Product Owner III (REX Insights Platform & Precision Pricing Engine)

Role Purpose

The Product Owner III is an integral part of the agile team, tasked with defining user stories and prioritizing the team backlog to enhance the implementation of program priorities while ensuring the conceptual and technical integrity of the team’s features or components. This position oversees multiple products of differing complexities, impacts, and visibility, collaborating closely with product and business management to realize the product vision, strategy, and roadmap as established by business leadership. The Product Owner III facilitates business leaders in achieving their workstream goals by aligning product roadmaps, features, and deliverables to effectively support business tactics and strategies.

Portfolio

The Product Owner III will be responsible for the feature roadmap for the "insights-as-a-service" platform, known as the REX Insights Platform, along with the Precision Pricing Engine, both managed within the ShopriteX business unit and tailored to the specifications of business leadership. REX is a SaaS platform customized to meet the needs of the Shoprite Group. The Precision Pricing Engine is a sophisticated data science solution that recommends optimal pricing strategies.

Role Description

• Spearhead the design of new features (“continuous exploration”) and collaborate with business stakeholders to craft the ideal user experience and evaluate the impact on the REX Insights Platform and Precision Pricing Engine.
• Conduct workshops to gather feature requirements.
• Develop wireframes that illustrate the optimal user experience.
• Collaborate with business stakeholders to assess the user experience and secure their feedback and approval.
• Document the implications of new features on data models, business logic, and business rules within the REX Insights Platform and Precision Pricing Engine, which may include:
  • Context diagrams
  • System/data flows
  • Tables summarizing scenarios affecting business logic
  • High-level system integration requirements (including necessary data fields in request and response payloads), etc.
• Review integration specifications (IFS) provided by Functional Analysts to ensure they meet all requirements stemming from the user experience.
• Contribute to the refinement of the program backlog, ensuring the team is updated on the features being introduced into Program Increment (PI) planning, while collaborating with business leadership in backlog refinement and keeping them informed about progress toward team PI objectives.
• Continuously refine and prioritize the product backlog:
  • Collect requirements for the REX Insights Platform and the Precision Pricing Engine, documenting them as a product backlog comprising user stories with acceptance criteria.
  • Verify that all user stories are articulated and that each includes acceptance criteria.
• Offer clear, transparent guidance, ensuring that development teams understand priorities:
  • Provide unambiguous solution direction to the agile team.
  • Utilize economic decision-making.
  • Order user stories based on team PI objectives.
  • Balance PI objectives with the requirements of local teams.
  • Ensure the team backlog is prepared for the next iteration.
  • Include team members in backlog refinement.
  • Remove obstacles for team members.
  • Maintain alignment in requirements, information, and next steps among teams.
• Participate in Scaled Agile Framework ART level events: ART sync, Product Owner Scrum of Scrums, Inspect and Adapt, PI Planning, daily stand-ups, and system demonstrations.
• Assist in developing a release plan and monitor progress towards product release.
• Actively promote and champion product features and a customer-first product design.
• Adhere to and enhance customer service standards across businesses and services.
• Provide integrated reporting and feedback.
• Test new features in the staging environment (user acceptance testing) for business approval.
• Engage at a senior level regarding customer-centric product concepts and best practices.
• Act as a subject matter expert to steer product development.
• Collaborate closely with key stakeholders to define KPIs for the overall solution and suggest tracking mechanisms/visualizations/dashboards for the KPIs.

Qualifications and Experience

• Bachelor's degree in Business, IT, Engineering, Marketing, or a related field.
• Certified Product Owner / certified SAFe Product Owner.
• Over 3 years of experience in a Lead or Senior Product Owner position, with a background in working within an agile team and a proven track record of launching new and complex product features and translating business strategies and analysis into successful consumer products.
• Significant experience collaborating across multidisciplinary teams to deliver complex projects.
• Profound understanding and experience with analytics platforms and big data.
• General experience in marketing or retail.

Key Competencies and Work Ethic (Consolidated for Advertising)

• Self-reliant, motivated individual who is determined to excel in a demanding, fast-paced environment to achieve high-quality outcomes.
• Exceptional problem-solver and analytical thinker, capable of prioritizing effectively, balancing technical constraints, maximizing product value, and delivering a distinctive product. Considers innovative solutions to enhance product value while ensuring the business value aligns with the overall strategy.
• Strong product focus and expertise in end-to-end product optimization – Converts market and customer feedback into strategic requirements, propelling product delivery through an agile release process while leading execution across development and product management. Brings top-tier expertise to manage product requirements, deliver product optimization, and introduce new tools and practices.
• Customer-centric – Committed to generating value for customers. Interprets customer needs into significant experiences, proactively anticipating future customer demands.
• Business savvy – Understands the company-wide KPI framework; comprehends company business models, objectives, and strategies, and their impact on commercial viability and profitability.
• Collaborative partner – Effectively harnesses the collective intelligence of the team; achieves positive negotiation outcomes while nurturing collaborative relationships. Exemplifies company values.
• Stakeholder engagement skills – Anticipates and aligns stakeholder needs across different business sectors. Communicates and aligns the vision and strategy across product and technology teams; engages stakeholders in the product development process and product management approach.
• Leadership and influencing skills – Empowers and motivates others to perform at their best; quickly identifies and resolves conflicts or obstacles independently; fosters a culture of enthusiasm and commitment; mentors and supports junior and mid-level product owners in their professional growth.
• Communication skills – Strong communication and facilitation skills; produces thought-leadership communications; comfortable preparing and delivering presentations to large, senior audiences.
• Possesses curiosity and adaptability, finding agile and swift methods for implementing innovative solutions. Highly comfortable with ongoing technological and organizational changes.

Our Group and all its operating entities are dedicated to fostering, embracing, and preserving a diverse workplace that appreciates the unique talents, perspectives, backgrounds, and abilities that enrich our organization. A place where everyone is valued and feels included.

We are committed to Employment Equity in our recruitment processes, both internally and externally.

Please note that by responding to this application and providing your personal information, you confirm your explicit and informed consent for Shoprite Checkers (Pty) Ltd and all its subsidiaries and affiliated companies to process your personal information for the purpose of considering your application for this position. All personal information provided to the company will be used and/or retained solely for the purposes for which it was collected, after which it will be permanently destroyed. Your information will only be retained as required by law or if you have consented to us retaining such information for an extended period.

If you do not receive a response from us within 14 days, please consider your application unsuccessful. Any personal information collected as part of your application will be securely destroyed in accordance with South African legislation.