The role of Expert, Product Owner (PO), is to act as the SAFe AGILE team's primary customer advocate (ie the "voice of the customer"). The PO is responsible for the creation of user story specifications and ensuring the overall cohesion of the all the product's specifications (including UX specifications and non-functional requirements (NFR)). This enables the team to balance the needs of multiple stakeholders while continuously evolving the Solution. A PO is accountable for drafting user stories, refine feasibility and effort estimation, communicating the specifications, and prioritizing the product backlog based on maximizing business value and ensuring proper product functionality. The role is also vital to ensuring quality and customer satisfaction.
The PO collaborates closely with a cross-functional team made up of customers, the Product Manager, BAs, the scrum teams and the product development teams throughout the product lifecycle, from Specification phase to Customer Rollout. This role is not to be confused with the role of a Product Manager, who is accountable for product roadmaps and high-level features
Create and maintain user stories and backlog
· Analyze preferences and requests of customers and end users.
· Analyze the existing processes and business rules as input into the to-be specifications.
· Draft user stories with appropriately detailed specifications as per PO standard template, including coordinating the collection of the preliminary functional, non function and UX specifications from the relevant team members to ensure the clarity and accuracy of the product requirements.
· Define the Acceptance criteria.
· Define any required Enablers, including exploration, architectural, infrastructure and compliance enablers.
· Perform, and sign-off on, quality checks of the user stories.
· Refine the feature feasibility assessment and high-level effort and time estimates
· Own, maintain, prioritize and commit the backlog of user stories to ensure work focuses on those with a maximum value that are aligned with product strategy and roadmap.
· Identify the user story business value explicitly. Help the customer understand the value and value proposition.
· During Architecture and Design phase: Oversee the refinement of the user stories and perform and sign-off on quality checks. Help make trade-off decisions.
· During Build phase: Support delivery teams and ensure they deliver based on specifications. Help make trade-off decisions.
· During Test phase: Provide input on test data setup. Act on behalf of the customer to perform UAT testing and acceptance of user stories and enablers. Validate that the Acceptance Criteria has been met satisfactorily.
· Throughout the SAFe AGILE process: Participate in all SAFe AGILE ceremonies (including scrum meetings, sprint plans and PI plans). Solve user-story-related problems, make decisions, complete trade-off analysis to stay on track towards business value and deliverable commitments.
· Remain up-to-date with CN's SAFe AGILE practices, process and artifacts.
· Take guidance from PO Manager on usage and compliance to PO standards.
· Facilitate the definition and tracking of key metrics related to the product (e.g. flow, rework, quality)
· Guide the customers in what to expect from the SAFe AGILE process and the role they play.
· Provide feedback and continuous improvement suggestions to the PO Manager for the PO Practice and artifacts.
The role has standard working conditions in an office environment with a regular workweek from Monday to Friday. Due to the nature of the role, the incumbent must be able to meet tight deadlines, handle pressure, and stress. The role requires minimal travel (up to 20%) in accordance with CN policy for meetings within Canada and the United States (U.S.).
Requirements
• Minimum 7-10 years overall work experience.
• Experience in transportation logistic companies.
• Experience in a Product Ownership or related role.
• Software development experience, with I&T or Applied Engineering context.
• Demonstrated experience in engaging senior leaders and other stakeholders to support business decisions.
• Experience in shaping, building, scaling and sustaining products.
• Experience in diverse roles and increasing responsibilities across Business and IT, although a business-only career is acceptable if business roles included sufficient technology focus.
• Experience working with complex systems in large organizations.
• Minimum of 3 years working in or with Design Thinking and Lean / Agile software delivery teams.
• Bachelor's Degree in computer science, business administration or an equivalent degree and experience.
• Knows the business and stays current on industry needs.
• Communicates with impact.
• Demonstrates agility and drives change.
• Applies critical thinking.
• Collaborates with others and shares information.
• Identifies needs and finds solutions to create value for all stakeholders.
• In-depth knowledge and experience of the Product Ownership discipline
• Business acumen, and the ability to communicate with executives, business domain stakeholders and technical staff alike.
• Excellent analytical and technical skills.
• Experience with SW Development methodologies (Agile, Devops, etc.).
• Familiarity with the principles of Design Thinking
• Vision and passion for building great products.
• Experienced in requirements analysis.
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