Scrum Master
PPL · Allentown, Johnston, Louisville
Company Summary StatementAs one of the largest investor-owned utility companies in the United States, PPL Corporation (NYSE: PPL), is committed to creating long-term, sustainable value for our 3.5 million customers, our shareowners and the communities we serve. Our high-performing regulated utilities — PPL Electric Utilities, Louisville Gas and Electric, Kentucky Utilities and Rhode Island Energy — provide an outstanding experience for our customers, consistently ranking among the best utilities in the nation. PPL’s companies are also addressing challenges head-on by investing in new infrastructure and technology that is creating a smarter, more reliable and resilient energy grid. We are committed to doing our part to advance a cleaner energy future and drive innovation that enables us to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 while maintaining energy reliability and affordability for the customers and communities we serve. PPL is a positive force in the cities and towns where we do business, providing support for programs and organizations that empower the success of future generations by helping to build and maintain strong, diverse communities today.
Overview
NOTE: This role is hybrid requiring 3 days a week in office at one of our locations: Allentown, PA; Louisville, KY or Johnston, RI. #INDPPL LI-Hy
The Scrum Master is accountable for enabling delivery across assigned Agile teams or highly complex, high-risk technical initiatives. The role provides Agile and SAFe coaching opportunities for assigned teams, partners with Product Owners, Release Train Engineers, architects, and delivery leaders, and improves flow, predictability, team maturity, and value delivery across assigned teams or complex initiatives while providing insights to the RTE. The role may also provide expanded team- and initiative-level coordination during testing, cutover, go-live, and hypercare based on the project lifecycle.
Responsibilities
- Coach, mentor, and facilitate the team members to adopt truly Agile mindset, including ownership, self-management and empowerment.
- Coach multiple Agile teams or the most complex and high-risk team; mentor Scrum Masters and Team Coaches; and support onboarding, Communities of Practice, training, and consistent application of fit-for-purpose Agile practices across assigned teams and initiatives.
- Actively participate in and contribute to Communities of Practice by sharing ideas, lessons learned, reusable practices, and improvement opportunities across Scrum Masters and Agile teams.
- Model Lean-Agile leadership and coach the team to become self-organizing, cross-skilled, accountable, and high-performing while fostering team health, collaboration, transparency, and continuous improvement.
- Prepare assigned teams for PI Planning; facilitate team breakout sessions; support the development of team PI objectives; identify risks, capacity constraints, and dependencies; and align iteration goals and team commitments to ART priorities in partnership with the Product Owner and RTE.
- Optimize flow across assigned teams or initiatives using measures such as throughput, predictability, quality, delivery performance, and team health; use data and feedback loops to identify constraints, drive improvement, and provide insights to the RTE.
- Manage and facilitate the scrum team's daily work including execution of Sprint Ceremonies (e.g., Sprint Planning, Daily Stand-up, Sprint Review and Retrospective)
- Facilitate cross-team coordination forums for assigned teams or initiatives to surface dependencies, impediments, and delivery risks; escalate ART-level or organizational constraints to the RTE.
- Capturing and tracking sprint metrics (e.g., team velocity), and being accountable for the continuous improvement of the scrum team
- Create a collaborative environment which allows the team and stakeholders to interact closely.
- Identifying and removing impediments to allow the team to focus on development.
- Help the team identify its strengths and weaknesses.
- Motivating and acting as the glue that holds the team together.
- Project Planning
- Lead planning, delivery recovery, and impediment resolution within assigned teams or initiatives; resolve constraints within the role’s authority and escalate ART-level or organizational constraints to the RTE.
- Identify, manage, and close dependencies affecting assigned teams or initiatives; keep dependency information current in Azure DevOps and escalate unresolved, external, or ART-level dependencies to the RTE, who retains ART-level governance, aging visibility, escalation, and integrated closure oversight.
- Serve as the primary assignee for requester-side dependency work items for assigned teams or initiatives, driving follow-up, status accuracy, validation, and closure in Azure DevOps, and providing aging and escalation inputs to the RTE.
