We are seeking 6.0 SAFe® Program Consultants to join our team. Have you taught classes remotely? Do you have current industry experience? Are you passionate about help other learn to be SAFe certified? Send us your resume and schedule a call.

Description of Work:

• Establish strategy and approach to transform customer software development from a traditional SDLC methodology to Agile methodology.
• Lead the development and execution plan to support the transformation to Agile methodology, including development of processes, templates, artifacts, training materials, and lessons-learned.
• Lead the efforts of developing Agile software engineering and management best practices, metrics, and audit practices.
• Manage corporate wide Agile software engineering support across customer organization.
• Conduct Scrum team training, scrum of scrums, PI planning sessions, retrospective workshops, and Lean software development workshops for infrastructure teams.
• Establish Agile PMO function and an architectural recommendation review function.
• Develop Agile/Scrum processes, including analysis of existing processes, elicitation of requirements from subject matter experts, and application of industry best practices and standards.
• Analyze and articulate complex subject matter via white papers and presentations, enabling the ease of comprehension by customers and all stakeholders.
• Maintain an in-depth knowledge of customer’s lifecycles, standards, and supporting processes and practices.
• Serves as liaison between client’s Agile Center of Excellence, systems and product teams by sharing best practices and lessons learned for continuous improvement
• Demonstrates strong presentation, facilitation  and written communication skills
• Demonstrates strong ability to communicate technical topics to management and non-technical audiences, as well as interface with the senior technical customers on a daily basis.

Basic Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree and 7 years of relative experience, Master’s degree and 5 years of relative experience, or a minimum of 11 years related experience in lieu of a degree
• Minimum of 4 years of experience in leading/coaching large Agile programs and projects, including extensive experience in leading software development and system deployments.
• Minimum of 3 years of experience in supporting an enterprise wide Agile transformation.
• Minimum of 2 year of experience in conducting Agile team training.
• Active Scrum Master (CSM) certification.
• Must be US Citizen or Lawful Permanent Resident.

Preferred Qualifications: 

• Experience with and understanding of doing business with the federal and state government and healthcare organizations
• Ability to understand technical legacy systems and associated component functionalities.
• Experience with enterprise architecture, application planning, and deployment.
• Experience leading efforts to prepare life cycle documents, including Use Cases, Requirements System Design Alternatives, System Development Plans, Detailed Design Specifications, and Implementation Plans.
• A solid understanding of SSA operations.
• Must have excellent written and oral communication skills.
• Must have experience in dealing with all levels of executives.

Preferred Certifications:

• Certification as an Agile Coach
• Agile Certified Practitioner
• Certified Scrum Master (CSM)
• Certification as a Product Owner  (i.e. CSPO)
• SAFe Program Consultant 5 (SPC 5)
• Project Management Professional (PMP)®, PMI-ACP

We desire an experienced project manager to help oversee this mission-critical modernization project.. The project manager must be able to help coordinate activities and staff schedules and be the driver behind keeping the project on track and on the very strict timeline.

Role Description:

• Direct, administer, manage and facilitate a business process re-engineering or development of a high priority, high profile, commonwealth enterprise – wide information technology project of strategic importance.
• On behalf of the Department of State, provide project oversight and help plan, organize, prioritize, and manage multiple work efforts across the project team.
• Assist in conducting reviews with project steering committee and report status and recommendations to senior leadership as needed.
• Mentor less experienced project management staff to build overall understanding of project management when needed.
• Develop and facilitate achievement of project service commitments.
• Plan project-specific training and orientation needs.
• Accountable for delivery of all work tasks identified in the project management plan.
• Monitor and track the project budget and advise necessary stakeholders.
• Responsible for the capture and reporting of required project management metrics.
• Accountable for the final project management evaluation review with stakeholders

Project Management Plan

• Assist in the development and maintenance of a project management plan
• Review and refine project plan, to identify needs and define major tasks and milestones, based on scope, resources, budget, and personnel.
• Make decisions within the designated authority as defined in the project plan to minimize project risk supported by sound analysis and project management best practices.
• Accountable for management of the project’s scope and gaining agreement and approval of scope changes with project steering committee and affected stakeholders.

Project Schedule

• Develop work planning and scheduling work.
• Manage, and track the project progress against the project schedule.
• Coordinate project schedules across multiple project teams.
• Balance workload with project members’ capacity.
• Monitor project milestones and phases and take corrective action as needed to ensure the project is on schedule.
• Notify team leads of project timelines, milestones, phases, work requests target dates, and approved executable work packages.
• Accountable to schedule or monitor status reviews, project management inspections, and software quality assurance work product and process reviews with the appropriate stakeholders.
• Accountable for peer reviews with the appropriate project team resources.
• Responsible for the development of estimates for the enhancement, business process re-engineering or development effort in planning, analysis, design, construction, testing, and implementation.
• Works with team leads to adjust and revise project estimates when necessary.
• Ensure new project estimates are approved by the client and agreed upon.

