Scrum Master

The Liberty Mutual Reinsurance (LM Re) technology team is seeking a Scrum Master to support the transformation of our global Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Underwriting Workflow solutions on the Salesforce platform. The new cloud-based, fully integrated solution will allow Underwriters and Actuaries to move away from pricing on teamspecific tools and enable enhanced risk decision-making through improved data aggregation, global pricing consistency and greater efficiency. The project is one of several high-profile investments aimed at transforming the LM Re business capabilities through people, process, data & technology change.

Reporting to the Head of Technology, and working as part of an Agile team, the Scrum Master will support the portfolio, ensuring business needs are understood and met.

About the Department & Team

Led by the Chief Information Officer, delivers innovative solutions and capabilities that leverage our technical expertise, business understanding and partnerships to enable market-leading performance across the organisation.

Global Technology teams collectively deliver innovative solutions and capabilities that leverage our technical expertise and business understanding and partnerships to enable market-leading performance world-wide. The team is made up of Product Owners, Scrum Masters, Application Support, Development & Testing expertise who deliver day to day 'Business as Usual' support, enhancements, and new applications. The Portfolio supports the Claims and Distribution business teams via strong partnerships. The applications in scope are used in offices from Latin America to across Europe and the Middle East, through to Lloyd's China.

The Team works closely with other portfolios, US based Global Risk Solutions teams and Central IT Teams including Development, Testing, Change Management and Incident Management. Liberty follow Agile practices globally.

Key Responsibilities

• Working with the Delivery Lead, to support the delivery of claims initiatives which contribute to the strategy and growth priorities

• Coaching the scrum team and organisation on how to use Agile/Scrum practices mentoring staff on the new ways of working as required, and ultimately owning the process to deliver value to business customers

• Supporting, educating and coaching Product Owners, especially on prioritisation, backlog creation, backlog refinement and their role in the Scrum team

• Plan, organise and facilitate the relevant Agile Ceremonies as required e.g. Daily Scrums, Sprint Planning, Sprint Reviews and Retrospective.

• Support the preparation of the 90/30 day events such as quarterly planning and portfolio reviews

• Guiding the team on self-organisation to fill in the intentional gaps left in the Agile/Scrum frameworks

• Ensure agile anti patterns are raised and discouraged

• Support the team in continuous improvement

• Assess the Scrum Maturity of the team and organisation by coaching the team to higher levels of maturity, at a pace that is sustainable and comfortable for the team and organisation

• Removing impediments or guiding the team on how to remove impediments

• Support building a trusting, safe and fun environment where problems can be raised openly with an emphasis on honesty and problem-solving

• Assisting with internal and external communication, improving transparency, and socialising information to the wider team

• Working with other teams to help ensure the new way of working is understood and integrated with other processes/reporting as needed

Skills and Experience

• Experience in playing the Scrum Master role diligently applying Scrum principles, theory and practices, across multiple Agile teams

• Experience coaching Product Owners

• Proven delivery capability, supported by specific examples

• Good skills and knowledge of facilitation, situational awareness, conflict resolution, continual improvement, empowerment, and increasing transparency

• Scrum approach e.g. Velocity and Burndown reporting, Retrospective formats, handling bugs in the Product Backlog

• A clear understanding of the difference between Epics, Features and User Stories

• Knowledge of different Agile approaches: Kanban, Lean etc. and Agile tools e.g. JIRA • Awareness and experience with widely used Agile techniques: User Stories, TDD, Continuous Integration, Continuous Testing, Pairing, Automated Testing, Agile Games

• Applicable knowledge of the development technologies used by Agile development teams

• Excellent communication and mentoring skills

• A relevant certification in Agile e.g. Certified ScrumMaster or PMI Agile Certified Practitioner

Key Performance Indicators

• Successful implementation of Agile and acceptance both within the team and the wider Digital team

• Business benefit evidenced and accepted by the Delivery Lead, business Product Owners and other stakeholders

• Positive acceptance of new practices within the development team (morale should be neutral/positive)

• Delivery of fully tested and successfully claims initiatives within agreed Sprints

• Producing long term predictability

• Good quality analysis/design documents and up to date Product Backlog

• Smooth transition of changes from development to production

• Compliance with the organisation's control policies and procedures