Product Owner II

About the role...

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 owner's requirements. May provide overall leadership to Product Owner team through mentorship and guidance.

What you'll accomplish...

• 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 and 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 needed...

• Bachelor's degree preferred.
• Product Owner, Scrum Master, or Product Manager Certified (obtained within 180 days of hire) required.

Experience needed...

• 1-3 years experience in an Agile environment or 3-5 years in a project environment required.
• 1-3 years leadership experience preferred.
• Experience in financial services or insurance field preferred.

Special skills needed...

• Strong product knowledge.
• Superior business and functional knowledge in the supported value stream based on prior experience.
• Comfortable working in Excel Spreadsheets
• Ability to handle light data pulling and manipulation
• Possesses flexibility to work in a fast paced, dynamic environment.
• Ability to react quickly to change in direction.
• Demonstrated written communication skills.
• Ability to effectively write user stories and break down features into user stories.
• Builds and manages effective teams.
• Ability to handle multiple agile teams as needed.
• Performs work independently with minimal supervision.
• Strong verbal communication and listening skills.
• Excellent organizational skills.
• Develops and delivers effective presentations.