Product Owner

About the role

The Collaboration Centre is a critical component of the ITS Operating Model, and an enabler for the Technology Strategy in AMP8 and beyond. It brings together the historically separate worlds of change / project delivery and IT service and operations into one multidisciplinary team responsible for the complete end to end business service for a given technology platform or group of applications.

Working as a multidisciplined member of the Specialist Applications CC, you will report to the Senior Product Owner.

The Product Owner role is accountable for ensuring that SA CC initiatives continues to align with business strategy and best practices. You will also ensure that the SA CC team continually releases innovative products to relevant business areas to support the achievement of our AMP goals, drive efficiencies and help our business areas provide excellent customer service.

To do this you will engage with all business areas, using your excellent communication and problem-solving skills to identify business problems that can be solved through enterprise grade, specialist applications. This will require not only an in-depth knowledge of applications, technology and concepts, but a deep understanding of our business and the challenges we face. You will translate these problems into requirements aligning with SA CC best practice and standards which can be delivered by our technical teams.

You will need to continually review and refine the SA CC demands, to ensure the applications backlog remains aligned with business needs and offers DCWW the most return on value as priorities change. You will need to engage in negotiation with business areas and resolve conflict where there is a lack of clarity around the strategic priority of requirements to be delivered. You will be required to manage and lead by influence, rather than direct control.

You will need to work with stakeholders all over the business, from director level to front line staff, technical and non-technical and be comfortable communicating confidently at all levels, facilitating discussion and negotiation priorities with restricted resources.

You will be accountable and empowered to make quick, in the moment decisions which can have a significant impact on your colleagues and be able to quickly justify and explain the rationale for these decisions. This will require a significant amount of emotional intelligence when stakeholders will perceive to have lost out, have been deprioritized, or we have failed to deliver on our commitments, because of these decisions.

What you’ll be responsible for

Your responsibilities fall under the following key areas:

• Support the SA CC Lead and the Senior Product Owner in the development, implementation and continual review of the Welsh Water specialist applications strategy by engaging with stakeholders from around the business and to identify and document business problems as well as potential solutions and business requirements to feed into the applications backlog.
• Through continuous engagement with stakeholders from Director level to front line staff, use your excellent communication and problem-solving skills to define business problems, and translate these into requirements backlog which supports the SA CC and broader Welsh Water strategies for technology, digital and customer service, as well as AMP goals for efficiency savings.
• Define and implement stakeholder management strategies to ensure that all business stakeholders, from all areas of the business remain engaged and that they are continually informed of progress of products and features on the specialist applications backlog schedule.
• Develop a process by which to assess priority of demand based on forecast business benefit to ensure that we are delivering initiatives in the correct order, that delivers the most value for money for the business
• Lead and challenge business stakeholders to define a Minimum Viable Products (MVP) for initiatives so that we only delivery high value requirements and minimise wasted effort.
• Act as a Subject Matter Expert across the business and lead the organisation in defining application principles and procedures and ensuring that these are adhered to. Represent the applications team at internal and external forums.
• Lead and coach others on Agile ways of working and principles to ensure that business value is delivered often and value for money is achieved. Challenge stakeholders on their behaviors when they do not align with these principles.
• Ensure that initiatives are delivered in adherence to the principles and governance established by SA CC
• Lead in the identification and definition of benefits associated with initiatives you are working on and work with the Senior Product Owner to ensure that these benefits are tracked and reported to support the continual improvement of products and services across the business.
• Challenge business stakeholders to ensure that benefits associated with initiative’s and requirements are clearly defined and aligned with business objectives and strategy, rejecting any requirements which do not meet these requirements and providing rationale for this decision.
• Lead on implementation Go/No Go decisions during deployment to Production, and sign-off of Test Exit Reports.
• Managing all demands/requests through ServiceNow and Azure DevOps for the specialist applications backlog.
• Contribute to Scrum ceremonies and take ownership of Product Owner Scrum Artefacts
• Work with the team to help resolve issues and impediments that would result in not delivering on the sprint commitments and customer expectations

About you

Experience, Qualifications and Skills

• Experience of developing and managing requirements and product backlogs
• SCRUM Certified Product Owner would be desirable
• Agile Working / Delivery Approaches
• Experience of working across an enterprise application product base environment
• Understanding of current enterprise application technologies and roadmaps
• Experience of working with and resolving complex and conflicting business priorities
• Experience of management through influence without direct line management responsibility
• Innovative approach to solution design and Product Lifecycle Management

Good to know

This is a hybrid role, the successful candidate will be expected in our Cardiff office 2 days a week or as the business requires.