Product Owner

About the Role:

The Product  Owner is responsible for one or more technology Products or Services, end-to-end.  This includes defining features or service offerings; setting prioritizing, and evaluating the work done by software development and technical shared service teams to ensure a services or product features  / functionality are valuable to the customer.

Who You Are:

• You're an experienced product owner with strong business acumen and have been critical in the delivery of commercial grade digital products and services.  You've grown up in SaaS or custom development shops
• You are a fierce customer advocate who wants to transform the client experience and provide world-class products and service offerings.  You ignore the status quo, challenging yourself, your team, and your customers to new levels of performance, and you respect when you yourself are challenged
• You're highly organized and data-driven with excellent presentation and interpersonal skills and an ability to tell a story convincingly and comfortably.  You can effectively communicate complex concepts to varied audiences (Senior Executives, Customers, IT Management, and Developers)

Core Responsibilities:

• Align with internal Product Managers / Business Owners to create, maintain and prioritize a backlog of customer requests and product feature enhancements
• Provide vision and direction to the Agile development team and stakeholders throughout the project by accurately capturing and defining functional and non-functional requirements, as well as managing evolving requirements communicated by the Product Management / Business Owners / Architecture
• Write user stories, ensure stories have the right attributes and acceptance criteria, and are in alignment with business requirements, product vision, and architecture solutions / standards
• Assess value, develop use cases, prioritize stories, epics and themes to ensure work is aligned to business priorities
• Plan and prioritize technical stories tied to customer request / feature enhancement backlogs; provide support to manage backlog, iteration planning, and refinement of user stories.  Spotlight inter-dependencies among stakeholders development teams to ensure seamless delivery
• Set expectations for delivery of new functionality and actively mitigate impediments impacting the team's success in completing these product releases
• Ensure total transparency between Agile development team and the business by communicating honestly and effectively about progress and status
• Related Responsibilities:
• Ensure appropriate product documentation is created
• Ensure appropriate functional and non-functional requirements align to INVEST criteria and are incorporated in the definition-of-done and signed off prior to work beginning
• Ensure there is a strong emphasis on "customer experience" with product deliverables

Qualifications:

• Requres at least 4 years of working experience.  Previous working experience as a Product Owner for 1-3 years strongly preferred
• In-depth knowledge of Agile process and principles.  Understands the difference between operational and development value streams, as well as Scrum vs. Kanban delivery
• Firm understanding of SDLC and IT Service Management principles
• Sharp analytical and problem-solving skills
• Outstanding communication, presentation, and interpersonal and leadership skills
• Excellent organizational and time management skills