Role Summary
The Agile Coach – AI PMO will serve as a senior Agile and delivery excellence leader, responsible for coaching teams, programs, and leaders on scaled Agile delivery (SAFe) while acting as a deep subject matter expert in Azure DevOps (ADO) and Azure Boards.
This role partners closely with AI product, engineering, data, and analytics teams to establish consistent Agile ways of working, ensure disciplined execution, and enable predictable delivery across a complex, multi-team AI portfolio. The Agile Coach will balance hands-on ADO governance, SAFe-based coaching, and organizational change leadership to drive maturity, alignment, and outcomes at scale.
Key Responsibilities
Agile & SAFe Coaching
- Coach delivery teams, Product Owners, Scrum Masters, and leaders on Agile principles, SAFe practices, and lean delivery mindset across team, program, and portfolio levels.
- Support Program Increment (PI) planning, execution, and inspect & adapt events; coach teams on effective backlog refinement, sprint execution, and retrospectives.
- Guide teams in applying Scrum, Kanban, and SAFe appropriately based on delivery context, maturity, and AI development needs.
- Identify systemic delivery impediments and partner with leadership to drive continuous improvement and organizational change.
Azure DevOps & Azure Boards Leadership
- Serve as the primary Azure DevOps (ADO) and Azure Boards SME across the AI PMO portfolio.
- Own and govern Azure Boards configurations end-to-end, including work item types, hierarchies (Epics → Features → Stories → Tasks), area/iteration paths, boards, backlogs, sprint planning, and delivery plans.
- Establish and enforce standards for naming conventions, tagging, sprint hygiene, workflows, and definition-of-done across teams.
- Conduct Azure DevOps health checks and lead remediation efforts for non-compliant or ineffective configurations.
Standards, Enablement & Change Adoption
- Define and maintain Agile and ADO standards aligned to SAFe and AI delivery at scale.
- Author and maintain an Azure Boards Playbook covering lifecycle management, state transitions, and best practices.
- Build reusable templates for epics, features, stories, risks, dependencies, and impediments.
- Lead onboarding, training, and communities of practice to drive consistent adoption across teams.
Program Insights & Stakeholder Engagement
- Translate Agile and ADO data into clear, actionable insights for technical and executive stakeholders.
- Partner with analytics and data engineering teams to enable program-level dashboards, metrics, and delivery health reporting.
- Facilitate retrospectives, feedback loops, and inspect-and-adapt sessions to continuously improve delivery effectiveness.
Required Experience
- 5+ years of experience in Agile delivery roles (Agile Coach, Scrum Master, or equivalent).
- Expert-level experience with Azure DevOps (ADO), with deep specialization in Azure Boards configuration and governance.
- Hands-on experience managing multi-team backlogs, sprint planning, capacity planning, cross-team dependencies, and workflow customization in Azure Boards.
- Demonstrated experience coaching teams and leaders on Agile practices in scaled or multi-team environments.
- Proven ability to define, roll out, and sustain Agile and ADO standards at program or portfolio scale.
- Strong facilitation, communication, and stakeholder management skills, including engagement with senior leaders.
- Experience supporting complex technology programs, preferably involving AI, data, or platform delivery.
Preferred Experience
- Experience coaching teams within the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe), including PI Planning and program-level execution.
- SAFe, Scrum, or Agile certifications (e.g., SAFe Scrum Master, SAFe Agilist, CSM, PSM II/III).
- Experience working within a PMO or delivery governance organization.
- Familiarity with Azure DevOps REST APIs, reporting integrations, or workflow automation.
- Exposure to AI/ML delivery, MLOps, data engineering, or analytics programs.
- Experience guiding Agile maturity transformations and driving change across distributed or global teams.