Advisor, Software Development Engineering

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Job Title

Job Posting Title: Advisor, Software Development Engineering

What does a successful Agile Product Owner do at Fiserv?

The Product Owner (PO) s responsible for maximizing the value delivered by the team and ensuring that the Team Backlog is aligned with customer and stakeholder needs. The PO is the team’s primary customer advocate and primary link to business and technology strategy. This enables the team to balance the needs of multiple stakeholders while continuously evolving the Solution.

The PO represents the needs of customers and the business within a particular Solution domain, which is typically co-represented by a Product Manager. Together, they ensure that product strategy and implementation remain connected throughout the value stream. Serving as the ‘voice of the customer’ for the team entails a broad range of responsibilities. The PO must build and manage key relationships, synthesize information from multiple sources, maintain business alignment in the Team Backlog, and communicate effectively with a variety of audiences—all with a bias toward delivering, and learning, quickly.

The PO is ultimately responsible for maximizing the value delivered by the Agile team, which requires the PO to ensure that the right solutions are built and that they are built the right way. However, the PO cannot accomplish this alone. Building the right solutions requires deep knowledge of business strategy, customer segments, market dynamics, and value stream economics. The PO establishes a close relationship with Product Management to derive these macro-level insights and apply them to specific product domains. Building solutions the right way requires Team and Technical Agility, DevOps practices, and a Continuous Delivery Pipeline. These technical capabilities determine the speed and quality with which value can be delivered, and the PO relies on the Agile team to provide them. The PO provides a crucial link in the bi-directional information flow between Product Management and the Agile team. As shown in Figure 2, the PO keeps the Agile team informed of the strategy that drives product design and keeps Product Management informed of the innovations that influence the evolution of product strategy. Customer feedback aligns thinking from strategy through execution and is accessible to all roles.

What you will do:

• The PO, in close partnership with Product Management, applies a customer-centric mindset along with design thinking tools to guide the team toward delivering solutions that are desirable, viable, feasible, and sustainable.
• The PO must understand what solutions and experiences the teams can deliver. This practical insight is a valuable contribution to the vision and roadmaps that guide solution implementation.
• In collaboration with Product Management, System Architects, Delivery Management and other stakeholders, POs help guide the sequencing of features over time toward the best economic outcomes. Through their understanding of which problems need to be solved, which solutions would best solve them, and the feasibility of delivering those solutions, POs help ensure that the vision and roadmap are reflected in the Jira Project Backlog.
• The PO should communicate the vision and roadmap during PI Planning to ensure teams are aligned and ready to execute against them.
• It is the PO’s responsibility to ensure that they are well-formed and aligned with product strategy. The PO clarifies story details, applies user-story voice, ensures ‘INVEST’ characteristics are present, assists with story splitting, defines enablers, and incorporates behavior-driven design (BDD) to ensure stories support continuous value flow. The PO also allows space for ‘local’ stories and spikes that advance product design but are not derived explicitly from the strategic roadmap.
• Achieving continuous value flow requires that the highest-value backlog items are delivered in the shortest sustainable lead time and in the right sequence. The PO enables this by regularly ordering backlog items according to their cost of delay and communicating that sequence to the team during backlog refinement
• The PO works with the team to agree on accepted story completion. This includes validating that the story meets acceptance criteria, that it has the appropriate, persistent acceptance tests, and that it otherwise complies with its Definition of Done (DoD). In so doing, the PO assures that quality is built in.
• POs facilitate frequent conversations with their teams to resolve questions, manage dependencies, and communicate priorities that emerge as stories are implemented. This information also helps the team slice stories effectively to achieve increased velocity and shortened learning cycles.
• The PO regularly evaluates progress toward story acceptance criteria, including compliance with Built-In-Quality criteria, such as the scalable definition of done, and non-functional requirements (NFRs). The PO works closely with the team to detect quality issues as they are introduced and correct them in or near real time.
• As a member of the Agile team, the PO attends and actively participates in team events during PI execution. During iteration planning, backlog refinement, iteration reviews, team retrospectives, and team syncs, the PO provides crucial feedback on the team’s work from an outside-in, customer-centric point of view. By participating in PO Sync and System Demos, the PO helps the team satisfy dependencies, demonstrate incremental value, and maintain cadence with the roadmap.
• The PO collects and shares feedback with Product Management and System Architects as part of Continuous Exploration, with their teams during backlog refinement, iteration planning, and iteration reviews, system demos, and, if applicable, Inspect and Adapt events.

What you will need to have:

• Degree or equivalent experience
• 5 + years relevant experience in the Fintech sector
• Extensive Agile experience preferably with a recognised Product Owner certification
• Proven track record of managing a complex product backlog for delivery through regular refinement and prioritisation
• Experience in delivering a new product from inception to market/live
• Expert in User Story and Acceptance criteria creation, coaching and review
• Great communication and meeting facilitation skills
• Experience in managing and developing team members
• Expert in defining success criteria and creating meaningful reporting through the use of metrics and empirical measurements
• International travel may be required
• Strong verbal, written and organizational skills; strong customer orientation
• Ability to prioritise
• Pro-active approach in meeting agreed deadlines
• Committed to clients and to delivery
• Strong analysis skills; tenacious, determined, interested in detail
• Strong document-writing ability
• Quality-focused, with attention to detail, good use of language (proficient with Word, Excel PowerPoint, Visio), familiarity with Jira and Confluence tools.
• Ability to adapt to different situations; Clients, technical requirements, business outputs
• Organised; analysis and documentation must follow pre-determined project methodologies
• Present information to / illicit relevant information from stakeholders with ease
• Flexible
• Project and Process Management

What would be great to have:

• Degree in IT/IT related discipline advantageous
• Experience in Financial Services Solutions Implementation

Thank you for considering employment with Fiserv. Please:

• Apply using your legal name
• Complete the step-by-step profile and attach your resume (either is acceptable, both are preferable).

Our commitment to Diversity and Inclusion:

Fiserv is proud to be an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, disability, protected veteran status, or any other category protected by law.

Note to agencies:

Fiserv does not accept resume submissions from agencies outside of existing agreements. Please do not send resumes to Fiserv associates. Fiserv is not responsible for any fees associated with unsolicited resume submissions.

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