Senior Product Owner

Let's Write Africa's Story Together! Old Mutual is a firm believer in the African opportunity and our diverse talent reflects this. Job Description The MyGoals team is a dynamic unit within the newly formed OMiX business, within Old Mutual Limited. It aims to help our customers reach their financials goals through the use of dynamic, data-driven insights to create meaningful and timely digital and physical personalised interactions. The team applies customer-focused design thinking, agile and lean development methodologies, and continuous delivery practices.  We are looking for talented individuals to join our team!  We’re creating a digital experience that connects Old Mutual to our customers, with an aim to enable them to visualise and engage towards achieving their financial fitness. Do you have the following attributes? • A can-do attitude and the ability to think outside of the box, • Passionate about delivering customer value and the Old Mutual brand. • Want to make a difference in the moments that matter to our customers. • Can operate effectively in a matrix structure and with partners in our value chain. Job summary: The Senior Product Owner’s main responsibility is to coach and develop Product Owners, and therefore may work with multiple teams in complex product environments to ensure delivery of the agreed upon strategy. They work closely with the Product Manager and the client to determine product strategy. The Snr PO actively supports the Client from the business point of view and provides guidance in assessing Product opportunities and risks. They take advantage of the Product KPIs (and other business metrics) to optimize the Product, based on hard data. Furthermore, a Senior PO stays up to date with popular trends in software product development and knows how to provide even more value to the Client based on this knowledge. The Snr Product Owner must have (or develop) deep technical knowledge on how products are built and designed as they are embedded within the teams. There is often overlap in roles between Product Managers and Product Owners – both can have input into Strategy, execution and customer insight. However, the Product Manager has overall responsibility for representing the customer, vision and strategy, whilst the Product Owner has overall responsibility to work with the teams to execute on the agreed plans. Key result areas: The Senior Product Owner guides, coaches, mentors and develops product owners and may have oversight over multiple teams within a Product environment, The Snr PO works with the teams or multiple teams to decompose Epics from the Product Manager into Features and stories, including agreeing 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 Product Owner may be involved in this. Write and prioritise features with acceptance criteria to help guide the team and align stakeholders. Long term as well as short term product roadmap. Understand and be actively involved in removing impediments to team performance that are raised by either the Scrum Master or team. 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. Maintaining and Prioritize team Product Backlog. 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 Product Owner will make decisions at a team level to get work done. The Product Owner will represent the needs and requirements of the Product Manager and as such the two roles should connect and work together closely to ensure alignment. The organisation must empower the Product Owners to make decisions with the knowledge that they will be held accountable. To maintain the required speed of development, decision-making must be made locally at the product level. Minimum Qualifications and Experience:  Bachelor’s degree in Business, Commerce, or Information Systems 6 years plus experience in Product Ownership/Product Manager role, Business analysis and software delivery. Relevant Agile certification required (SAFe, A-CSM, ICAgile) Product Owner and Leading SAFe certification Knowledge of Kanban/Lean desirable Knowledge and experience in using tracking and collaboration tools such as Jira, Miro and TFS Knowledge and experience with typically used Agile techniques such as User Story mapping, ATDD, TDD, etc. Knowledge of agile methodology and frameworks like Scrum, Kanban, Scaled Agile (SAFe) etc. 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. Clarity on delivering clear, prioritised stories with acceptance criteria. Aligning these to Features. Competencies: Strategic Customer First Executing Innovation Leading with Influence Relating Skills Education Closing Date 15 January 2024 The appointment will be made from the designated group in line with the Employment Equity Plan of Old Mutual South Africa and the specific business unit in question. Old Mutual Limited is pro-vaccination and encourages its workforce to be fully vaccinated against Covid-19. All prospective employees are required to disclose their vaccination status as part of the recruitment process. Please refer to the Old Mutual’s Covid-19 vaccination policy for further detail. Kindly note that Old Mutual reserves the right to reinstate the requirement to vaccinate at any point if it is of the view that it is imperative to do so. The Old Mutual Story!

About Us

Old Mutual is a premium African financial services organisation that offers a broad spectrum of financial solutions to retail and corporate customers across key market segments in 14 countries. The lines of business include Life and Savings, Property and Casualty, Asset Management and Banking and Lending. We are rooted in our purpose of Championing Mutually Positive Futures Every Day and believe that a great customer experience is anchored in a great employee experience. #J-18808-Ljbffr