Product Owner

About the role

As part of the Customer Engagement Portfolio within Southern Company's Technology organization, the Product Owner is responsible for managing and supporting system product enhancements, maintenance, and requests, and maintaining a well-groomed backlog for the Online Customer Care (OCC) suite of solutions including web, batch, and middleware applications. This role collaborates with stakeholders, development teams, vendors, architects, and other cross-functional teams to ensure successful delivery of high-quality, scalable, and efficient solutions. The role involves every aspect of the product development process from discovery, delivery, and support while following SAFe Agile Framework and focusing on upholding a high standard of quality. This role reports to the Customer Engagement Supervisor in the Technology Organization's Customer Engagement Portfolio.

Requirements

• B.S. degree, preferably in business, IT, engineering, computer science, or another technology-focused field
• Must have at least 3 years of working experience as Product Owner in Agile development teams
• Knowledge and experience with transactional web sites, batch processes, databases, APIs, and integrated middleware applications
• Strong analytical, root cause analysis, and problem-solving skills with ability to elicit and efficiently document business rules and research technical issues
• Ability to prioritize and maintain well-groomed backlogs comprising new features, bugs, technical debt, and knowledge acquisition with good planning and organization skills
• Ability to define clear acceptance criteria and work with Developers, QA, and UA testers to ensure quality and accuracy of the assigned area in the OCC product
• Excellent interpersonal skills and strong proactive communications skills including ability to communicate complex concepts clearly across different audiences at varying levels
• Engage with key stakeholders such as business owners, vendors, marketing teams, and leadership to understand their needs and gather feedback; communicate product updates, progress, and timelines to stakeholders
• Excellent presentation skills to facilitate demos and support the team to deliver high-quality releases on schedule
• Experience working in a fast-paced, highly collaborative environment with cross-disciplinary teams (Quality Analysts, Developers, Architects, and Analysts) and business groups (technical and non-technical) to shepherd products through the SDLC
• Ability to identify and quickly implement process improvements, sound decision-making skills, and ability to work with minimal supervision

Preferred qualifications

• Working knowledge of utility operating company business unit rules and processes
• Prior experience in utility and/or large-scale complex customer-facing web applications
• Experience with Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe)
• Technical aptitude to understand web, batch, database, and middleware applications and architecture
• Knowledge of current and relevant digital, mobile, and web best practices in design and implementation
• Skilled at leading software projects of varying sizes and degrees of complexity

Responsibilities

• Define and communicate the product vision, strategy, and roadmap for solutions owned; align the product roadmap with overall business goals and objectives
• Be a primary resource and business/customer proxy and work closely with business units to ensure both common and specific business rules are identified and integrated into product design and development
• Develop, adapt, and carry out product implementation plan throughout SDLC, supporting and championing the vision aligned with business goals
• Create, plan, and prioritize an effectively groomed backlog with clear acceptance criteria aligned with business objectives
• Author epics, features, and user story acceptance criteria and continuously refine and prioritize user stories based on business value, customer feedback, and market trends
• Obtain deep product and business knowledge to act as a subject matter expert for several roles including Dev and QA
• Define and instrument success criteria measured via qualitative and quantitative feedback and identify growth opportunities for the assigned functional area
• Work with QA testers to ensure quality and accuracy; conduct user acceptance testing and validate that the product meets specified requirements
• Attend PI plannings, provide quality control, facilitate PI demos, and review stories; responsible for accepting stories as done
• Be accountable for each stage of the development process and the final product while taking a primary role in inspecting and evaluating product progress and quality through each iteration
• Manage business expectations, maintain communications, and bring issues to business' attention proactively; offer solutions
• Create and maintain product documentation including user guides, release notes, and training materials; ensure documentation accurately reflects features and functionalities of developed solutions

Additional details

• Location: Atlanta, GA or Birmingham, AL (must reside in GA or AL or be willing to relocate – hybrid role)
• Occasional night and weekend work may be necessary
• Occasional travel may be necessary