The Vacancy
We’re building an inclusive work environment
Here at Zen your gender, race, ethnicity, neurodiversity, sexuality, sub culture, size, introversion, extraversion, family background and everything else that shapes you does matter to us. Because they matter to you and are part of who you are.
We’re interested in you as an individual and here you’ll find opportunities to develop, be recognised and hopefully enjoy yourself along the way. So don’t hold back, there is a warm welcome for everyone at Zen and we look forward to meeting you.
FAO Recruitment agencies & organisations: Please note that we do not need agency support to fill this role. We have a small, but great, pool of agencies on our PSL and will contact one of those if we need to.
Role Description & Purpose
The Product Owner facilitates change within Zen by providing expertise on particular services / products and determines how best to change the product to deliver the strategy and requirements as defined and agreed by the Exco and key stakeholders.
This change is facilitated by using agile development principles to ensure that for each systems change, the business requirements are understood, and the backlog is agreed and reviewed regularly. The Product Owner ensures the roadmap is kept up to date, and that the necessary changes are being made to support the strategic direction of the business.
The Product Owner is responsible for managing deliverables with all relevant parties during and throughout the delivery and will manage the overall relationship between the business and Technology to ensure all agreed systems change is delivered during the iteration.
They must demonstrate a depth of knowledge and expertise in their domain to effectively prioritise and shape the requirements to be delivered. The Product Owner must understand and influence a broad section of stakeholders and must be an excellent communicator.
The Product Owner is responsible for translating the needs and wants of our user community into the product requirements, supported by Business Analysis and expressed as Epics and Features, the development teams need to deliver and to subsequently verify this has been done to the appropriate level of quality before their release.
The Product Owner must effectively sequence the delivery of iterative and incremental value and therefore must prioritise requirements within a backlog of potential work. They must engage with the wider business and communicate expectations around product capability and delivery timescales, this includes the need to respond to change.
Working within aligned but autonomous technology development teams to deliver iterative and incremental value to stakeholders and operating alongside Developers, Testers, Architects, Designers, System Analysts and other technology professionals. The Product Owner occupies a critical position within the agile delivery team.
Core Accountabilities
Deliver an outstanding customer experience.
1. Create, maintain and own the Product Backlog - Create Themes, Epics and Features and work with stakeholders to prioritise the work. Work with delivery teams to size the work and update the roadmap to reflect the effort needed.
2. Drive iteration content via prioritised Epics and Features.
3. Assist the Business Analyst with elaboration of Epics and Features. Helping establish acceptance criteria with their support.
4. Convey the vision and goals at the beginning of every iteration.
5. Participate and play a key role in the daily Stand Ups, Planning, Reviews and Retrospectives.
6. Sign off the progress at the end of every iteration and have complete authority to accept or reject work done and ensure acceptance criteria are met.
7. Responsible for ensuring the requirements are ready.
8. Has the ability to alter the course of the work at the end of every iteration in line with stakeholder feedback.
9. Responsible for communicating the delivery status externally to other stakeholders or to third parties. Develop and maintain the roadmap for the service/product, validating that the features being developed support the overarching strategy and objectives.
10. Represent and engage with the customer, working as the interface between Technology and stakeholders.
11. Work with other Product Owners, ensuring that there is a clear understanding of how the people, process, and systems interact across Zen to deliver the various services.
12. Act as an SME in helping Zen develop and achieve its strategic objectives.
Identifying and maximising value.
13. Identify which Epics and Features deliver the best value and work with key stakeholders to rule Epics/Features in or out based the delivery of value.
14. Work to deliver the maximum value for the minimum time/cost.
Ensuring that the quality of the product meets customer needs.
15. Work with Project Managers and the other Product Owners to ensure that large scale projects deliver consistent business solutions.
16. Work with Systems Development and the Solutions Architects to ensure solutions align with target architecture and the architecture roadmap.
17. Ensure that for all changes, business change activity is being identified, and that there is a plan of work with associated owners working with either Business Analysts or directly with the business.
Skills & Experience
Skill Requirements
18. Must be an excellent collaborator and a strong communicator able to convey information, both orally and in writing.
19. Must be able to communicate effectively and at the right level for a variety of stakeholders ranging from business users to board members.
20. Must have experience of delivery within an agile environment including management of backlogs.
21. Must be able to demonstrate experience of working collaboratively with Agile IT delivery teams.
22. Strong business analysis skills - able to gather requirements and develop high level business solutions.
23. Able to articulate solution design skills within a business environment.
24. Able to work with delivery teams and stakeholders to provide day to day guidance to ensure successful delivery of change. Issuing effective communications and undertaking exception management.
25. Able to work on multiple product lines and change items concurrently.
26. Proven track record in change delivery.
27. Experience of working with Azure DevOps, Jira or similar backlog management software.
Knowledge Requirements
28. Professional Product Owner with strong agile team working and stakeholder management skills.
29. Knowledge and understanding of working directly with multiple stakeholders including external 3rd party suppliers as well as internal suppliers.
30. Knowledge of working within an agile delivery environment including Scrum and Kanban.
31. In-depth understanding of the product’s domain. Having experience with telecoms domain would be advantageous, but isn’t essential.
32. Excellent analysis and decision-making skills.
33. Self-driven with a proactive and positive approach to work.
34. Organised and methodical approach to problem solving.
35. A great team player.