Product Owner

How will your role impact First Command?

The Product Owner (PO) is a member of the Agile Team responsible for defining Stories and prioritizing the Team Backlog to streamline the execution of program priorities while maintaining the conceptual and technical integrity of the Features or components for the team.

The PO has a significant role in maximizing the value produced by the team and ensuring stories meet the user’s needs and comply with the Definition of Done. This role has significant relationships and responsibilities outside the local team, including working with Product Management, Customers, Business Owners, and other stakeholders.

What will you be doing?

• Heavily involved in program backlog refinement and prep for Program Increment (PI) planning and also plays a significant role in the planning event itself. Updates the team backlog and typically reviews and contributes to the program vision, Roadmap, and content presentations.
• Involved with story definition, providing the clarifications necessary to assist the team with their story estimates and sequencing. The entire Agile team, which includes the PO, also work together to determine their team PI objectives for the upcoming PI.
• The PO has the primary responsibility for building, editing, and maintaining the team backlog. Consisting mostly of user stories, it also includes defects and enablers. Backlog items are prioritized based on user value, time, and other team dependencies determined in the PI planning meeting and refined during the PI.
• Reviews and reprioritizes the backlog as part of the prep work for Iteration Planning, including coordination of dependencies with other POs. During the iteration planning meeting, the PO communicates story detail and priorities and ensures the team aligns and agrees on a final iteration plan.
• Maintain proper flow of user stories. This may happen before the iteration, during iteration planning, or during the iteration.
• Collaborate with their team to detail stories with acceptance criteria and examples in the form of acceptance tests.
• Works with the team to agree on accepted story completion. This includes validating that the story meets acceptance criteria, that it has the appropriate, persistent acceptance tests, and that it otherwise complies with its Definition of Done (DoD).
• Understand the scope of the upcoming enabler work and collaborate with System and Solution Architect/Engineering to assist with decision-making and sequencing of the critical technological infrastructures that will host the new business functionality.
• Collaborate with their team and any other stakeholders in the team demo. They also participate in the Iteration Retrospective, where the teams gather to improve their processes and are active in the Agile Release Train’s (ART’s) Inspect and Adapt (I&A) workshop.
• During each PI, the PO coordinates dependencies with other POs. This often occurs in weekly PO sync meetings.
• Plays an instrumental role in producing the System Demo for program and Value Stream stakeholders.
• Works across teams to define and implement improvement stories that will increase the velocity and quality of the program.

What Skills/Qualifications Do You Need?

Education

• Bachelor’s degree or relevant business experience
• Banking experience preferred

Work Experience

• Product Owner I EX08    1-3 years in a related area         
• Product Owner II EX09    4-7 years in a related area
• Product Owner III EX10    7+ years in a related area
• Product Owner IV EX11    10+ years in a related area

Knowledge, Skills and Abilities (all are required)

• Understand the Agile mindset, the Product mindset and demonstrate Agile principles and values
• Understand the role of the Product Owner in an Agile team and on an Scaled Agile Framework (Agile Release Train (ART))
• Able to challenge norms to improve the process and create efficiencies
• Able to hold team members accountable and provide relevant and timely feedback
• Excelled problem solver
• Able to facilitate group discussions in an effective and efficient way
• Able to prioritize
• Able to build high performing teams and resolve interpersonal conflicts among team members
• Extensive knowledge of the function and department processes
• Growth mindset
• Strong analytical skills
• Able to pivot and function in ambiguity

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