Sr Product Owner

GENERAL SUMMARY OF POSITION:

Under the direction of the Manager Scrum Practice or designee, the Sr. Product Owner is a project's key stakeholder responsible for supporting information technology products and delivery at the UMass Medical School. The Sr. Product Owner

(PO) is responsible to work with Engineering to visualize and deliver the product. The Sr. PO will represent the voice of the customer and the vision of the product throughout the products development. The overall responsibility of this position is to ensure that products address customer requirements, and to work with both clients and scrum teams to set appropriate expectations regarding delivery time line and costs. The product owner will adhere to UMMS's scrum framework guidelines, with the goal of ensuring quality deliverables that achieve customer satisfaction.

MAJOR RESPONSIBILITIES:

Visualize and deliver information systems solutions in attainment of the Medical School's strategic and tactical business plans
• Develop, adapt, and facilitate scrum framework including backlog through all sprints of product release phases
• Lead and Communicate the release plan for the product
• Educate scrum teams, other product owners, clients and support staffs on scrum best practice
• Work directly with Best Practice leader to create and manage Scrum Framework for entire scrum staff
• Actively engage with other product owners and scrum masters in the in developing a comprehensive strategy around the development of IT products and services.
• Lead the acquisition of related software, products, and services as needed by clients
• Work with Core Team Lead, Product Managers, Service, Support and key technical resources to identify stories to be added to the backlog
• Order and manage the backlog of user stories and product defects to ensure that the work defined for the team is meaningful to the customer, yet realistic and attainable for the development teams
• Plan, coordinate, and document product related development activities of large scale and highly visible projects that will vary in scope and affected business units
• Facilitate communication of the sprint and release deliveries, budget, costs, issues, and related information to same
• Consider which activities will produce the most business value including making tough decisions during sprint planning
• Develop and maintain an effective relationship with the product's steering committee, sponsor(s), customer(s), functional managers, and project teams as appropriate
• Communicate with all appropriate parties to ensure that the product's objectives, scope, and expected deliverables of each project phase are understood.
• Motivate the scrum team with clear, elevating goals
• Drive to a sustainable maximum velocity. Work with development teams to address questions I concerns during sprints
• Engage with development to commit backlog items to sprint deliverables (negotiate on what gets put in each iteration)
• Support "Post-Live" retrospectives of releases to review whether the delivery met expectations and to identify potential areas for improvement. Documents results of retrospective and recommendations
• Advocate for and manage the value of the product release at the team level
• Perform other duties as required

REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS:

• Bachelor's degree in computer science or information management technology, or equivalent experience
• 6 year of Information Technology experience
• 4 years of experience working as primary product owner for agile/scrum teams
• Flexibility to partner with and negotiate with various personality types at all levels within and outside the organization
• Ability to build effective leadership skills and ability to listen, communicate and motivate teams to achieve results
• Strong organizational skills and the ability to handle many (5 +) products and customers concurrently
• Ability to delegate effectively. Established track record of delivering on commitments
• Strong written and verbal communication skills to interact effectively with IT staff, clients, executive leadership and vendors
• Demonstrated knowledge of current and available scrum tracking tools such as Team Foundation Services and other supporting tools
• Ability to lead and direct scrum teams, sprint planning meetings, and client review sessions
• Product level understanding the needs of users, their market place, the competition and of future trends for the domain or type of system being developed
• Possess positive attitude and creativity in generating solutions
• Passionate understanding of customer needs as it relates to the product development
• Ability to travel to off-site locations

• Scrum Product Owner certification
• Experience implementing 3rd party business applications
• Experience managing large enterprise projects highly desirable
• Experience in higher education
• Experience in health and medical services automation

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