Associate Product Owner

Associate Product OwnerJob Summary: Talent Software Services is in search of a Associate Product Owner for a contract position in New York City, NY. Opportunity will be seven months with a strong chance for a long-term extension.Position Summary: The associate product owner supports the product team in execution of the vision and the roadmap by collaborating with product owners/managers, designers, and development teams. This includes proactively incorporating feedback from users and internal Client functions such as Accessibility, Customer Service, Cloud Excellence, Communications, Data Governance, Legal, LEvR (Learning, Evaluation, and Research), Information Security, Marketing, Risk Management, and User Experience. The product owner directly manages the backlog for a development team.Associate product owners are motivated, proactive team members who operate with a sense of urgency in solving problems and getting things done. They are the opposite of passive or "pass the request from X through to team Y people. They bring a customer-focused and organizationally-aware mindset; they are inquisitive and possess tremendous learning agility; they constantly seek useful information that can shape their products for the good of the user; and they build strong, productive relationships while guiding/leading/nurturing their teams and stakeholders to produce tremendous value for our customers. The greater the complexity they face, the greater initiative they assume, and they are adept at exercising their influence to get things done across the organization.Primary Responsibilities/Accountabilities:

• The associate product owner is a core member of the product development team and partners closely with senior product team members daily. They manage the Agile processes/activities working very closely with the development team.
• Attends and actively participates in ceremonies such as sprint planning, daily scrum, sprint review/demo, retrospective ceremonies
• Accepts the work of a team as it is completed (generally in an end of sprint review/demo) Working with the product owners/managers, an associate product owner focuses on delivering the highest priority features on the product roadmap that are aligned to the product vision and organizational priorities
• Works with product owners/managers to have a shared understanding of work
• In conjunction with the product owners/managers, conveys the product roadmap(s) to the development team.
• Collaborates with product owners/managers and other stakeholders to get details needed for the development team to successfully complete the work
• Supports the product owner in managing the backlog and facilitating backlog refinement with the team
• Breaks features into epics and user stories with the development team.
• Writes user centered stories with clear acceptance criteria. Team decides how to contribute to the writing, but the APO/PO own accepting the story
• Prioritizes and sequences epics and stories in the product backlog based on feature priority (which should already be aligned to the roadmap priorities based on the product vision and organizational priorities)
• Works with product owner and other teams to resolve dependencies and negotiate, coordinate, and align priorities to complete a feature
• Ensures the product backlog is visible, transparent, and clear to all, and shows what the development team will work on next
• Work with Technical Lead/Architect to understand technical work and help to drive product needs in a technical manner
• Collaborate with product owners/managers to gather data on product usage to inform prioritization of features
• Communicates progress outside of the team
• Works with the product owners/managers to provide release information for product update communications to internal and external stakeholders
• Collaborates with product owners/manages to determine relevant information that needs to be added to internal and external training & support materials including manuals, websites, FAQ's, etc.

• Bachelor's degree or equivalent required
• 3+ years relevant experience
• Experience supporting a full product lifecycle from inception through design to implementation and launch
• Experience working in an Agile product development work environment
• Experience writing technical documentation (e.g., user stories, product specifications, test scripts, user guides, FAQs, etc.)
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills
• Ability to complete complex tasks on short deadlines and in a fast-past environment
• Preferred skills for the role
• Excellent prioritization skills
• Experience distilling data to inform key decisions
• Experience designing and communicating Objective and Key Results (OKRs)
• Conflict resolution skills