What are the responsibilities and job description for the Associate Product Owner position at Neptune?
Neptune Technology Group Inc. is a technology company serving water utilities across North America. Since 1892, we have continually focused on the evolving needs of water utilities – revenue optimization, operational efficiencies, and improved customer service. With our portfolio of smart water meters, data collection systems and software, we make data actionable for our customers – so they can remain focused on the business of water. For additional information, please visit the company website at www.neptunetg.com.
Position Summary
This Associate Product Owner is responsible for the overall vision of the team outcomes and represents the value it delivers to the organization. The role is the primary aggregator of business demand into clear priorities for the development team. It is a highly collaborative and consensus-seeking role that ensures requirements integrity and execution alignment with the support of Agile Leadership, Software Engineering, and Architecture. Also, effectively communicates cross-functionally across the organization including gaining trust and influence among executives. Will operate in an Agile environment that is very fast-paced across multiple enterprise business domains.
Responsibilities:
Own Development Backlog & Team Delivery Roadmap
- Envision business functionality and process that is required to deliver on corporate initiatives and objectives
- Develop sequential Road map of deliverables that is socialized with alignment across business stakeholders
- Transform roadmap items into Epics level definitions of MVP deliveries with clear and concise representation of scope, value, outcomes and acceptance criterion
- Effectively organize Story Maps that break down Epics into Feature/Function level deliverables
- Maintain healthy backlog of work accepted by the Development Team
- Plan prioritization of Stories into development Sprint based on value delivery
Program and Sprint Delivery Execution
- Plan Program Increments (PIs) with Release Train and Team Leads by mapping priority efforts to Team capacity
- Groom Epics with Release Train and Stories with the Team to make them “Ready for Dev”
- Monitor un-planned support requests and balance priority between primary development objectives
- Ensure cross team dependencies and/or blockers are communicated and impacts clear in Scrum of Scrums (SoS)
- Define/review strategies required to accept work in terms of functional, regression, SIT and UAT testing
- Accept/Reject work delivered by the development team
- Approval of Releases and Deployments to Production
- Conduct Demos and Read-outs on team delivery across the stakeholders and organization
Business Relationship Management
- Act as the face of the Team promoting the value and delivery of their efforts
- Negotiate priorities across multiple business units with logic and quantitively measure value
- Organize workshops and value stream mapping exercises to discover gaps and opportunities
- Be the “Trusted Advisor” to the stakeholders
Minimum Work Experience
- 3 years conducting complex business analysis that directly became requirements for successful software development efforts
- 2 years within an Agile framework for software delivery (preferred as a System Analyst, Business Analyst, Product Owner, or similar)
- 2 years delivering or directly supporting Testing and Quality assurance practices for Software Development
- Proven leadership abilities with influence, communication, and motivation of teams
- Exposure to Agile Project management tools such as JIRA and Confluence
- Proven team player with the ability to multi-task in a fast-paced dynamic agile work environment
- Supported a metrics-driven data culture to drive accountability and transparency
- Passionate problem solver and motivated self-starter including ability to analyze situations and recommend sound solutions and implementation strategies
- Outstanding verbal and written communication skills
Additional Desired Skills:
- Scrum Master and/or Product Owner certifications
- Experience working as hands on technical resource
- Experience with Data Warehousing, Business Intelligence methods
- Experience with MS Dynamics 365 CRM
- Exposure to QAD, SAP, and Boomi applications
Education
- Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, or a combination of education and experience.
Location: Duluth, GA or Tallassee, AL (some travel required between locations)