Old Mutual is a firm believer in the African opportunity and our diverse talent reflects this. Job DescriptionThe Product Owner’s main responsibility is to work with the teams to ensure delivery of the agreed upon strategy. Working closely with the Product Manager and inputting into the consumer strategy, the Product Owner focuses efforts on the team to drive delivery that meets consumer needs. Working closely with the teams to take the requirements of the Product Manager in the form of Features, the Product Owner works with the team to break these into Stories with acceptance criteria that ultimately meet the features requirements. The Product Owner accepts all stories written by the team and ensures that the expectations of the Product Manager are managed effectively. To achieve this, 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. Let's Write Africa's Story Together! Old Mutual is a firm believer in the African opportunity and our diverse talent reflects this. Job DescriptionThe Product Owner’s main responsibility is to work with the teams to ensure delivery of the agreed upon strategy. Working closely with the Product Manager and inputting into the consumer strategy, the Product Owner focuses efforts on the team to drive delivery that meets consumer needs. Working closely with the teams to take the requirements of the Product Manager in the form of Features, the Product Owner works with the team to break these into Stories with acceptance criteria that ultimately meet the features requirements. The Product Owner accepts all stories written by the team and ensures that the expectations of the Product Manager are managed effectively. To achieve this, 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.The Product Owner works with the teams to break Features from the Business Owner into 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 Business owner ultimate expectations as defined in the feature statements.• Provide input into the vision and strategy. Whilst this is the responsibility of the Business owner, the Product Owner may be involved in this. Write and prioritise features with acceptancecriteria 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.• Continuously build backlog of solution features.• Ensure that backlogs and product team roadmaps are visible, transparent, and clear to all.• 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.• Attend all team planning to reaffirm backlog order based on priority and clarify the requirements, while assessing and approving the product throughout its progress.• Maintaining and ordering team Product Backlog • A key aspect of the role is being available to answer questions from the team.• Make decisions at a team level to get work done. The Product Owner will represent the needs and requirements of the Business owner and as such the two roles should connect and work together closely to ensure alignment.MINIMUM QUALIFICATIONS/EXPERIENCE (REQUIRED FOR THE JOB)• Matric• Relevant IT / Business related diploma/ degree• Foundational Agile certification required• Scrum.org Professional Scrum Product Owner (PSPO I)• 5 + years experience in Product Ownership, Business analysis , software delivery, software engineering or project management• Knowledge of agile ways of working and approaches like Scrum, Kanban, Scaled Agile (SAFe) etc.• Knowledge and experience in using tracking and collaboration tools such as Jira, Miro or TFSADDITIONAL QUALIFICATIONS/EXPERIENCE (PREFERRED)• Knowledge and experience with typically used Agile techniques such as User Story mapping, ATDD, TDD, etc.• Knowledge and experience in using tracking and collaboration tools such as Jira, Miro or TFS.• 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.• Ability to lead through influence within and across teams in achieving the product vision.• Role specific certifications advantageous• Scaled Agile Product Owner /Product Manager (POPM)SkillsConducting Standups, Pi Planning, Product Backlog Management, Sprint Retrospective, User StoryEducationClosing Date14 June 2024The 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