Product Owner

HomeChoice is a leading omni-channel retailer, delighting our customers with an innovative range of curated products on personalised terms. Our Aim is to provide multiple, convenient, and easy retail shopping experiences which guarantee our customers’ expectations are met and exceeded.

The Junior Product Owner 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.

As a Junior Product Owner, your focus would primarily be on execution and maximizing the value delivered by your Agile Scrum team, whilst working closely with the Senior Product Owner / Product Manager to execute against the Portfolio Roadmap. You will also be responsible to continuously refine and sequencing the product backlog, ensuring that each feature consists of user stories and acceptance criteria. Has strong problem-solving capabilities with proposed/conceptual solutions ultimately resulting in improved/optimized user experiences.

**Here’s what you can expect to be doing in the role**
- The Jnr Product Owner works with the teams to break down Features from the Product Owner/Manager into consumable stories with agreed acceptance criteria.
- Active involvement in certain team and program meetings: Feature writing (if required), PI planning, all team meetings such as Daily Stand Ups, Sprint Reviews, Sprint Retrospectives, Sprint Planning, and Backlog Refinement. Product Owner syncs and Program syncs on the program level (if required).
- Ensure alignment between work delivered and Product Managers ultimate expectations as defined in the feature statements.
- Inputting into the vision and strategy. Whilst this is the responsibility of the Product Manager, the Jnr Product Owner may be involved in this. Write and prioritize features with acceptance criteria to help guide the team and align stakeholders.
- Understand and be actively involved in removing impediments to team performance that are raised by either the Scrum Team or Master.
- Communicating risks effectively to stakeholders.
- Communicate and align with other Product Owners when inter-team dependencies and trade-offs are required to be solved.
- Make day-to-day decisions that will guide the team’s delivery.

**A little about who you are**
- A minimum of 2 - 3 years of relevant experience
- A tertiary qaulification/s
- Knowledge of agile methodology and frameworks like Scrum, Kanban, Scaled Agile (SAFe) etc.
- Deep technical knowledge on how products are built and designed in relation to their environments.
- Clarity on delivering clear, prioritized stories with acceptance criteria aligned to Features.
- Commitment to deliver the agreed work through the team and relevant stakeholders.
- Understand the value of team metrics and ask them to be tracked to drive team performance.
- Stakeholder Management, Negotiation & Communication Skills.

**Competencies**
- _Available and Engaged_
- A key aspect of the role is being available to answer questions from the team. Questions can arise at any time and any delay will impact the ability of the team to deliver. The most successful projects have fully engaged Product Owners working daily as an integral part of the team.
- The Jnr Product Owner will make decisions at a team level in order to get work done. The Jnr Product Owner will represent the needs and requirements of the Product Owner/Manager and as such the two roles should connect and work together closely to ensure alignment.
- _Empowered_
- The organization has empowered the Product Owners to make decisions with the knowledge that they will be held accountable. To maintain the required speed of development, certain decision-making may need to be made locally at a product level.
- _Decisive_
- The development team's questions, issues, and blockers must be answered promptly and with authority. Delaying decisions will prevent the work planned from being completed, and frequently reversing previous decisions will lead to a lack of trust. The Jnr Product Owner should understand requirements and work closely enough with the Product Owner/Manager to ensure decisions are made in a timeous fashion.
- _Good Domain Knowledge_
- The Jnr Product Owner must have a good understanding of the target customers’ needs and appropriate business knowledge to lead development in coordination with all of the stakeholders. This requires strong support networks within the organization and the creation of good relationships with the team and stakeholders. Understanding customer journeys is vital.
- _Communication_
- This role requires an excellent communicator, collaborator, and “people person” capable of sharing a vision, aligning people, focusing efforts, and motivating the team. High emotional intelligence will help to collaborate and steer product development to a successful conclusion.

**Behaviours**