About the position
As a member of the Agile team, the Product Owner represents the voice of the customer and the organization through the delivery of business value. This person works closely with stakeholders (business and technology), including LOB leadership, to define and prioritize features and stories, ensuring alignment with customer needs and organizational goals. This person understands customers' problems in detail and ensures the problems are clearly defined, prioritized and the squad/team is focused on the most valuable work. The Product Owner is the team member always communicating with stakeholders to ensure an aligned understanding of how the squad/team can provide the highest value to the customer through the lens of the portfolio. This person collaborates with squads/teams, technologies and architects across portfolios to develop a deep understanding of the technologies and systems they support. This team is making significant changes to our premium and loss ecosystems! We are working on one integrated source to simplify and streamline premium and loss financial processing to enable efficient, transparent and reliable accounting, regulatory reporting and ad hoc analysis. Corporate Financial Systems is looking for a Product Owner II to lead the squad responsible for delivering the modernized pipeline to the General Ledger and enabling operational reporting and external compliance.
Responsibilities
- Collaborates to create product vision and alignment with strategic priorities with stakeholders.
- Contributes to the development of the portfolio vision.
- Communicates product and portfolio vision to their squad/team and other squads/teams outside their portfolio/functional area.
- Collaboratively accountable for developing and achieving product level KPIs.
- Manages product(s) with a moderate degree of strategy, scope, and complexity.
- Owns and maintains the product backlog and is accountable for its contents and prioritization.
- Accountable for clear, actionable user stories.
- Sets priorities and actively participates in squad/team quarterly planning.
- Collaborates with more senior Product Owners to set priorities for portfolio quarterly planning.
- Sets expectations with stakeholders for delivery of new capabilities, features, and functionalities.
- Participates in squad/team demos, retrospectives, and all other ceremonies.
- Works daily with the agile working group, clarifying business requirements, removing roadblocks, constantly communicating, and supporting alignment around product strategy.
- Collaborates with IT and business leadership to align development and business goals and priorities while working with stakeholders and squad/team to remove roadblocks to execution.
- Resolves open issues/questions quickly and efficiently.
- Monitors and maintains the product health, supporting long-term product viability and efficiency, and balancing long and short term and costs with desired outcomes.
- Analyzes and reports on feasibility, cost of delay ramifications, economies, or other aspects of planned or potential changes to the product.
- Understands regulatory, compliance, and other industry constraints on the product and prioritizes accordingly.
- Negotiates with internal and external squads/teams to ensure priorities are aligned across squads/teams both within and outside the portfolio.
- Collaboratively builds the squad/team product roadmap, contributes to strategy inputs from stakeholders.
- May contribute to program/portfolio level planning.
- Influences stakeholder expectations for delivery of new capabilities, features, and functionalities.
- Communicates expected value and any changes in value to be delivered in each iteration (sprint, monthly, quarterly, etc.) based on the squad/team-determined capacity.
- Leads customer-driven design and usability testing for the squad/team.
- Ensures a well-positioned product through market & industry analysis.
Requirements
- Knowledge of Agile development methodologies and IT project management as typically acquired through a Bachelors' degree in relevant field (business, computer science, humanities etc.)
- Minimum of 3 to 5 years direct experience with agile teams as well as 7 years in business, technology, or consulting.
- Able to depict and explain the importance of complex ideas, issues and designs to varied audiences; educate SBU/department(s) on business vision and plan and the impact of change.
- Able to influence a diverse group of stakeholders; strong leadership skills.
- Able to make difficult and quick decisions daily.
- Ability to demonstrate resiliency and be able to pivot with changing business needs.
- Strong problem solver with demonstrated ability to lead a team to push the solutions and progress.
Nice-to-haves
- Finance and/or Accounting background preferred.
- Experience in the insurance industry preferred.
- Knowledge of relevant products and portfolio preferred.
- Strong experimental mindset to drive innovation amongst uncertainty.
Benefits
- Comprehensive benefits and continuous learning opportunities.
- Environment where employees can succeed, both professionally and personally.
