Product Owner

• The Product Owner works on an Agile Team representing customer and business interests through the definition and prioritization of stories in the team backlog that provide sequential deliverables that satisfy the larger program features and solutions.
• The Product Owner works with Product Management and stakeholders to understand the Features and with the ScrumMaster and Agile Team to develop smaller incremental stories and iteration deliverables based on those Features.
• Will work with other Product Owners and stakeholders to define and prioritize stories and determine dependencies.
• Owns the team backlog so that the solutions effectively address program priorities.

Essential Functions:

• Understands and supports prioritized Portfolio and Value Stream work by collaborating with Solution Architect Business Architect Product Manager and stakeholders to break down features into user stories
• Manages the delivery of business value by owning the team backlog defining stories establishing story acceptance criteria and leading story refinement for preparation of iteration planning and program increment planning
• Provides input and feedback to Epic Owners on new and existing epics understands stakeholder and customer needs
• Reviews and accepts user stories throughout the iteration as developed functionality is completed by the team (develop on cadence)
• Works with other Product Owners and the Product Manager to determine impacts and interdependencies with other teams programs or value streams
• Acts as customer advocate for team questions and seeks out opportunities to connect the team with end users stakeholders and customers to develop and improve their understanding and empathy of end user needs
• Interacts with stakeholders during iteration demos or individually to show the most critical aspects of a solution and negotiate the reality of systems solutions
• Collaborates with Product Manager to provide input to the Program Vision and Roadmap
• Collaborates with Product Manager Release Management stakeholders and team to define and plan for releases (Release on Demand)
• Participates in the iteration demo and retrospective meetings to inspect and adapt the product or solution for the next iteration and the teams process for improvements in how they work to build solution increments
• Works with the team to ensure features stories and tasks are entered maintained and tracked in required Agile tooling solutions

Minimum Experience:

• Four (4) years demonstrated functional SME experience (either system development or process engineering) including one (1) year experience working as a key member of a project team (waterfall Agile etc.) developing business processes or solutions creating business requirements and delivering business capabilities required.
• Experience working in an Agile environment and applying SAFe scaling.

Required Skills:

• Knowledge of Agile and Lean values/concepts and scaling with the SAFe framework required
• Demonstrated ability to understand complex ideas break them down into smaller sequential plans while understanding interdependencies to deliver solutions
• Uses solutions-based thinking in problem solving asking probing questions and looking for underlying issues
• Has systems subject matter expert technical knowledge to partner with technical leads as it relates to stories and the Agile Release Train
• Strong influencing skills to guide a team to understand Program Features and the impact on the story and iteration deliverables
• Strong influencing skills with customers and Product Managers to understand the system and iteration capabilities for deliverables
• Strong verbal and written communication skills necessary to develop stories and to inform the team and stakeholders
• Business acumen and ability to understand the larger company strategy
• Software skills including use of Microsoft Office and web-based application development