Senior Product Owner
About the role
This position will act as a Senior Product Owner on a production team utilizing Scrum methodology and implement Agile ideology. The Senior Product Owner serves as a bridge between the product development process, business stakeholders, and clients. The Senior Product Owner's primary goal is to provide value for the business/customers and align the business needs with the overall strategy of the department.
Responsibilities
Customer / Stakeholder Relations: Provides strategic consultation and participates in quality reviews and provides feedback sessions. Advises on options, risks, costs versus benefits, and impacts on end-user products and services, business processes and system priorities. Create reports and communications to both Stakeholders and Senior Management. Devises and evaluates plans that integrate system components across existing and new businesses. Set and articulate clear product vision aligned to the overall strategy for the product. Negotiate and mediate problems with stakeholders.
Project Management and Product Backlog: Lead complex, major or highly visible tasks in support of multiple projects that require multiple areas of expertise and that may span a broad range of applications. Analyze and interpret complex enterprise-wide problems or processes, identify and understand requirements, and develop alternate solutions while educating senior leaders as to their solution. Establish strategic goals with a long-term view and builds a shared vision with others. Use formal methodologies to forecast trends and define innovative strategic choices in response to the potential implications of multiple integrated options. Use MoSCoW, Story Mapping, Kano Analysis and other prioritization methods while considering the value of the feature including impact on the individual, team and organization, story cost, estimated time to implement, impact on other stories, risk and opportunity costs when prioritizing. Create Business Model/ Product Canvas, Product Roadmap, and Product Launch Strategy. Conduct SWOT and competitive analysis Guide Product Owners in the use of appropriate requirements gathering methods. Prioritize urgent customer requests with the team to negotiate inclusion in current sprint and adjustments to other planned work as needed.
Review/Testing: Write and approve Acceptance Criteria. Provide final acceptance of the User Story. Create and validate prototypes.
Agile Project Management: Understand and keep abreast of Scrum and other Agile methodologies. Apply methodologies and tools as needed to ensure an effective, and transparent agile project. Partner with the Scrum Master who is the owner of the Scrum process, to ensure continuous improvement on project tasks.
Mentorship: Mentors and guides Product Owners. Review and monitors the Project Management of the Product Owner and identify areas of improvement. Gradually allow more autonomy on Projects to Product Owner as their experience and skills increase.
Performs other duties as assigned.
Qualifications
Minimum Education & Experience: Bachelor’s degree Business, Engineering, Computer Science or IT related field and three years of IT or Project Management experience OR seven years of IT or Project Management experience, or a combination of relevant experience and education.
Knowledge, Skills & Abilities: Technical Skills Product Management - Managing and developing products or services through their full life cycle from inception, growth, maturity, decline to retirement. Stakeholder Relationship Management - Influencing stakeholder attitudes, decisions, and actions for mutual benefit. Requirements Definition and Management - Managing requirements through the entire delivery and operational life cycle. Project Management-Delivering agreed outcomes from projects using appropriate management techniques, collaboration, leadership and governance. Soft Skills IT Core Competencies: Growth Mindset - Takes ownership of personal growth and embraces the concept that intelligence and talent can be developed through continuous learning. Willing to take on new challenges, and views failure as an opportunity to grow. Communication - Comfortable using a broad range of communication styles, and chooses appropriate, effective ways to communicate. Adapts communication style depending on the audience and situation. Listens and asks questions to develop a better understanding. Collaboration- Collaborates with others in the pursuit of common missions, visions, values and goals. Fosters a sense of community within and across teams, building on mutual respect, trust, and drawing on the strengths of others. Client Obsession-Client focused when creating solutions or solving problems, believing that everything we do is to earn and keep our clients’ trust. Ownership-Takes responsibility, accountability and proactively focuses on areas they can directly influence. Understands their role within the team and recognizes that they share the team’s successes and failures. Outcome Driven-Focuses on desired results, business outcomes, and how to achieve them. Takes appropriate actions to ensure commitments are met and results achieved. Industry Knowledge Three years of experience as a Product Owner or working in a Scrum Environment Experience using tools such as JIRA and Confluence Certified Product Owner or SAFe Product Owner