Product Owner Expert at McKinsey & Company

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in computer science, business or an equivalent degree
• 10+ years of experience leading agile projects as a product owner and as a scrum master
• Experience leading product and/or cross-functional teams
• Experience as both a team member and coach in the agile product owner roles
• Experience with building consumer quality products, enabling business capability and objectives through technology
• Strong product instinct to build a great product vision, product roadmap and competitive analysis
• Knowledge and understanding of technical engineering best practices (e.g., test-driven development, continuous integration, etc.)
• Excellent knowledge of tracking and analytics setup
• Proficient with drawing storyboards, creating wireframes, creating/‘grooming’ product backlogs, writing user stories, and developing acceptance criteria
• Relentless prioritization and alignment with business and IT stakeholders to ensure the highest value capture
• Excellent project manager that can plan 2-3 steps ahead of the team and surface hidden risks 2-3 levels deep within the team
• Ability to work at an abstract level and continuously ‘pivot’ to arrive at the highest impact answer for the client
• Ability to work under pressure, manage client expectations effectively and not get overwhelmed by client pressures on the team
• Excellent analytical skills, and data-driven approach to constantly analyze user feedback and analytics report
• Ability to move between strategic discussions with senior client leaders to tackle on the ground agile coaching with teams
• Excellent communication skills with the ability to influence senior client business and IT executives on transforming towards agile
• Skills to communicate complex ideas effectively in English and French

What You'll Do
You will lead the execution of digital product development and transformation projects for leading industry players, mainly in Johannesburg.

• In this role, you will be a core member of the McKinsey consulting team with responsibilities that range from shaping product vision and strategic designs to managing and transforming agile product and leadership teams. You will engage in some of the most challenging business problems facing our clients. These projects can range from rapid process re-inventions at leading financial institutions, ‘big data' analytics at large-scale retail organizations, to consumer-facing app development for traditional industries. In each situation, you will typically be at the center of the problem solving, advising our most senior clients on how to successfully execute their strategic vision by digital means.
• You will be well versed in all aspects of the product, process, and technology. You will work at the intersection of business strategy, client and implementation vendors and you'll be responsible for translating abstract visions into reality while managing client expectations as well as vendor efficiency. You will also be proficient in all aspects of the agile deliverables required for a technology team to build beautiful products. This includes hands-on development of storyboards, wireframes, product prioritization, backlog, user stories, product KPI, monitoring/tracking, and commercialization.