Product Owner.

Job Purpose

• The Product Owner represents the “voice of the customer” at the squad level, maintaining and prioritizing the product backlog to ensure that the squad is working on stories that maximize business value and deliver necessary fixes and functionality to all customers.  The Product Owner is responsible for leading squads to ensure timelines are met, ensuring deliverables are aligned with Business requirements / quality standards, ensuring timely day-to-day decisions are made and roadblocks are escalated to Senior Management as required.

Requirements

Key Responsibilities & Accountabilities

• Own the vision and backlog for a particular journey; align with DVP Digital Customer Journey & Product Lead, Business Analysts on backlog.
• Understand key business objectives and strategy of the product.
• Work with Business Analysts to ensure that they are engaged and supportive of direction.
• Lead the planning product release plans and set the expectation for delivery of new   functionalities.  Track progress towards the release of a product.  Gathers, manages, and prioritizes product backlog.
• Create user stories, acceptance criteria, and guide development of customer journeys, experience and design of product features.
• Ensure that Project deliverables are of the desired quality and have appropriate endorsements; Ensure that all submissions to committees are of the right quality and are timely.
• Check product is aligned with business needs / requirements.
• Act as the link between squads and Business.
• Identify potential roadblocks and mitigating actions.
• Assist with prioritization of work / time / resources.
• Ensure the squads are fully up to date with latest context and specific tasks.
• Assess business value and prioritize all stories to ensure work focuses on those with maximum value that align with strategy.
• Ensure stories clearly communicate customer / stakeholder needs to the squad; work with team to clarify stories as necessary.
• Understand and support inter-team dependencies, and escalate issues as needed.
• With squad, set and communicate release date and scope.
• Lead squad events (e.g. daily stand-up, sprint planning, sprint review) and attend standups with other Product Owners
• Keep abreast with Agile/Scrum best practices and new trends.
• Selectively take on process design and analytics roles to fill in for a business analyst role as required.
• Lead a cross-functional team consisting of NBK resources as well as external vendors / consultants.

Educational Qualifications & Experience

• Bachelor’s degree holder in related field , Master’s is a plus
• 8 or more years of experience in a product strategy role or requirements intake role (e.g. business analyst); additional business or technical training may be required
• 5 or more years of experience managing a team
• Background in Digital Banking and/or customer experience
• Experience with agile development strongly preferred; agile certification a plus
• Prior exposure to the Financial Services industry / payments is a plus

Competencies

• Knowledge and understanding of Financial Services industry (specifically consumer / retail banking)
• Outstanding communication, presentation and leadership skills
• Ability to manage large-scale initiatives and effectively partner with stakeholders across business and technical teams.
• Strong understanding of customer needs and business strategy
• Ability to use analysis to prioritize business value.
• Ability to synthesize data to form a story and align information to contrast or compare to industry perspective and historical business trends.
• Deep understanding and experience with Agile methodologies
• Knowledge and understanding of online authentication, authorization, fraud, or security.
• Experience with a definition of minimum marketable features and minimum viable products.