Product Owner II/III - Business Insurance

Job Summary

The role will serve as a dedicated Product Owner specific to the end-to-end conversion of legacy policy administration and quoting systems to Guidewire. The Product Owner will be 100% focused on the build, rollout, and sucessful transition to the new platform, ensuring product integrity, underwriting excellence, and a superior user experience for both internal and external users of the platform. Takes the lead more independently in areas of product development by following the principles of Agile to manage the team backlog, anticipate and prioritize needs, oversee development stages, act as a primary liaison and evaluate product progress. Serves as the customer proxy; works collaboratively with business owners and other stakeholders to accomplish these tasks with little to no support and with a higher volume of work. Utilizes strong understanding of the business vision to offer guidance and influence the business owners requirements. May provide overall leadership to Product Owner team through mentorship and guidance.

Key Expectations

• Serve as the primary leader for specific Agile teams throughout the Guidewire launch and deployment process.
• Be fully dedicated to the build, development, rollout, and conversion of legacy policy administration and quoting systems to Guidewire, maintaining a holistic view ensuring alignment with business goals and quality standards.
• Act as leader and influencer among stakeholders to ensure varying needs are considered and addressed, while coordinating with supporting team members to confirm completeness of requirements, adherence to scope, and ultimate acceptance of work.
• Demonstrate a passion for excellence and technology-driven process improvement, proactively identifying opportunities to enhance system functionality and user experience.
• Commit to ongoing self-development and learning, staying current with both underwriting trends and Guidewire system capabilities.
• Collaborate effectively within a matrixed environment, partnering daily with cross-functional teams to deliver shared outcomes. 
• Product Owner / Product Manager SAFe Certification
• Experience with Business Insurance products (Businessowners Policy (BOP) / Commercial Multi-Peril, Umbrella, Commercial Auto, Workers Compensation)

Essential Job Functions

• Applies scientific practice within iterations in order to routinely plan, do, check and adjust.
• Manages team backlog items and prioritizes based on business value.
• Outlines dependencies and informs stakeholders the necessary sequence of development to ensure optimized performance and outcomes.
• Holds a significant role in quality control and is the primary team member empowered to accept stories as done.
• Utilizes strong business knowledge, influence and communication skills to anticipate problems, address them accordingly while working cross functionally in a self-organizing manner to accomplish tasks and effectively manage the backlog.
• Effectively applies critical thinking to identify flexibility in determining how and when each iteration and product element will be developed. Acts as primary communicator and connection between stakeholders, end users and teams determining if each story meets their shared expectations.
• Mutually partners with the business and uses effective challenging techniques in order to influence decisions.
• Ensures collaboration from all stakeholders on decisions and strategy providing clear instructions and deliverables for developers.
• Takes ownership for each stage of the process and final product to ensure the goal and vision are correctly aligned with the work items on the backlog.
• Contributes input into the prioritization of the program backlog, coordinates dependencies and manages the inspection and evaluation of product progress through each iteration.
• Assists in the mitigation of program risks.
• Participates in PO and/or ART sync meetings in addition to the system demo to show critical aspects of the solution.
• Participates in Inspect & Adapt (I&A) workshop to work across teams to define and implement improvement stories to increase program quality.
• A key member of the Agile team who utilizes perspective to define iteration goals and drives execution and delivery with the ability to influence stakeholders.
• Partners with the business owner to understand needs, manage scope and add/eliminate user stories.
• Communicates requirements to Agile Team in a clear and collaborative manner to determine new requirements, negotiate teams and dependencies.
• Regularly interacts with the Product Manager in order to discuss goals and share a clear understanding of the business/value stream vision.
• Heavily involved in the Program Increment (PI) planning, story definition and assists team with story estimates and sequencing.
• Oversees the development of the product to include planning, refinement, review, and execution.
• Partners with stakeholders to identify and organize steps required for next iteration.
• Works to gain clarity on queries and participate in the demo of committed items.
• Participates in ceremonies within the team to coordinate efforts with team to refine the process, identify areas for improvement and support the execution of tasks.
• Continuously keeps the end-user needs in mind based on on higher level of business acumen.
• Ensures the solution meets expectations and the development delivers expected outcomes from the accepted stories.
• Provides mentorship and guidance to PO I.
• Performs other duties as assigned.

Education Requirements

Experience Requirements

• Experience in an Agile environment or 3+ years in a project environment. 

Physical Actions

Physical Environment