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SalaryYou have a clear vision of where your career can go. And we have the leadership to help you get there. At CNA, we strive to create a culture in which people know they matter and are part of something important, ensuring the abilities of all employees are used to their fullest potential.
CNA seeks to offer a comprehensive and competitive benefits package to our employees that helps them — and their family members — achieve their physical, financial, emotional and social wellbeing goals.
For a detailed look at CNA’s benefits, check out our
For a detailed look at CNA’s benefits, check out our
Candidate Guide
. JOB DESCRIPTION:
The Release Train Engineer (RTE) is accountable for overall Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) execution and delivery of value through the Agile Release Train (ART), while ensuring alignment with company strategy, commitments, and goals. They are a critical link between multiple scrum teams; facilitating communications, opening the flow of information, and sharing important progress updates to ensure all teams involved in the ART are focused on successful delivery. They plan and facilitate the events and processes through the preparation, planning, execution, and learning cycles to continuously improve value delivery and flow. They coordinate with business owners, Product Managers, System Architects, Scrum Masters, and others throughout the Marketing, Distribution and Digital application portfolios.
A coach and mentor, the RTE drives evolution toward business agility within their scope of responsibility and champions the agile mindset and behaviors with all stakeholders. The RTE interacts frequently with internal stakeholders to communicate status, resolve impediments, and facilitate strategic roadmap planning. The RTE navigates the complexity of delivering innovative solutions to our customers and stakeholders consistently in large environments. The RTE has responsibility for supervision/coordination of three to five Scrum Masters and teams of medium to high complexity.
This hybrid role will work from our corporate headquarters in Chicago, IL.
Essential Duties & Responsibilities
Performs a combination of duties in accordance with departmental guidelines:
- Plan and facilitate ART ceremonies: Backlog Refinement, Program Increment (PI) Planning, ART Sync or PO Sync, Scrum of Scrums, System Demos, and Inspect and Adapt.
- Maintain Program Roadmap, backlog, Kanban and ROAM boards; support preparation of program backlog, Architectural Runway backlog, maintenance backlog, innovation backlog, and influence prioritization efforts.
- Facilitate PI Planning readiness by ensuring the synthesis and alignment of the ART vision and roadmap through cadence-based feature prioritization, estimation, and grooming.
- Identify and manage program level dependencies and monitor/escalate impediments for the ART and increment.
- Develop the ARTs “sense of urgency” enabling them to identify their own relentless improvement opportunities. Measure ART delivery, maturity, and performance and review the metrics with the ART to enable continuous improvement opportunities, and optimize the flow of value.
- Manage and communicate program increment status and changes/impacts to the ART's PI plan.
- Lead and promote communication and collaboration within the ART to support value delivery and PI commitment.
- Train and coach the ART teams on Scaled Agile development practices and principles. Guide team member transformation from “doing Agile” to “Being Agile”.
- Teach the Agile ways of working in leading by example to facilitate discussion, decision making, and conflict resolution across teams, stakeholders, and executives, including external teams, business partners, and other ARTs/programs.
- Incrementally build and shepherd the scaled agility mindset, values, principles, and practices across teams, ARTs and the portfolio. RTEs are viewed as the long living coaches on the ART.
- May manage several direct reports, potentially including Scrum Masters, Business Analysts, and other product team members as necessary per ART structure.
- Influence the evolution to business Agility by coaching and guiding all participants within the ARTs as well as stakeholders and leadership in SAFe and Agile practices, including to think beyond day-to-day activities to determine strategic direction and strategy.
- Negotiate and execute the key terms of Statements of Work (SOW), reviewing contract verbiage and costs and providing feedback, ensuring teams are adequately resourced, conducting any needed staffing discussions. RTE should help support management of overall ART annual budget through the SoW negotiations.
- Serve as escalation point for any team-level issues, concerns or capacity / velocity decisions.
- Capture data to provide insight and recommendations to product funding and resource acquisition needs.
- Ensure that the ART adheres to and blends Lean Agile best practices, DevOps and DevSecOps practices, and required internal controls and governance.
- Provide recommendations for continuous improvement of DevOps and DevSecOps practices.
- Be an Agile Champion and thought leader in the RTE Community of Practice helping the organization to maintain alignment, learn new lean Agile and Scaled Agile processes, and improve technical and quality practices. Work with RTE community to determine ways to help ARTs across the company improve cross training and solution group coordination and collaboration.
- Has full management responsibility for the performance and development of subordinate staff, including resource planning, hiring, talent, performance, and career development
May perform additional duties as assigned.
Reporting Relationship
Typically, AVP or above.
Skills, Knowledge & Abilities
Skills, Knowledge & Abilities
- Strong coach and executor, proven across initiatives of medium to high complexity
- Excellent ability to effectively coach, develop, mentor, and inspire others as a Lean Agile Leader to embrace agile ways of working and execute to commitments
- Proven ability to think strategically and develop plans and roadmaps to realize outcomes aligned to organizational strategy using agile methodologies.
- Excellent interpersonal, presentation, verbal, and written communication skills, with the ability to guide and influence internal and external business partners at all levels.
- Proven ability to build and maintain strong collaborative relationships with stakeholders
- Strong ability to resolve conflicts, facilitate discussions, propose viable alternatives, and consider different approaches, then enact change quickly
- Senior-level experience in developing Agile Release Train team members by inspiring, encouraging and providing constructive feedback
- Proven track record of effecting empowerment through servant leadership
- Proven ability to facilitate successful outcomes across Product Management, business stakeholders, Architects, and technical/product teams
Education & Experience
- Bachelor’s or Master’s degree (preferred) Computer Science, Information Technology, or related discipline; or equivalent work experience
- Typically, a minimum of five years as Scrum Master Experience on an ART, or prior Release Train Engineer experience, preferable implementing Agile and SAFe methodologies
- Typically, eight years working within a formal software development lifecycle
- Experience with insurance or finance based products
- Successful track record with Agile and SAFe methodologies
- Applicable certifications preferred – SAFe RTE, SASM, SPC is desirable
- Tool experience of benefit – Jira, Confluence, LucidSpark
- Experience with Marketing and Digital implementation is preferred
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CNA is committed to providing reasonable accommodations to qualified individuals with disabilities in the recruitment process. To request an accommodation, please contact
leaveadministration@cna.com
.
