Product Owner at Silica

Job description

The Product Owner is the project's key stakeholder for Correspondence and Reporting. The Product Owner is responsible for the product and product features from concept to implementation. You need to understand the vision of a product from the point of view of a customer, end user or stakeholders. Create a bridge between the customer and the scrum team. The Product owner is responsible for the overall delivery and quality of the product.

Key Performance Areas:

• Own and understand the correspondence and reporting solutions for specific clients.
• Responsible for the teams delivery to clients, runs and manages the team from a delivery perspective.
• Breaks down in-coming work and requirements into appropriate size and level of detail to enable and support efficient prioritisation, dependency management and delivery.
• Prioritises the backlog for delivery in consultation with the business and clients.
• Attend the specific client relationship meetings when required.
• Attend the BA estimate meetings to provide high level estimates
• Co-ordinate and communicate all changes with the stakeholders and clients keeping the CRM/PM in the loop.
• Flight plan and dependency management
• Coordinate delivery between development teams
• Review and provide input into the Business requirement documents
• Define and instil Agile based work delivery methods and processes within the team.
• Run the planning and backlog grooming meetings.
• Plan and groom the backlog.
• Create and detail User Stories prioritised on the Backlog.
• Maintain User Story conceptual and technical integrity.
• Plan and Estimate Sprints, and allocate Story Points with the scrum team.
• Plan the releases which includes change controls, support roster, pre and post release notifications.
• Provide the team with guidance on project aspects (including architecture, estimations and efficient problem solving.
• Enforce deadlines and delivery.
• Run the scrums and stand-up’s.
• Ensuring that learning and improvement happens continuously as the work progresses (not just at the end)
• Ensure that participants are focused and dedicated (not multitasking), and aligned with the same list of priorities.
• Ensure the team is multiskilled.
• Ensure that people are focusing on achieving the highest possible business impact with the lowest possible effort and output.
• Ensure that waste and impediments are visualized, prioritized, and systematically removed.
• Encourage teams to own and solve their own impediments whenever possible.
• Work with the Programme/Project Manager to review the impact of scope changes and/or missed sprint commitments on projects.
• Make sure all documentation is updated by the team and requirements are ready for the sprint:
• Specification documents
• Correspondence and Reporting matrix
• Branding matrix management
• Transaction calculation matrix management
• Client/business approvals
• Ensure that changes are documented and ready for CAB.
• All change controls go via the change control process.
• Quote for changes and follow up on quote approval.
• Make sure all ad hoc quotes are managed on the Jira quote board.
• Keep the CRM/PM informed on the deployment progress and client post release sign-off
• Document/review Incident reports if required.
• Make sure the team is capturing their time correctly and timesheet approval.
• Be a mentor for the team and have regular feedback sessions.
• Ensure the work being done has a clear purpose, clear hypotheses, clear boundaries/scope (“what are we NOT doing”)
• Interacts with the client in terms of product only.
• Aligns with governing architectural principles defined by the architecture forum and ensures that execution is done accordingly for product development.
• Ensure DR is up-to-date for a production solution.
• Ensure tight source control.
• Review quotes and change controls.

Prior Work Experience / Background:

• Knowledge of the financial industry (preferably CIS’ , Mutual Funds).
• Experience in Correspondence (client communications) / Reporting preferred.

Technical / Special Requirements:

Strategic competencies:

• Industry knowledge is advantageous
• Silica business knowledge is advantageous

Technical competencies:

• SQL
• Knowledge of software testing
• Good general system knowledge

Educational Requirements (Educational / academic qualifications)

• Minimum Matric
• Business Degree or Diploma (in related industry)
• Formal business analysis training advantageous
• Formal testing training advantageous
• Formal SQL training advantageous
• Agile product owner training advantageous