Program Product Owner

Company:

Want to work for a company with unparalleled financial strength and stability that offers "large company" benefits with an exciting, friendly, and "small company" atmosphere? Our companies, as members of the Berkshire Hathaway group of Insurance Companies, provides opportunities for professionals interested in just that.

A Brief Overview

This position is responsible for identifying, organizing, prioritizing, and assessing work for value stream delivery teams. The Program Product Owner's responsibilities include gathering and prioritizing stream-aligned Feature requests, assigning, scheduling and coordinating releases. Abilities include identifying and measuring business value delivery and working with multiple cross-functional teams to manage product releases. Responsible for facilitating communication between stakeholders and delivery team(s), as well as helping clearly define what should be built on behalf of the relevant business team(s) and why. Expected to interact with senior management and subject matter experts across multiple departments and to support the Product Owners in the value stream in creating Features and developing overall test plans built around the Feature requirements.

What will you do?

• IDENTIFY VALUE STREAM GOALS: Collaborates with key stakeholders to define goals and create an execution plan for development projects, focusing on outcomes rather than solutions. Works with business and technical teams to establish and validate requirements at a Feature level throughout development process. Clearly expresses user needs in the form of product requirements to the teams. Ensures that the product owners understand the business and technical objectives and that the proposed solutions are aligned with customer needs. Provide vision and direction to the stream aligned product owners and stakeholders throughout the product life cycle, ensuring alignment with business objectives.
• FEATURES AND RELEASE PLANNING: Participates in the analysis phase of the Portfolio Process by working with a cross-functional team including by not limited to architects, security professionals, technical leads, and subject matter experts to create possible solutions for business problems. Translates multi-product initiative requirements to Product Owners by defining Features for the stream aligned teams. Maintains and applies understanding of work process dependencies into functional requirements. Drives multi-product release planning and sets expectations for delivery of new capabilities, features, and functionalities. Creates the overall release plan with input from the stream-aligned team(s). Refine, prioritize, and sequence the stream aligned product backlog based on changes, team progress, and customer and/or stakeholder feedback. Works with other technology team members from Software Development, Infrastructure and Security to recommend and provide trade-off considerations for technology solutions and approaches. Participates in sprint review(s) and provides direction to the team(s) for final deployment.
• PRODUCT TEAM GUIDANCE AND DIRECTION: Provides overall leadership, guidance, and support of stream aligned software product delivery team(s). Works with Program Scrum Masters and Technical Leads to help direct, motivate, and guide the delivery team(s). Works with stream aligned Product Owners to support the development of project test plans, and the organization of the testing efforts for the team(s). Prepare and maintain the implementation tools such as stream aligned roadmaps, milestone plans, resource alignment maps, overall burndown charts, and the necessary backlog features so that teams have adequate visibility and information on work that is planned and how the work is progressing. Review and provide feedback to ensure changes which are made to the applications meet the goals of the value stream.
• AGILE CEREMONIES: Along with Program Scrum Master, leads various Agile activities and ceremonies including Scrum of Scrums, feature review, release planning sessions, status meetings, sprint reviews, demos, and retrospectives. May assist Program Scrum Master to help mitigate impediments impacting the successful completion of the stream aligned goals. Along with Program Scrum Master and Technical Lead, oversees and manages feature scope, timeline, quality, goals, and deliverables that support the stream aligned goals.
• COMMUNICATION AND COLLABORATION: Works closely with and ensures regular communication with Portfolio Managers, internal stakeholders, project sponsors, and other technology teams to ensure smooth on-boarding of work. Acts as a coordination and facilitation point for organizing work efforts. Ensures that the product feature backlog is visible, transparent, and clear to all, and shows what the delivery team will work on next. Develop, manage, and communicate status for program plans, timelines, team velocity, and deliverables to stakeholders and other appropriate individuals and teams. Serves business needs by communicating complex features to management, requirements to technology partners, and potential development implications to business teams as needed.

Education

Bachelor's degree in related field or equivalent work experience.

Experience

Seven or more years related work experience.

Required Knowledge

• Knowledge of Agile methodologies (Scrum, Kanban, etc.)
• Knowledge of software development practices and procedures
• Experience working in application lifecycle management tools such as DevOps, JIRA, or Rally
• Professional experience as a Product Owner, Business Analyst, Business Team Manager, Project Manager, or Scrum Master

Preferred Knowledge

• Experience with product ownership, business analysis or project management
• Familiarity with continuous delivery and continuous integration
• Insurance industry and product knowledge

Required Skills and Abilities

• Strong mulit-team facilitation skills
• Strong interpersonal skills including conflict resolution skills
• Excellent sense of ownership and accountability
• Excellent oral and written communication skills with all levels of the organization
• Ability to explain and defend a view point and persuade others to a defined position
• Ability to prioritize work objectives and goals
• Be able to think
• Learn quickly
• Work independently
• Work well with others
• Work with remote team members
• Respond well to demands on time and resources
• Identify problems and make decisions, train personnel, and organize workflow
• Maintain confidentiality
• Delegate, plan, prioritize, and meet deadlines

We want you to be involved! We offer Employee Resource Groups for volunteering, connecting with others, social gatherings, and professional development. We also regularly seek employees input through companywide surveys.

We care about your health and wellbeing! Our Wellness program is integrated into the Company culture with an online wellness portal that offers a year-round, one-stop-shop to manage and track all areas of health, our Omaha office boasts a complimentary state-of-the-art onsite fitness center, and a robust wellness program.

Benefits, Perks and more! We offer retirement and savings plan with immediate enrollment with 100% employer match up to 5%, Medical, Dental and Vision for regular, full-time employees and eligible dependents, a dedicated Learning & Development program for employees to grow personally and professionally, 100% upfront Educational Reimbursement program, subsidized downtown parking, competitive time off policies including parental leave, an Employee Assistance program and much more!