Agile Coach

Position Title: Agile Coach

Location: Aberdeen, MD

Reports To: Program Manager

Job Type: Full-time

Clearance Requirement: US Citizenship required with the ability to obtain a government security clearance.

Summary:

This role is responsible for bridging the gap between high-level agile strategies and the practical implementation and team execution of continually evolving methodologies and processes.

The Agile Coach is a dedicated servant leader whose primary mission is to unlock the diverse potential of individuals and teams by fostering an environment of psychological safety, mutual respect, and shared purpose. By understanding the unique motivations and challenges of team members and stakeholders, an Agile Coach acts as a mentor, facilitator, and bridge-builder, clearing impediments so that teams and program leadership can focus on what they do best: rapidly and continuously delivering meaningful value to customers and stakeholders.

Key Responsibilities:

At Luf Co, “Agile” is not a ‘thing' we do, it's the way we do everything.

Agile Servant Leadership and Coaching

• Facilitate and document continual improvement by teaching Agile and Lean-Agile mindsets, leading quarterly "Inspect and Adapt" cycles, and designing unique Retrospectives that engage critical introspection and which result in accountable SMART goals; foster a culture of Kaizen where small, incremental changes are validated through continuous feedback and analysis
• Act as the steward of agility for the program, exemplifying and advocating for the 12 Principles of Agile Software Development and the 10 SAFe Lean-Agile Principles. Evolve and expand these principles to include hardware-focused and hybrid HW/SW projects.
• Provide 1-on-1and team professional development, mentorship, and coaching to new hires, Scrum Leaders, Product Owners/Managers, Resources Leads, Release Train Engineers (RTEs), and customers and stakeholders as requested/required
• Manage, train, and develop all program Scrum Leaders and assist them where needed by monitoring and/or facilitating Agile Team Events
• Encourage and promote all team and company best practices

Practical Implementation of Agility

• Design, organize, and launch Agile Release Trains (ARTs) and Agile teams using Scrum, Kanban, and Hybrid methods based on the specific needs of the team or program. Balance and coalesce Agile delivery cycles with rigorous government compliance, reporting, and milestone/event requirements without sacrificing agility
• Lead the preparation and implementation of large, hybrid Program Increment (PI) Planning workshops, Inspect and Adapt (I&A) workshops, and leadership and improvement focused sessions to include Scrum of Scrums, Sprint Reviews, and team-based Technical Deep Dives.
• Identify and eliminate bottlenecks in the delivery pipeline to reduce lead time and improve the flow of value, establishing clear and consistent direction for program teams via value stream mapping
• Monitor, compile, analyze, and present qualitative feedback and data-driven insights to identify systemic impediments and to evaluate improvements, providing program leadership with critical information to drive decision-making and evaluation of KPIs and OKRs.
• Own and update all program documentation related to Agile best practices

Tool Administration

• Atlassian Suite Administration
  • Act as the primary administrator for Jira, Confluence, and Jira Service Desk software in both Cloud and Data Center implementations, operating instances deployed in secured, virtual environments.
  • Configure, optimize, and maintain complex custom Jira workflows, automations, schemes, permission structures, etc. in order to create custom project and board configurations
  • Develop automated reporting dashboards (within Jira and via custom platforms using data from the Jira API) and Advanced Roadmaps to provide real-time visibility into individual and team velocity, flow, burn-up/down charts, and program predictability metrics
• GSuite Administration
  • Create, organize, and maintain multiple Groups, Calendars, and Drive file structures to include permissions management. Requires Sheets, Docs, and Slides familiarity.
• Communication Tool Administration
  • Manage combined…