

• Engage and develop the Change Management approach for any standard and best practices which includes but not limited to: direct communications, facilitation of training sessions and automate reporting on adoption of best practices.

• Support shared services (e.g. Cigna Information Protection, Infrastructure Solutions Group) & Business Operational Readiness areas (e.g. Service Operations, Sales, Underwriting) mature their processes to be as lean and efficient as possible.

Required Skills:

• Agile techniques: User Stories, ATDD, TDD, Continuous Integration, Continuous Testing, Pairing, Automated Testing, Agile Games.

• Knowledge of other agile approaches: XP, SAFe, Kanban, Crystal, FDD, etc.

• Applicable knowledge of the technologies used by the team.

• Experience applying a wide variety of well documented patterns and techniques for filling in the intentional gaps left in the Scrum approach (example: numerous Burndown techniques, numerous Retrospective formats, handling bugs, etc.).

• Previous experience as a team lead.

• Excellent communication, coaching and mentoring skills

Required Experience & Education: 

• College degree (Bachelor) in related technical/business areas or equivalent work experience. 

• 8 – 11 years of overall professional experience, with 3–5 years in a Scrum Master or similar Agile delivery role

• Experience in a Scrum Master role for at least two years in a software development team that was diligently applying Scrum principles, practices and theory.

• CSM (Certified Scrum Master)

• SSM (Certified SAFe Scrum Master)

• Second level Scrum Master Certification (CSP, PSM II)

• Experience with vendor management in an onshore/offshore model. 

• Proven experience with architecture, design, and development of large-scale enterprise application solutions. 

Desired Experience:  

• Other industry certifications such as PMP or Six Sigma Green Belt 

• Healthcare experience

About Evernorth Health Services