Senior Product Owner

Role Description  

·                Manage a product portfolio of medium to high complexity (between 4-10) products to build required functionality and empower successful delivery. 

·                Work with the business leads, business analysts and solution architects to set the 12 – 18 month product or services roadmap that meet customer needs, drive continuous exploration to define the benefit hypotheses, processes and solution intent for program epics. 

·                Guide Product Owners to plan, forecast and market a product or service at each stage of the product’s lifecycle.  

·                Work closely with Product Owners to ensure that feature breakdown occurs for continuous exploration epics. 

·                Contribute as subject matter expert across business and IT teams to drive business objectives through product-market fit.  

·                Participate in ART level events; ART syncs, inspect and adapt, PI planning, system demos and continuous exploration reviews. 

·                Determine and track the profitability of products during the product lifecycle. 

·                Act as a centre of product and market information for different parts of the company including sales, finance, marketing, management, development, and support. Ensure ongoing and meaningful communication with internal departments, clients, customers, and external stakeholders. 

·                Serve as key integration point with IT development, business process, architecture and business leadership.  

·                Establish and monitor customer satisfaction and other KPIs to define the success of digital experiences. Includes identifying and leading efforts to analyse results and continuously improve performance through product improvements.  

·                Understand changing consumer trends to apply strategies and product roadmaps that deliver added value.  

·                Generate new product ideas, researching and analysing for feasibility and business impact.  

·                Provide strategic input to customer experience improvements that help drive customer acquisition, customer retention, and conversion.  

·                Ensure a consistent and delightful customer experience across all digital touchpoints of the Shoprite customer journey. 

·                Provide integrated reporting and feedback. 

·                Engage with executive leadership and present customer centric product concepts and best practices. 

 

Qualifications and experience 

·                Degree in Business, IT, Engineering, Marketing or another relevant field – (essential).  

·                Certified Product Owner / certified SAFe Product Owner – (desired). 

·                +6 years’ experience in a lead product management role, with proven success launching new and complex product features and translating business strategy and analysis into successful consumer products – (essential).  

·                Experience as a product owner – (essential).   

·                Experience leading an agile team – (essential). 

·                Experience collaborating across multi-disciplinary teams to deliver complex projects – (essential). 

·                Depth of understanding and experience with analytics and big data – (essential).   

·                Strong commercial experience in digital led business development environments – (essential).   

·                Customer user and loyalty experience – (essential).  

·                Knowledge of legal compliance (POPIA, Electronic Information Act, etc.) – (essential). 

·                General marketing or retail experience – (desired).  

·                Exposure to the African digital market and customers – (desired).  

 

Key competencies and work ethic (detailed competencies and capabilities outlined in framework) 

·                User and Customer Knowledge: Expands customer knowledge to drive segmentation and shape existing / new personas; draw actionable conclusions of customer discovery interviews and achieve and prioritize validated problem statements independently.  

·                Data Knowledge: Ensures high-quality data tracking and leverages a variety of sources and business insights for the entire domain based on broad customer / stakeholder and strategic contexts; consistently derives sound business insights and proactively thinks through implications. 

·                Industry and Domain Knowledge: Profound understanding of differentiation of value proposition of the company and its key competitors; profound understanding of the product of key competitors; good understanding of market, social and technology trends. 

·                Business and Company Knowledge: Good understanding of the company-wide KPI tree; profound understanding of company’s business model, goals and strategy. 

·                Product Operational Knowledge: Anticipates and proactively approaches operational challenges with products within area of responsibility. 

·                Product Strategising: Own end-to-end product strategy for area of responsibility; manages all continuous exploration items per program increment for their tribe; actively challenges opportunity assessment for all topics; establish loops to continuously generate opportunities; facilitate effective roadmap transparency and discussion with senior stakeholders. 

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·                Team Collaboration Skills: Leverage collective intelligence of the team; reach objectively good negotiation results while maintaining collaborative relationships.  

·                Stakeholder Management Skills: Anticipates stakeholder needs and interests; aligns stakeholders across different business areas. 

·                Influencing Skills: Communicates and aligns the vision and strategy across the product and technology department; effectively engages with stakeholders on the overarching product development process and PM mindset. 

·                Leadership Skills: Empowers and inspires others to deliver their best; identifies conflicts or roadblocks quickly and resolves them independently; creates an atmosphere of enthusiasm, fun, commitment and trust; coaches and supports junior and mid-level product owners in their development. 

·                Communication Skills: Strong moderation skills; writes thought-leadership communications; prepares and gives presentations in front of large, senior audiences. 

·                Product Strategising: Own end-to-end product strategy for area of responsibility; manages all continuous exploration items per program increment for their tribe; actively challenges opportunity assessment for all topics; establish loops to continuously generate opportunities; facilitate effective roadmap transparency and discussion with senior stakeholders.