Position Summary:
The Release Train Engineer’s (RTE) purpose is to create the highest performing Release Train possible. To accomplish this, the RTE serves as a servant leader and coach for the Agile Release Train (ART). They ensure the smooth operation of ART events and practices and assist Agile Teams in their success. The RTE facilitates communication with stakeholders, problem-solving, and risk management. The RTE also manages impediments and fosters continuous improvement. They are integral to the ART leadership, collaborating with Product Management, the System Architect, and Business Owners to achieve effective outcomes on the ART. Beyond the ART, RTEs aid in the broader Lean-Agile transformation by coaching leaders and teams across the organization.
What You’ll Do:
- Valuing Differences - Works effectively with individuals of diverse cultures, interpersonal styles, abilities, motivations, or backgrounds; seeks out and uses unique abilities, insights, and ideas. Considers the collective.
- Collaboration - Works cooperatively within teams and partners with others, both internally and externally as needed, to achieve success; focuses on the results of the team, not the achievements of one person. It’s “All for One and One for All”
- Accountability - Accepts personal responsibility and/or consequences of failure and successes, delivering on commitments and refocusing effort when needed. Someone who is willing to step up and own it.
- Time Management - Effectively manages personal time and resources to ensure that work is completed efficiently.
- Developing Trust - Gains others’ confidence by acting with integrity and following through on commitments; treats others and their ideas with respect and supports them in the face of challenges.
- Takes Initiative - Takes prompt action to accomplish goals and achieve results beyond what is required; is proactive and pursues relentlessly.
Required Skills:
• Ownership of ART level delivery health metrics (PI predictability, feature readiness, flow efficiency) in partnership with Pod leader(s)
• Actively manage cross value stream dependencies
• Coaching Pod/team leaders
• Establishing and facilitating the all-ART meetings and forums as well as the ART Leadership collaboration forums
• Compiling ART Data and performance summary artifacts
• Fostering lean-agile principles and practices with the ART Leadership Team
• Adapt tools (e.g. Azure DevOps (ADO Nooga Scale is a nice to have), Rally, M IRO, MS Teams, PointingPoker, Mentimeter, Ideaboardz, etc.) to plan, execute, and monitor and control the ART as well as leverage for continuous improvement.
• Knowledge Expectations
o Practical knowledge in the following areas
Coaching
Create a Safe Environment, Get Permission, Meet Them Where They Are, Active Listening, Ask Powerful Questions, Promote Self-Organization, Facilitate Continuous Improvement, Build Trust and Relationships, Encourage Experimentation
• Change Management (Key Elements):
o Leadership Alignment, Stakeholder Engagement, Communication, Training and Development, Change Impact and Readiness Assessments, Organizational Design, Monitoring and Managing Resistance, Celebrating Success, Review, Revise, and Continuously Improve
o Servant Leadership
o Wanting to serve the team
o Growth and well-being of employees and stakeholders.
o Helping individuals grow.
o Delivery Physics
o Flow Accelerators, Theory of Constraints, Queuing Theory, Toyota Production System
o Behavior Science
o Small Group Theory: Size, Structure, Common Purpose, Mutual Influence, Shared Identity, Communication, Interdependence, Cohesion, Norms, Roles.
o Team Lifecycle, Team Dysfunctions