Agile Project Manager/Scrum Master - Manchester, United Kingdom - Pearson Education

Description

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Job Description

Role: Agile Project Manager/Scrum Master

Division: Assessment & Qualifications Delivery

Location: Bangalore or Chennai, India; Manchester, Oxford or Rotherham, UK

Fixed Term Contract (maternity cover) for 12 months with the potential to extend to 18 months

About Pearson: At Pearson we 'add life to a lifetime of learning' so everyone can realise the life they imagine. We do this by creating vibrant and enriching learning experiences designed for real-life impact. Our Purpose | Add Life to a Lifetime of Learning. Pearson was founded in 1844 and has been built on our ability to grow with and adapt to a constantly evolving market. Our 20,000+ employees are dedicated to creating the high-quality, digital-first, accessible and sustainable resources for lifelong learning.

About UK Assessment & Qualifications: We are responsible for the delivery of nearly 4 million examination results per annum, including A-Level, GCSE, BTEC and T-levels for students in UK and International centres. Our in-house systems process every learner from registration to marking and certification, in a highly regulated business. We currently operate a hybrid estate of predominantly bespoke systems, with an ongoing strategic transformation program to migrate from on-prem to cloud based, cost effective, scalable, and resilient services.

The Role

The position is for an Agile Project Manager/Scrum Master, who is responsible for the delivery of projects within our current transformation programme.

About You

We'd ideally like for you to be a qualified Project Manager with significant experience of working on Agile delivery of bespoke software using Scrum or Kanban, however, software delivery experience is more important than Project Management certification.

Key Responsibilities :

As an Agile Project Manager/Scrum Master, you will:

• Project Management of software delivery
• Detailed knowledge & experience of the SDLC
• Detailed knowledge & experience of Agile (Scrum, Kanban) methodologies (CSM or PSM is highly desirable)
• Delivery of projects within a Cloud environment
• Delivery of in-house bespoke systems
• Management of project budgets and resourcing
• Management of project time, cost, quality, and scope
• Proactively manage risks, issues dependencies, incidents/problems, overcome obstacles and get the best value against constraints. Lead the delivery of the weekly, fortnightly, monthly, quarterly, and yearly priorities including regular reporting, managing dependencies, risks, issues and owning and resolving blockers. Report project status, issues, and risks to leadership as needed.
• Define, scope, plan and size the quarterly/yearly priorities with PO and Dev team, identifying dependencies and risk.
• Meeting facilitation, both business & senior stakeholder meetings, and technical team
• Meetings and Agile / Scrum ceremonies.
• Build and maintain motivated teams, making sure there is an iterative plan aligned to the programme roadmap to work towards.
• Ensure teams align, collaborate, communicate, and focus on what is most important.
• Coach team members and others, facilitate continuous improvement and apply the most appropriate agile and lean tools and techniques for their environment.
• Bridge the gap between Product Manager and Product Owner for Product related requirements, managing dependencies and risks and owning and resolving blockers.
• Demonstrate a working knowledge of production operation of systems, including incident management and production changes.
• Collaborate with globally distributed teams.
• Display superb written and verbal communication skills.

Skills required

• Agile and Lean practices : able to identify and compare the best processes or delivery methods to use at scale. Able to recognise when something does not work and encourages a mindset of experimentation. Can adapt and reflect, is resilient and has the ability to see outside of the process. Able to use a blended approach depending on the context. Able to measure and evaluate outcomes. Able to help teams to manage and visualise outcomes. Continuously improve team processes through inspection and adaptation.
• Communicating and Collaboration between the technical and non-technical : able to listen to the needs of technical and business stakeholders and interpret them. Able to manage stakeholders' expectations and be flexible, is capable of proactive and reactive communication. Facilitates difficult discussions within the team or with diverse senior stakeholders.
• Maintaining delivery momentum : able to facilitate the delivery flow of teams at scale, managing the pace and tempo. Able to actively address internal and external risks, issues and dependencies including where ownership exists outside the team.
• Making the process work : able to identify and challenge organisational processes of increasing complexity and those processes that are unnecessarily complicated. Able to add value and can coach the organisation to inspect and adapt processes. Guides teams through the implementation of a new process.
• Planning : understands the environment and can prioritise the most important or highest value work (capabilities, features, stories (incidents, problems)). Able to use data to inform planning. Able to manage complex internal and external dependencies. Able to provide delivery confidence. Able to remove blockers or impediments that affect the roadmap and can develop a plan for difficult situations. Ensures teams plan appropriately for their own capacity.
• Team dynamics and collaboration : able to bring people together to form motivated teams. Able to empower delivery teams. Able to help create the right environment for teams to work in. Recognises and deals with issues. Able to facilitate the best team makeup depending on the situation. Problem-solving mindset with a proactive approach to challenges.

Job Location and Hours

The role is aligned to our Bangalore or Chennai offices in India, working a 45 hour week, or our Manchester, Rotherham, or Oxford offices in the UK, working a 37.5 hour week. Our Rotherham office is located at Junction 1 of the M18.

All our roles are hybrid working; our current policy requires our team to visit their base office no more than once a week, and with the possibility of occasional business travel to other Pearson sites. Candidates must be a suitable commute from their base office as our office presence policy may change to require more frequent presence in 2024.

For this role there is a requirement to provide occasional out of hours support during business critical periods.