Scrum Master Jpmorgan Chase & Co.
Plano, TX

Job Description

Scrum Master

Req #: 190039863

Location: Plano, TX, US

Job Category: Technology

Job Description:

Scrum Masters are responsible for ensuring Scrum is understood and enacted by adhering to Scrum theory, practices, and rules. Providing project leadership to cross-functional project teams, and facilitating daily scrum sessions. Scrum masters are responsible for removing obstacles to ensure the team's pursuit of its sprint goals, managing scope and making sure the team remains on task. Our Scrum Masters facilitate the planning process and monitors the team's day to day activity for continuous improvement. This includes daily stand-ups, grooming, review and retro sessions.

RESPONSIBILITIES

* Making sure a Scrum team lives by the values and practices of Scrum


* Coach the team


* Facilitating Sprint Ceremonies


* Helping the Product Owner get the backlog in good shape for the next Sprint


* Facilitate the removal of impediments


* Protects the team from over-committing


* Protects the team from complacency


* Leads the teams efforts towards continuous improvement


* Facilitate developer accountability for readiness of user stories


* Facilitate and run sprint ceremonies


* Maintain team focus throughout sprints on priorities and business value


* Manage all Scrum boards (physical or virtual)


* Manage sprint backlog items and tasks


* Remove obstacles for developers and testers


* Use key Scrum metrics (burndown, velocity) to help deliver committed work


* Empower the team to make system and process improvements captured in sprint retrospective meetings


* Build the team's Agile knowledge and skills


* Foster a culture of continuous delivery


* Conduct accurate capacity planning


* Main motive is to do anything possible to help the team perform at their highest level.


* Enforce agile in the room.


* Make sure everyone in the team equally motivated so that the velocity doesn't dip.


* Not just a manager facilitating the team but a part of the team contributing to the success of the team.


* Set the standards for the team.

Future Release


* Regular meetings with Product and Design to get a peep at their future requirements.


* This will enable me plan the order of items to the backlog and provide the prioritized order to BSA to groom the stories.

Current Release


* Understand each requirement to the core.


* Create a list of all the requirements along with the cross impacted teams to track the delivery (with dates) internally which can help us get an exact status on the release any time.


* Attend all the JADs for the team so that the team can focus on their delivery not the meetings.


* Capture the notes and follow up items from all the JADs and work with Product / other team to discuss the gaps if any.


* Once the delivery dates are published by the backend teams, revisit the stories for that release and reorder them so that the team can deliver the service independent stories during the early sprints of the release to keep the QA engaged and make progress.


* Make sure the team is on track to reach the release goal by closely watching the delivery and defect count.


* Closely monitor the delivery to highlight any delays / issues on the right time and to the right audience.


* Know the players and the right contacts from each team for that release.


* Highlight any design delays and help Product and Design understand the impact of these delays on the release.


* Review the APIs published by the backend teams to identify any gaps between their designs and the requirements so that we can highlight the gaps at the right time and bring them to everyone's notice. This will reduce the possibility of finding the gaps in a service after its implementation.


* After a service is delivered, try to hit the service to make sure it is taking the right set of parameters as agreed in the API and giving the right set of response as published in the API. Check the overall integrity of the service delivered before letting the Dev pick it for integration.


* Publish the implementation plan for requirements when needed to help the Dev team.


* Whenever any gaps identified during the integration, open a dialogue with all the required parties involved to figure if the service can be fixed on time for the release and if it cannot be fixed, analyze the gap and communicate the possibilities to the product whether we can deliver a part of their requirements in this release and get the rest fixed in the next release or postpone the complete requirement to the next.


* Coordinate with QA to make sure that the data is getting conditioned for all the use cases picked for a release in various ITE cycles which might also sometimes decide the order of the stories we pick.


* Make sure we have enough work to keep the team busy in all sprints.


* Start analyzing the requirements from the next release to see if we have any easy picks in case the team is trending towards getting the release scope delivered before the code lock.


* Work towards the success of the team.

Sprint


* Make sure the team has a goal set for that sprint and have stories and defects assigned.


* Try and identify the stories that can be implemented / completed in each week of the sprint, discuss the same with the team and set up weekly goals for the team rather than getting them stuck on the overall sprint goal. That way the team will have less to focus and these weekly goals put some ease on their delivery.


* Continues chat with Product and Design when we identify too many moving parts in a story.


* Facilitate regular (some times daily) desk checks with Product and Design on all the use cases to reduce the last minute VQA issues and design challenges.


* Active participation in demos to document the feedbacks and coordinate any follow up required.


* Make sure the QA is progressing well on daily basis and plan to unblock them in any way possible.


* Analyze each defect raised by the QA and identify the root cause to assign the defect to the right team / developer.


* Represent the team in any environment issue related calls and debug sessions.


* Daily / hourly coordination with BSA to make sure nothing is holding a story from dev or QA.


* Twice a week / adhoc discussions with our teams to run through our ADA implementations for complex use cases (especially when Dev and ADA support teams cannot come to a common agreement for complex use cases)

Processes enforced for the on time delivery

Design:


* All designs required for a release should have a target published by their SM.


* Any deviation from the target delivery dates need to be communicated well ahead so that the Scrum teams can plan accordingly


* The first cut of any design should be reviewed with Product, I and the BSA to confirm if all their thoughts can reach the screen in a release. Their thoughts sometimes mismatch with backend designs and I help them identify those gaps well ahead of time so that they can publish the right designs on time (only for NY scope).


* All designs should be reviewed by ADA support teams before they get published to the scrum teams.


* Know the distinction between the design delivery and scrum delivery.

QA:


* Try to know the requirements before raising the defects.


* Defined a set of details / items that need to be added to a defect before it gets assigned to me. Example, if a screen is failing to load with a service error, get a screenshot of the error log from the phone and attach it to the defect.

Dev:


* QA is part of the team and no different from our fellow developer


* Read the ACs before accepting a story.


* Make sure the ADA and Content tasks are completed before moving a story to QA.


* Planning for ADA is very important for every story.


* Don't get stuck on story points.

BSA:


* No story reaches the scrum backlog until the Design task is completed.


* BSA and SM need to be in synch on every requirement.

QUALIFICATIONS


* We are looking for a certified Scrum Master or at least 2 years working in an Agile environment.


* Exceptional communication skills are essential to be successful in this role as there will be constant collaboration with other departments regarding risk assessment, dependencies and gathering feedback.