Product Owner

**.**:
**When it comes to creating a place where everyone is welcome, we're number 1.**

The number 1 Top Employer in South Africa.
Certified by the Top Employer Institute 2024.

**Role Purpose/Business Unit**:

- The Product Owner represents the business stakeholders and is the voice of the customer guiding individual DevOps teams, responsible for ensuring that the delivery team delivers value to the business according to the outcome vision
- This role is responsible for the definition of customer-centric items or user stories from the capability/feature roadmap defined by the Product Manager, ranking and prioritizing them, and adding them to the team backlog
- This role will work closely with the Release Train Engineer/Agile Programme Manager and Scrum Master in coordinating day to day activities such as sprint planning, retrospectives and other agile functions to ensure collaboration and effective delivery of user stories against commercial milestone objectives
- Product owner works to Agile principles and will be responsible for the prioritization and delivery of the backlog of change initiatives to maximize business benefit of the products and features we offer. The rote works closely with the team to develop user stories, acceptance criteria and full business benefits, and convey the vision onwards to our in-house Scrum teams, or, where required, to our Offshore development partners

**Your responsibilities will include**:

- Own, drive, and focus the team on delivery of business value and content
- Develop and define user stories / items and acceptance criteria from the feature and capability roadmap defined by Product Managers Rank and prioritize user stories / items and add them to the team backlog for sprint development, conveying a clear vision of what is required to be built
- Approve the final release plan and accept all deliverables against defined user stories and acceptance criteria
- Analyse and report delivery risks and opportunities, and engage stakeholders for communications and decision-making
- Participate in retrospectives to identify improvement opportunities
- Acts as single point of business contact for the DevOps team
- Manage the financial plan for the delivery team, providing forecasts

**Must have technical / professional qualifications**:

- Bachelor’s Degree in Accounting, Administration, or other related field
- A total of eight or more years experience of which at least 5 or more years are in the successful delivery in Product Ownership (or equivalent role) across full product lifecycles, from MVP to marketable products in iterations, including support transition.
- Experience in successfully Leading and mentoring agile / DevOps teams in Large multi-team environments.

**Core competencies**:

- Experience in agile methodologies, such as Scrum, Kanban, Extreme Programming (XP), Test Driven Design and Behavioural Driven Design
- Experience in successful delivery against financial / resource constraints
- Experience in the use of analytics and AB / multivariate testing
- Experience with requirements definition and use case modelling
- Digital/software product ownership in large scale environments
- User story definition and refinement
- Professional experience and knowledge of the Telecommunications industry strongly preferred
- Industry Experience Required for Value Added Services Distribution/Vending:

- Reconciliations
- Billing & Settlements
- Supplier and Distribution contracts
- Products:

- Prepaid Utilities
- Bill Payments

**We make an impact by offering**:

- Enticing incentive programs, competitive benefit packages, and an exclusive 13th cheque
- Retirement funds, risk benefits, and medical aid benefits
- Cell phone and data benefits, advantages fibre connection discounts, and exclusive staff discounts offered in collaboration with partner companies

Closing date for Applications**:18 October 2024**

The base location for this role is **Vodacom Midrand Campus**

The company's approved Employment Equity Plan and Targets will be considered as part of the recruitment process. As an Equal Opportunities employer, we actively encourage and welcome people with various disabilities to apply.
Vodacom is committed to an organizational culture that recognizes, appreciates, and values diversity & inclusion.