- Participate in SOW reviews as appropriate, supporting Product teams and Supply Chain to ensure alignment with PPL Agile Ways of Working.
- Coordinate completion of technical architecture reviews and collection of SOX and General Audit evidence, as applicable.
- Support delivery planning for assigned initiatives, including schedules, estimates, resource needs, status reporting, scope inputs, risks, and financial information, in partnership with Product, Project Management, Finance, and portfolio stakeholders.
- Delivery and Monitoring
- Support delivery execution for high- to strategic-scale IT initiatives within assigned areas, coordinating team-level work within established scope, schedule, financial, and delivery parameters in partnership with the accountable Product, Project Management, Finance, and portfolio stakeholders.
- Coordinate and communicate critical milestones, delivery risks, and recovery actions for assigned initiatives and provide relevant inputs to ART-level planning and reporting.
- Communicate team- and initiative-level status, risks, dependencies, decisions, and recovery actions to the RTE and relevant stakeholders.
- Support PI Planning, Inspect and Adapt, and other ART events by preparing assigned teams, facilitating team-level activities and breakouts, and leading defined portions when delegated by the RTE. May provide temporary backup coverage for defined RTE activities when formally designated; accountability for overall ART events, delivery, and outcomes remains with the RTE.
- May provide day-to-day coaching and coordination, onboarding support, and practice guidance to assigned staff-augmentation Scrum Masters, in partnership with the RTE or designated people leader. Each contractor must have one designated direct-report owner.
- Coordinate assigned-team and initiative-level readiness inputs and execution support for end-to-end testing, system integration testing, user acceptance testing, cutover, deployment, go-live, hypercare, and transition to steady-state operations. Provide status, risks, decisions, and unresolved constraints to the RTE, who retains accountability for integrated readiness and recovery across the ART.
- Risk Identification, Action Planning, and Analysis:
- Conduct business impact analysis both inside and outside the company and review findings with management of the critical business functions.
- Develop, implement, and administer standards and procedures for recovery planning, security planning and documentation.
- Ensure the effectiveness of recovery and backup capabilities.
- May be assigned an Electric Utilities emergency and storm role. This is a special assignment that comes into play during storms and other emergencies when the company needs to restore power or respond to other issues affecting customer service. This role may necessitate the need to work after-hours, outside of your normal schedule.
- Performs other duties as assigned
- Complies with all policies and standards
Qualifications
Required Education:
- Bachelor's degree.
Required Experience:
- 5+ years of related experience, including 4+ years as a Scrum Master, Agile Team Coach, or comparable Agile delivery role; experience supporting multiple teams or complex technical initiatives; and demonstrated experience mentoring Scrum Masters or leading team- and initiative-level capability improvement.
- 1-2 years Experience leveraging AI, including prompt engineering or agentic AI, to support Agile delivery.
- Strong track record of on-time, on-budget, and to-specification delivery of projects.
- Ability to effectively execute an agile project
- Ability to manage relationships with internal business customer
- Technical aptitude and working knowledge of the software development lifecycle (SDLC) sufficient to support technical projects and facilitate effective coordination across delivery teams.
- Working knowledge of SAFe, Scrum, Kanban, Agile software development, CI/CD, DevSecOps, systems thinking, risk and value realization concepts, and Agile work-management tools including Azure DevOps; proficiency with Microsoft Office, SharePoint/Confluence, and Miro.
Licenses / Certifications / Other Qualifications: | ||||
Licenses/Certifications | Licenses/Certification Details | Time Frame | Required/ | |
Certified Scrum Master (CSM) | Required | |||
Agile Scrum Master (ASM) | Required | |||
SAFe Advanced Scrum Master certification | Advanced certification required for the Senior / Lead role; SAFe RTE, Agile Coaching, or SPC certification preferred. | Required | ||
Preferred Qualifications:
- PMP