Lean/Agile Quality Management Analyst

Grainger is a business-to-business distributor of products used to maintain, repair or operate facilities. Millions of businesses and institutions worldwide rely on Grainger for pumps, motors, hand tools, janitorial supplies, fasteners and much more. These customers represent a broad collection of industries including healthcare, manufacturing, government and hospitality.

The Lean/Agile Coach of the Lean – Agile Quality Management Team will provide support to the Solution Delivery (SD) Team by helping drive the transformation of SD to a more agile delivery model. This resource will be supporting the SD Team to help design, implement, and improve an SD target state lean – agile delivery model. This resource will provide subject matter expertise and support for the day-to-day activities of the Agile COE, a strategic “SWAT team” of Quality Management Analysts responsible for consulting and collaborating with Global ES and Business leadership in transforming ES work management systems and capabilities to a more agile delivery model adapted for IT/Knowledge Work. This role will work with SD team members to provide the guidance and advice necessary to assist managers and teams to effectively change their system of work to use iterative development. Leads efforts to conduct knowledge transfer sessions with SD team members to train on the application of lean/agile tools and techniques. This role will help support SD strategic improvement initiatives by helping to identify improvement opportunities with the application of various quantitative and/or qualitative assessment methods to objectively evaluate achieved results. Plays a supporting role in the development of performance standards, measures/metrics for SD in order to ensure that lean/agile standards are being applied consistently and any gaps are identified for performance improvement.

* Play a supporting role in developing a Lean-Agile system of work. This includes SDLC, governance model, quality system, and team structure (value delivery network) * Provides subject matter expertise and input to help create an overarching strategy and set of implementation tactics to guide the Lean – Agile transformation across ES organization. * Creates training materials and leads training sessions on various application delivery and maintenance oriented tools, techniques, and processes, specifically leveraging lean and agile techniques. * Assist in facilitation of the adoption and acceptance of Lean, Kanban, Agile, and other thinking tools and practices required to improve delivery of customer value. Motivates managers and team members to adopt Lean – Agile practices Grainger is an Equal Opportunity / Affirmative Action employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, disability, or protected veteran status. across ES. * Helps to create and deploy performance standards, measures/metrics to ensure that lean/agile standards are being applied consistently and any gaps are identified for performance improvement. * Provides coaching to team to monitor work as it progresses through all phases of the SDLC, analyze flow, bottlenecks, and quality/performance outliers. * Provides input to identify key metrics, helps define service delivery promises and SLA's. * Provides supporting data and trend analysis to SD leadership to identify improvement initiatives. Collaborate with ES and SD leadership to support and measure these improvements * Provide subject matter expertise to identify and implement strategic end to end system improvements. Identify key challenges, offer counter measures, and assist in the design and implementation of improvement plans. Leverage learning and iterative techniques to apply improvements to SD.

* Knowledge is acquired through completion of post-secondary education in Computer Science, Software Engineering or equivalent with a minimum of 3 year’s experience in IT * Experience in one of the following agile development approaches (Kanban, SCRUM, Extreme Programming) . * Demonstrated experience providing coaching/mentoring in Agile/Lean methodologies. * Knowledge of Structured SDLC such as RUP, CMMI, ITIL. * Knowledge and experience in quality management methods, tools and techniques such as LeanSix Sigma, Lean for software and systems and Agile software development. * Knowledge of Lean/System oriented tools and techniques for root cause analysis using tools such as 5 whys, Cumulative flow diagram, statistical process control charts. * Knowledge of research methods such as options analysis, cynefin framework and evaluate alternatives through quantitative and/or qualitative assessments. * Knowledge of business ideation toolkit such as Business Model Canvas, customer development, or LeanStartup. * Exposure to conducting business analysis using functional decomposition using techniques such as minimal marketable feature sets, user stories, or features and experience in iterative planning using agile techniques such as planning poker, fist of five, etc. * Knowledge of Agile design/technical practices such as CRC, domain driven design, behavior driven development, continuous integration,or test driven development. * Exposure to project methodologies and their application sufficient to provide consultative advice to project managers on methods and standards appropriate to their type of project. * Analytical and problem solving skills to identify problems and apply specialized knowledge in developing creative solutions within complex and unstructured situations. * Written and verbal communication skills for preparing documentation, delivering professional presentations and training sessions around processes and procedures.