Job Product Owner @ Smart Soft Serv

Description

Since 2009, we at 3SS have been shaping the future of entertainment for millions of users worldwide. We create solutions that bring video to any screen, with passion and vision, to make entertainment simple and personal for everyone - everywhere.

We are looking for a Product Owner (PO) as a key person in our Product & Design department. The main purpose of the role is to have a vision of what needs to be built and work together with the agile teams to transform that vision into products. Your responsibilities include:

Topic ownership

• As a member of the Definition & QA department, the PO is always involved in any marketing, sales, and partnership activities related to the topics that the PO owns apart from his agile projects.

Preparation and Participation in PI Planning

• As a member of the extended Product Management team, the PO is heavily involved in program backlog refinement and prep for Program Increment (PI) planning and also plays a significant role in the planning event itself. Before the planning event, the PO updates the team backlog and typically reviews and contributes to the program Vision, Roadmap, and content presentations.
• During the event, the PO is involved with story definition, providing the clarifications necessary to assist the team with their story estimates and sequencing. The entire Agile team, which includes the PO, also work together to determine their team PI objectives for the upcoming PI.
• Provide vision and direction to the Agile development team, Requirements Engineer, and stakeholders throughout the project.
• Demonstrate customer-centricity and closely align with Sales and Marketing to address current customer needs

Iteration Execution

• Maintaining the team backlog – With input from System Architect/Engineering and other stakeholders, the PO has the primary responsibility for building, editing, and maintaining the team backlog.
• Consisting mostly of user stories, it also includes defects and enablers. Backlog items are prioritized based on user value, time, and other team dependencies determined in the PI planning meeting and refined during the PI.
• Iteration Planning – The PO reviews and reprioritizes the backlog as part of the prep work for Iteration Planning, including coordination of dependencies with other POs. During the iteration planning meeting, the PO communicates story detail and priorities and ensures the team aligns and agrees on a final iteration plan.
• Just-in-time story elaboration – Most backlog items are elaborated into user stories for implementation. This may happen before the iteration, during iteration planning, or during the iteration. While any team member can write stories and acceptance criteria, the PO maintains proper flow.
• Apply Behavior-Driven Development (BDD) – POs collaborate with their team to detail stories with acceptance criteria and examples in the form of acceptance tests. See the BDD article for more details.
• Accepting stories – The PO works with the team to agree on accepted story completion. This includes validating that the story meets acceptance criteria, that it has the appropriate, persistent acceptance tests, and that it otherwise complies with its Definition of Done (DoD). In so doing, the PO also assures a level of quality, focusing primarily on fitness for use.
• Understand enabler work – While POs are not expected to drive technological decisions, they are supposed to understand the scope of the upcoming enabler work and collaborate with System and Solution Architect/Engineering to assist with decision-making and sequencing of the critical technological infrastructures that will host the new business functionality. This can often be best accomplished by establishing a capacity allocation, as described in the Team Backlog article.
• Participate in team demo and retrospective – POs collaborate with their team and any other stakeholders in the team demo. They also participate in the Iteration Retrospective, where the teams gather to improve their processes and are active in the Agile Release Train’s (ART’s) Inspect and Adapt (I&A) workshop.

Program Execution

• Iterations and Agile teams serve a larger purpose; the frequent, reliable, and continuous release of value-added solutions. During each PI, the PO coordinates dependencies with other POs. This often occurs in weekly PO sync meetings (see the PI article for more information).
• The PO also has an instrumental role in producing the System Demo for program and Value Stream stakeholders.

Inspect and Adapt

• Research best practices and implement them with the design and engineering team.
• Work across teams to define and implement improvement stories that will increase the velocity and quality of the program.
• The PI system demo is part of the I&A workshop. The PO has an instrumental role in producing the PI system demo for program stakeholders.
• To ensure that they will be able to show the most critical aspects of the solution to the stakeholders, POs also participate in the preparation of the PI system demo.

Requirements

Personal

• Communication and presentation skills
• Positive attitude and strong teamwork abilities
• Attention to details while keeping the big picture in mind
• Creative and solution-oriented thinking
• Multi-cultural understanding
• Excellent interpersonal skills
• Fluent English skills

Professional

• Solid understanding of users, marketplace, competition, and future trends
• Capability to present a vision and convey it to the agile teams
• Product Development and Requirements Analysis knowhow
• Experience in agile software development projects
• Knowledge of agile software development methodologies and processes
• Technical understanding of the project
• Excellent organizational and time management skills
• Sharp analytical and problem-solving skills
• Experience in working with virtual/distributed teams

Any of those will increase your chances

• Certification(s) in relevant fields (e. g. SAFe PO / PM)
• Working experience with
• Scaled Agile Framework
• Atlasssian Tools (JIRA, Confluence)
• Projects around digital entertainment services
• Working with designers and developers
• Experience with Live TV and Video on Demand applications

Benefits

You get

• the opportunity to grow and develop alongside us and work in a dynamic, stable environment
• to work in cross-functional teams with a lot of heart and brains
• to be a member of the #LearningOrganization and to develop into the professional you look up to now
• Work From Home
• Training & Development