Release Train Engineer

Job Description

The Release Train Engineer (RTE) is a servant leader and coach for the Agile Release Train (ART).

The RTE’s facilitate the ART events and processes and assist teams in delivering value. They communicate with stakeholders, escalate impediments, help manage risk, and drive relentless improvement.

The RTE facilitates Agile Release Train and at times Solution Train processes and execution, respectively. They escalate impediments, manage risk, help ensure value delivery, and help drive relentless improvement. They participate in the Lean-Agile transformation, coaching leaders, teams, and Scrum Masters in the new processes and mindsets. They help configure SAFe to the agency's needs, standardising and documenting practices.

Requirements

Key duties and responsibilities

Role Requirements

1. Create strategies for the effective planning, monitoring, reporting, establishment, and outcomes for an agile release train to deliver on the organisation's strategy and contribute to the creation of value and the delivery of benefits from the projects or features / capabilities.

2. Conduct complex release train events, including program increment planning, showcases or demonstrations, scrum of scrums, inspect and adapt as well as synchronisation across the train and improvement planning.

3. Ensure alignment of all teams on the agile release train with the agile and scrum processes, practices, patterns and principles and contribute to the organisations progress in agile maturity through contributions to the organisation.

4. Drive, manage and co-ordinate team objectives for the program increment, create and publish roadmaps for visibility and transparency and anticipate, recognise and resolve impediments, solve complex problems, identify patterns and manage dependencies.

5. Provide leadership and direction to a release train and ensure employees maintain a high-level of specialist, professional and / or technical expertise through coaching and training, and implementing and promoting a climate of change and continuous improvement.

6. Build and sustain mutually beneficial and collaborative relationships with clients and stakeholders, including other Release Train Engineers, consult and share information with their own team and maximise team strengths to achieve outcomes.

7. Provide business critical authoritative and expert advice to senior managers and executive level staff to define and implement governance frameworks for the release train.

8. Apply and maintain a high level of knowledge on the information management system, quality assurance and change control processes to co- ordinate quality reviews of documentation and processes to ensure effective management of features and / or release train.

9. Champion Scaled Agile (SAFe) implementation in line with the departments Delivery Methods, within their teams and across teams throughout the department.

Role Deliverables

• Establish and communicate the Program Increment and Iteration calendar of events, in collaboration with Agile HQ.
• Manage and optimise the flow of value through the ART using Program Kanban and Enterprise Agile tools
• Plan, prepare and facilitate the Program Increment (PI) planning event, working with Product Management and Enterprise Architecture to assure Product Vision, Roadmaps, Backlogs are ready.
• Summarise and publish Team PI Objectives into Program PI Objectives.
• Track and report on the progress of Features throughout the PI.
• Coordinate and facilitate the “Scrum of Scrums” or ART sync events.
• Assist with prioritisation and sequencing decision making, by facilitating feature estimation by teams and roll up to Epic estimation.
• Coach leaders, teams and Scrum Masters in Lean Agile practices and mindsets.
• Help manage risks and dependencies.
• Escalate and track impediments.
• Provide input on resourcing to address critical bottlenecks.
• Encourage collaboration between teams and System, Solution and Enterprise Architects.
• Work with Product management and Product Owners, to ensure Strategy and execution alignment.
• Work with the Agile Release Train to improve and assess DevOps and Release practices.
• Understand and operate with Lean budgets and ensure adherence to Guardrails ( ie Capacity allocation , horizon investment planning, approval of significant investments, continuous business owner engagement).
• Co-ordinate and facilitate System demonstrations and Showcases.
• Co-ordinate and facilitate Inspect and Adapt (ie System demo, Quantative measurement analysis, Retrospective and problem solving workshops) to drive relentless improvement.
• Foster Built-in Quality practices across teams; such as Collective ownership,  compliance to IT Methods, Policies and Standards, Pairing and Peer reviews, Automation and compliance to Definition of Done.
• Foster Communities of Practice.
• Foster a Continuous Learning culture to encourage individuals and teams to continually increase knowledge, competence, performance and innovation.
• Through the Systems team, guide and support the development of technical quality standards and practices.
• Coordinate, review and analyse whole Release train Metrics and Reports.  Drive recommendations for continuous improvement.

Criteria

The buyer has specified that each candidate must provide a one page pitch to address all criteria specified. This is equal to 5000 characters.

Essential criteria

1. At least 1-year recent experience as RTE in a Commonwealth Government ICT environment or similar organisation.

2. Experience working in an agile software development and project delivery

Desirable criteria

1. SAFe RTE certification

2. Other Agile Certification

Additional requirements

1. Candidates must provide a minimum of 2 referees. Referee checks will only be performed for candidates shortlisted for interview.

Requirements

Essential criteria 1. A track record of delivering technology products in large organisations 2. A demonstrated understanding of what makes for a great developer experience for external users 3. Experience leading multi-disciplinary teams that follow agile and user-centred design practices 4. Experience working on large Government transformation programs highly regarded Desirable criteria 1. Knowledge, experience of, and relationships with the agriculture technology industry 2. Delivery of technology to support regulatory decision-making processes 3. Experience delivering to the Australian Government Digital Service Standard