Kanban Coach

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• Weekly pay

• Scheduling flexibility

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Please review the job profile below and apply today!

We are seeking a skilled and experienced Kanban Coach to join our team. The ideal candidate will have a strong background in Kanban, Scrum, and Waterfall methodologies, along with excellent project management and coordination skills. This role requires the ability to develop Kanban teams to become high performance teams, manage and influence without direct reporting structures, and drive continuous improvement through empirical data and metrics.  This is a hybrid position requiring the ability to be in the Grand Rapids MI office Monday through Wednesday.

Key Responsibilities:

• Ensure that services are delivered as planned and on time.
• Collaborate with the team to create and manage workflows, set goals, and communicate with customers and stakeholders (engineers, managers, project managers, coordinators, I&O, and larger IT teams) about the status of services.
• Schedule, align capacity, and manage dependencies to ensure workflows are delivered on time and efficiently.
• Ensure work is understood and scheduled according to WIP limits, with predictable start and end dates.
• Initiate regular and continuous improvement activities within the team and across the organization.
• Monitor the Kanban board to ensure work items are completed regularly and without interruptions.
• Document and coordinate project work (waterfall date-driven work) with the Kanban board for a single source of truth, accommodating dependencies and timelines.
• Schedule and conduct regular Kanban team meetings to keep the entire team aligned on work in progress.
• Focus on delivering value to customers by controlling all work processes and coaching the team on these processes.
• Communicate with work item owners if tasks are delayed or not completed on schedule.
• Proactively identify and resolve work disruptions before they occur.
• Resolve and/or escalate impediments as needed for proper visibility and resolution.
• Lead conflict resolution within the team, removing any roadblocks to collaboration.
• Participate in larger IT PI planning events as determined by the governance model.

Required Skills:

• Experience in Kanban, Scrum, and Waterfall methodologies.
• Assist team to define and manage WIP limits to prevent bottlenecks and overloading. 
• Guide teams in identifying root cause of issues and developing effective solutions
• Helping teams to mature through the use of the Kanban practices, events and maturity model
• Project management or coordination experience.
• Ability to facilitate work within groups and between teams.
• Ability to manage and influence without direct reporting structures.
• Initiative-taking and coaching skills.
• Ability to drive continuous improvement through empirical data and metrics.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills.

Experience:

• 5-10 years of relevant work experience.
• Expertise in Kanban and flow optimization (WIP, Cycle Times, and Throughput).
• Kanban, Agile, and Scrum experience/certifications.
• Experience managing or scheduling work/projects.
• Experience working within IT projects and teams.
• Knowledge and experience with managing complex network infrastructure projects within core datacenter and remote locations 
• Developing Kanban teams to become high performance teams.
• Experience maturing teams with a maturity model (eg. Kanban Maturity Model (KMM)).