Agile Coach - Hybrid

Awarded a Healthiest Employer, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Arizona aims to fulfill its mission to inspire health and make it easy. AZ Blue offers a variety of health insurance products and services to meet the diverse needs of individuals, families, and small and large businesses as well as providing information and tools to help individuals make better health decisions.

We are hiring for a future start date of 1/1/2025.

This position is hybrid within the state of AZ only.  This hybrid work opportunity requires residency, and work to be performed, within the State of Arizona.

PURPOSE OF THE JOB

The Agile Coach is a highly skilled facilitator and expert in Agile, Scrum, Kanban, and SAFe practices. This individual will train, coach, and lead their team to support business leaders across the company to adopt the values, principles, and best practices of Agile.  The goal is to enable self-organized, high-performance teams that consistently improve delivery of customer value and business outcomes.

The Agile Coach will advocate new ways of doing things, challenge conventional wisdom by introducing and demonstrating proven Agile and quality improvement methodologies. Through coaching, mentoring, and facilitation of improvement sessions, the Agile Coach will work directly and effectively in matrix organization with teams and key stakeholders to identify process improvements opportunities with measurable outcomes.

REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS

Required Work Experience

• 5 years of experience as an Agile Coach, coaching multiple teams
• 7 years of experience implementing large Agile projects in varying size and complexity
• Proven experience in organizational Agile transformation at a large-scale enterprise
• 5 years of experience with process analysis and driving transformation efforts that result in sustained, on-going process improvement and culture change
• 5 years of facilitation experience
• 5 years of experience with coaching and influencing teams
• 7 years of project management experience
• 7 years business operational experience

Required Education

• High School Diploma or GED Equivalent

Required Licenses

• N/A

Required Certifications

• N/A

PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS

Preferred Work Experience

• 1 years of experience with scaled agile framework
• 3 years of experience as an Agile coach, coaching multiple teams
• 5 years of experience implementing large enterprise Agile projects in varying size and complexity
• 3 years process management experience with a proven track record managing process improvement and teams
• 3 years of experience in Lean/Six Sigma field

Preferred Education

• Bachelor’s degree in business or related field

Preferred Licenses

• N/A

Preferred Certifications

• Professional Facilitator certification such as MG Rush facilitation certification
• Agile certification such as Agile Certified Practitioner, Kanban Coaching Professional, Kanban Management Professional, SAFe Program Consultant
• Lean certification
• Lean Six Sigma Black Belt certification
• Rapid Process Improvement Facilitator certification

ESSENTIAL JOB FUNCTIONS AND RESPONSIBILITIES

• Train, coach, and mentor Agile (Scrum/Kanban) teams and business leaders in Agile concepts and how to apply them, coach many teams simultaneously
• Foster a team environment of self-organization, retrospect to continuously learn and improve, with the goal of delivering the highest value to our customers, employees, and the business
• Implement the organizational change management component to ensure successful adoption and institutionalization of new ways of working to drive quality and team productivity
• Facilitate quality, service, and team dynamics improvement sessions such as retrospectives, Lean sessions, and team building events as needed. Identify, suggest, and collaborate with teams on measurable improvements
• Assist teams in identifying areas of opportunity, defining process changes to incorporate good practices into current processes and solutions to address service delivery improvements and quality/performance outliers
• Participate in or lead complex problem-solving activities to define problems, assess current state root causes, design, and test solutions, and implement solutions leading to desired outcomes
• Help identify and address organizational impediments which limit team productivity and quality
• Liaise with management, remove blockers, escalate issues, and assist teams in grooming/ prioritizing the workload.
• Anticipate and mitigate risks and issues, address challenges and escalate to appropriate parties where required
• Partner and proactively communicate across multiple groups to facilitate transparency and gain buy in
• Coach business leaders to understand Agile and change the way they engage with Agile teams to ensure more value is delivered to the organization
• Be agile in the implementation of Agile - build, test, iterate with a goal of continuous improvement
• Build, lead and motivate a strong team of Agile coaches
• Define, publish, and educate the organization on key metrics that show the progress of the transformational effort (Agile maturity, value delivery and team effectiveness), and its benefit to the organization
• Communicate with management at all levels regarding the progress of Agile transformations and service delivery improvements within their teams
• The position requires a full-time work schedule.  Full-time is defined as working at least 40 hours per week, plus any additional hours as requested or as needed to meet business requirements
• Perform all other duties as assigned.

REQUIRED COMPETENCIES

Required Job Skills

• Experience with Agile, Lean, Kanban, and Scrum practices, including planning, stand ups, story boards, backlogs, burndown charts/velocity metrics and retrospectives
• Proven facilitator that can lead sessions and workshops driving commitments, accountability, and deliverables
• Effective and efficient trainer that inspires students with a proven ability to teach new concepts to challenging audiences
• Advanced planning, project management and program management skills; proven knowledge and experienced in project delivery
• Proficiency in process improvement and business process design
• Proficiency in processing mapping at both a high and detailed level
• Proficiency in value stream mapping
• Demonstrated exceptional critical thinking, strategic planning, and process management skills
• Strong analytical skills.  Ability to conduct data analysis, process analysis, and root cause analysis
• Intermediate proficiency in spreadsheet, database, and word processing software

Required Professional Competencies

• Solid coaching techniques and mentoring skills; ability to inspire, motivate and train teams and individuals to pragmatically use new practices and techniques that deliver results
• Open minded, creative, courageous to ask the tough questions
• Excellent interpersonal skills. Must be articulate and able to communicate effectively with employees at all levels across the organization, from front-line worker to executives
• Excellent communication skills in written and spoken form
• Experienced in solving problems analytically, creatively, and collaboratively; thinks about customer and employee needs when evaluating process and possible solutions
• Lead with confidence - thought leaders who empower those around them
• Excellent organizational and time management skills
• Conceptual and tactical planning skills
• A self-starter possessing a high degree of self-motivation
• Ability to multi-task and manage multiple priorities, balancing individual work and group collaboration
• Maintain confidentiality and privacy

Required Leadership Experience and Competencies

• Leadership and matrix management skills
• Passionate about assisting teams to reach their full potential
• Ability to motivate and empower associates at all levels and encourage innovation and risk taking.
• Ability to engage relevant stakeholders across functions to mitigate team impediments and manage occasionally competing interests
• Ability to work with others collaboratively in a constantly changing environment.
• Advanced customer relationship management skills
• Demonstrates political awareness and a proven track record of building effective working relationships with senior level business partners both internally and externally

PREFERRED COMPETENCIES

Preferred Job Skills

• Advanced facilitation skills
• Strong data mining skills
• Knowledge of statistical concepts and capabilities.
• Proficiency in value stream mapping
• Knowledge of healthcare industry
• Advanced proficiency in spreadsheet, database, and word processing software

Preferred Professional Competencies

• Thorough knowledge of the company’s needs, policies and culture

Preferred Leadership Experience and Competencies

• Ability to lead others in the same or higher levels to a valuable solution that may be novel or have no known set precedence in the customer experience or operational outsourcing areas 

Our Commitment

AZ Blue does not discriminate in hiring or employment on the basis of race, ethnicity, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, disability, protected veteran status or any other protected group.

Thank you for your interest in Blue Cross Blue Shield of Arizona.  For more information on our company, see azblue.com.  If interested in this position, please apply.