Product Owner

Role Purpose

The Product Owner III is a member of the agile team, responsible for defining user 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 role owns multiple products of varying to high complexities, impact and visibility products and engages and collaborates with product management to execute the product vision, strategy and roadmap.

Portfolio

The Product Owner III will own the feature roadmap for the "insights-as-a-service" platform called the REX Insights Platform, as well as the Precision Pricing Engine, operated from within the ShopriteX business unit. REX is a SaaS platform customised to the requirements of the Shoprite Group. The Precision Pricing Engine is an advanced data science product recommending optimal price points.

Role Description

1. Lead the design of any new feature ("continuous exploration") and work with business stakeholders to design the optimal user experience and assess the impact on the REX Insights Platform and Precision Pricing Engine.
2. Facilitate workshops to gather feature requirements.
3. Create wireframes of the optimal user experience.
4. Engage business stakeholders to review the user experience and obtain their input and sign-off.
5. Document the impact of new features on data models, business logic and business rules within the REX Insights Platform and Precision Pricing Engine. This can include:
   1. Context diagrams
   2. System/data flows
   3. Tables summarising scenarios that impact business logic
   4. High-level system integration requirements (incl. data fields required in request and response payloads)
6. Review integration specifications (IFS) from Functional Analysts to ensure that they address all requirements originating from the user experience.
7. Provide input into the refinement of the program backlog, ensuring the team is familiar with the features being brought into Program Increment (PI) planning, collaborating with program management in the refinement of the backlog and keeping them informed of progress in achieving team PI objectives.
8. Continuously refine and sequence the product backlog:
   1. Gather the requirements for the REX Insights Platform, as well as the Precision Pricing Engine, and capture them in the form of a product backlog, consisting of user stories with acceptance criteria.
   2. Ensure all user stories are written and that each user story has acceptance criteria.
9. Provide visible, transparent and clear direction, ensuring the development teams are clear on priorities:
   1. Provide clear solution direction to the agile team.
   2. Apply economic decision making.
   3. Sequence user stories based on team PI objectives.
   4. Balance PI objectives with local team requirements.
   5. Ensure team backlog readiness for next iteration.
   6. Include the team in backlog refinement.
   7. Unblock team members.
   8. Ensure alignment in requirements, information, and next steps amongst teams.
10. Participate in Scaled Agile Framework ART level events: ART sync, Product Owner Scrum of Scrums, Inspect and Adapt, PI Planning, daily stand-ups and system demos.
11. Help create a release plan and track progress towards the release of a product.
12. Actively promote and advocate product features and customer-first product design.
13. Adhere to and improve customer service levels across businesses and service.
14. Provide integrated reporting and feedback.
15. Test new features in the staging environment (user acceptance testing) to provide business sign-off.
16. Engage at a senior level with respect to customer centric product concepts and best practices.
17. Serve as a subject matter expert to guide product development.
18. Work closely with key stakeholders to define KPIs for the overall solution and propose tracking mechanisms / visualisations / dashboards for the KPIs.

Qualifications and experience

1. Degree in Business, IT, Engineering, Marketing or another relevant field.
2. Certified Product Owner / certified SAFe Product Owner.
3. +3 years' experience in a Lead or Senior Product Owner role, with experience working in an agile team and proven success launching new and complex product features and translating business strategy and analysis into successful consumer products.
4. Extensive experience collaborating across multi-disciplinary teams to deliver complex projects.
5. Depth of understanding and experience with analytics platforms and big data.
6. General marketing or retail experience.

Key competencies and work ethic (consolidated for advertising)

1. Independent, motivated self-starter with a focus and determination to persevere in a challenging, fast paced environment to achieve high-quality results.
2. Excellent problem-solver and analytical thinker with the ability to focus on what's most important, balance technical constraints, maximise product value and deliver a differentiated product.
3. Strong product focus and expertise with end-to-end product optimisation.
4. Customer focused – Passionate about creating value for customers.
5. Business acumen – Understands company-wide KPI tree; understands company business models, goals and strategies.
6. Collaborative partner – Effectively leverages the collective intelligence of the team.
7. Stakeholder engagement skills – Anticipates and aligns stakeholder needs across business areas.
8. Leadership and influencing skills – Empowers and inspires others to deliver their best.
9. Communication skills – Strong communication and moderation skills.
10. Curious and adaptable – finds agile and rapid ways of implementing innovative solutions fast.