Agile Delivery Manager

Job Description

Job Description:

This role is transformation-funded and therefore has an expected end date of December 31st, 2026

Background

To deliver on this ambition of a Powered by Data strategy we need an Agile Delivery Manager with deep expertise and experience of agile methodologies and agile coaching to drive the multiple initiatives and lead the change in data and user centric thinking across Mars Snacking.

This is a new job role created due to a team expansion. The role reports directly into the Global Program Management Office and works across teams with cross functional squads comprised of Product Strategy Leads, Product Owners, Data Engineers, Data Scientists and DevOps both internally and externally.

What are we looking for?

We are seeking an Agile Delivery Manager with deep expertise of agile methodologies, long-term product strategy and product lifecycle management experience to drive the multiple initiatives and lead the change in data and user thinking across the entire Mars Snacking business; supporting everything from identifying gaps and understanding and defining the strategy, to owing the delivery and execution of a project at team level through agile ceremonies.

The Agile Delivery Manager is responsible for facilitating and ensuring the Agile framework is followed within the team to deliver quality projects and products on time. Ensuring that the team has everything they need to do excellent work, whether it’s people, processes, or tech, and ensuring any issues impeding delivery are resolved in an appropriate and timely fashion.

As an Agile Delivery Manager, you will be responsible for agile practices within your team, creating an engaging and stimulating environment, enabling them to thrive and delivering great quality and value to our stakeholders. You will also focus on the long-term strategy of the products, understanding the stakeholders and the roadmap, vision, and strategy within your product area/s.

What will be your key responsibilities?

Thought leadership

• Drive thought leadership in Agile delivery operating model
• Promote and curate surpassing motivation that reliably achieves valuable results. Exactly when you convince your colleagues to work all the more steadily, to coordinate, and urge them to go the extra mile to complete every one of their tasks suitably, you will develop a strong and breathed life into a bunch that will widely add to your business advancement.
• Promote user iterative user feedback during development
• Build and sustain strong and trusted relationships with business partners, both internal and external, in support of broader program goals and objectives
• Ability to lead beyond direct and matrix resource management, and ability to work with a geographically dispersed team

Project Management

• Prepare and coordinate project/product governance, manage project/product financials, SOW management and overall project/product administration
• Lead projects/product developments from requirements definition through deployment, identifying schedules, scopes, budget estimations, and implementation plans, including risk mitigation
• Coordinate internal and external resources to ensure that projects adhere to scope, schedule, and budget
• Analyze project status and, when necessary, revise the scope, schedule, or budget to ensure that project requirements can be met
• Establish and maintain relationships with relevant stakeholders, providing day-to-day contact on project status and changes
• Develop and maintain partnerships with third-party resources, including vendors
• Report project outcomes and/or risks to the appropriate management channels and escalate issues, as necessary, according to project work plan

Agile delivery

• Responsible for ensuring the delivery of projects/products, through sprint and release planning, facilitating scrum ceremonies and focusing on continuous improvement.
• Ensure you unblock teams during delivery to ensure we reach goals in a timely manner
• Identifying strategical areas of improvement through talking to the team and stakeholders, ability to figure out solutions to hard problems with many constraints, using sound judgement to assess risks, and to lay out your argument in a well-structured, data-informed way
• Ability to articulate the value of metrics and reporting within agile delivery including backlog management, burndown charts and team velocity
• Ensure fluid and rapid communication in case of issues, scope changes, estimation inaccuracy or any other situations that could have an impact on the delivery of the team.
• Day to day management of the board, improving flow and working with the team to make the most out of utilizing user stories for backlog management. Working with other teams in building the platform backlog.
• Identifying ways to improve ways of working and workflow (by introducing automation if appropriate)
• Working with the tech lead to introduce true DevOps practices and help “close the loop” between users and the development team.
• Help the team highlight value and develop metrics and reports which can be presented to senior managers as to the state of the many parallel projects.
• Assisting in the role out of inner source and aligning agile process with inner source methodologies.

QUALIFICATIONS & COMPETENCIES

Preferred:

• CSM or equivalent Agile certification
• Experience in a scrum master/product owner role delivering projects and products through agile, waterfall and hybrid methodologies.
• Experience in delivering Advance analytics products
• Great at developing new relationships, driving positive change, and highly innovative
• Great at developing new relationships, forming strong stakeholder relationships, thoughtfully communicating, driving positive change, and highly innovative and collaborative
• Experience in strategic project planning, being a project manager owning that full process from ideation to delivery
• Advanced expertise in project management & agile tracking software (Jira/Trello/Monday.com etc)
• Ability to perform analysis and evaluation of projects including resourcing and project financials
• Experience in presentation and the delivery of information at varying levels from clients to the board
• Experience in coaching team members

Not Essential:

• Knowledge of open/inner source methods and ideas
• Working knowledge of DevOps Process
• Knowledge of the Azure Cloud
• Knowledge of Data systems and processes
• A basic understanding of software development and development lifecycle is advantageous.
• Any blend of technical skills (e.g. Python, SQL, HTML etc.) due to the nature of the stakeholders being developers themselves.

What can you expect from Mars?

• Work with over 130,000 diverse and talented Associates, all guided by the Five Principles.
• Join a purpose driven company, where we’re striving to build the world we want tomorrow, today.
• Best-in-class learning and development support from day one, including access to our in-house Mars University.
• An industry competitive salary and benefits package, including company bonus.

#LI-PA1 #LI-Hybrid

Mars is an equal opportunity employer and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability status, protected veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law. If you need assistance or an accommodation during the application process because of a disability, it is available upon request. The company is pleased to provide such assistance, and no applicant will be penalized as a result of such a request.