Change Requests

• Ensure all changes to scope follow processes outlined in the Change Management Plan and are documented.
• Receive and log all change requests from project stakeholders assisting them with the completion of the form as necessary
• Conduct preliminary risk, cost, schedule, scope analysis of change prior to CCB
• Seek clarification from change requestors on any open issues or concerns
• Make documentation revisions/edits as necessary for all approved changes
• Ensure any approved change is communicated to the project team and stakeholders

Risk Management

• Identify and manage project risk, and develop risk mitigation strategies, and track to closure.

Project Standards

• Coordinate the establishment of project standards and project specific procedures with team leads.
• Responsible for project compliance with project’s standards and procedures.
• Ensure that tasks provide value and support the strategic direction of the project and meet service commitments
• Responsible to tailor and baseline all project templates.

Project Communication

• Serve as the primary point of contact for all project-related issues and resolution of issues.
• Communicate effectively with customers and software / hardware suppliers supporting the commonwealth as appropriate.
• Communicate and work with users and client as necessary.
• Anticipate issues and proactively address them. Identify and track issues.
• Build and maintain relationships with key stakeholders and customer representatives.
• Communicate to team members how their work assignments relate to and help achieve project objectives.
• Prepare status reports on a periodic basis for the project team, team leads, group leads, Sponsor, and appropriate stakeholders.
• Analyze and distribute reports on project metrics associated with work items related to improvement measures.

• Inculcate agile mindset within the team as well as organization through interactions and Coaching
• Deliver various Agile training on Agile requirements, user stories, Agile testing practices and Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe): Leading SAFe, SAFe for Teams, SAFe SM, SAFe PM/PO
• Understand client’s organization structure, business goals.
• Work with the core agile program team to understand the transformation goals, objectives, plans, impediments and dependencies. Work with the client’s PMO to understand the means by which Agile projects can satisfy governance requirements
• Assess the progress level, identify impediments, organize coaching sessions at team and organizational level
• Act as a change agent in bringing agility in thought process thereby improving agile practices and delivering Quality Product Increment
• Ability to lead Organizational Release Trains, Assist / perform role of RTE / Ability of leading PI planning
• Worked in enterprise environment and guided the programs and projects to align in SAFe Program and SAFe Team structure
• Good knowledge on Essential SAFe, Large Solution SAFe, Portfolio SAFe and Full SAFe
• Responsible for coaching waterfall teams and migrating/adapting them to SAFe Team (Scrum/Kanban) and SAFe Program
• Responsible for providing Agile teams with best practices and roadmap to transform into SAFe Teams
• Should be highly proficient in process knowledge, methodologies and People skills to influence teams to create a working environment
• Support implementation of Scrum ceremonies ensuring full team’s engagement.
• Support Product Owner on creating the vision for the product.
• Establish a Constructive working relationship with the Product Owner, Development team, Stakeholders and Sponsors
• Identify people within the organization who could actively contribute to the execution of the new processes and practices
• Facilitates the efforts of multiple teams and the greater organization to employ Agile practices that maximize product delivery and value.
• Train and coaches all scrum team members, clarifying roles and responsibilities and offering motivation and support, as necessary.
• Sets up an Agile COE within the organization to promote the Agile best practices
• Engage the Leadership team for Agile Adoption
• Knowledge of SDLC process, DevOps culture and Tools like Jira Software, Confluence, CA PPM & Jenkins

• Job Description:

  • Works with internal and/or external parties to organize components of a major project.
  • Duties include coordination of schedules and activities, tracking progress, and reporting results.
  • Assist with business and technical requirements by helping to develop requirements traceability matrices and conference room, pilots
  • Facilitate and refine critical processes related to project and program management as well as the software development life cycle (SDLC).
  • Will support all dimensions of project administrative activities and ensure project success for multiple projects under a program as well as the overall program. This will include:
  • Establishing and maintaining project performance metrics and measures.
  • Coordinating the documentation of the project management process.
  • Maintaining the project library housed in SharePoint; Perform budget tracking as needed.
  • Coordinate and track project communications.
  • Maintain the resource allocation of the project schedule while working with a project scheduler.
  • Document and track status meeting minutes and activities.
  • Document and track lessons learned, issues, risks, and dependencies.
  • Support executive-level reporting.

  Requirements:

  • 1-3 years of project management experience.
  • This position requires excellent communication skills and knowledge of project management software.
  • Demonstrated understanding of Project Management principles and practices.
  • Demonstrated understanding of WBS, critical path, dependencies, and milestones.
  • Experience in scheduling using Microsoft Project and/or Clarity, Microsoft Office, and Visio.
  • Experience with tracking project budgets, forecasting, and accruals.
  • Proactive involvement in the management of projects.
  • Excellent understanding of general business practices and process design.