About Northern Trust:

Northern Trust provides innovative financial services and guidance to corporations, institutions and affluent families and individuals globally. With 130 years of financial experience and nearly 20,000 partners, we serve the world's most sophisticated clients using leading technology and exceptional service.

Working with Us:

As a Northern Trust partner, you will be part of a flexible and collaborative work culture, which has a strong history of financial strength and stability. Movement within the organization is encouraged, senior leaders are accessible, and you can take pride in working for a company that is committed to strengthening the communities we serve!

We recognize the value of inclusion and diversity in culture, in thought, and in experience, which is why Forbes ranked us the top employer for Diversity in 2018.

We'd love to learn more about how your interests and experience could be a fit with one of the world's most admired and ethical companies. Build your career with us and apply today.

SUMMARY

The Product Owner provides the direction and vision for the Agile team, and acts as the central collection and prioritization point for all requirements for the team. The Product Owner elicits requirements from all stakeholders and is the primary contact for stakeholders of Agile teams. He or she maintains a continuously prioritized Product Backlog of required work, collected from all impacted stakeholders, and is available to the team to resolve questions and provide direction as new information becomes available. The Product Owner has ultimate accountability for the creation of acceptance criteria for each story, for prioritization of all team work, for the acceptance of fully completed stories at the end of each sprint, and for the delivery of the release goal(s).

RESPONSIBILITIES

1. Identify and engage all impacted stakeholders or stakeholder groups; create an open communication channel with all stakeholders

2. Understand and contribute to the product roadmap (set of business goals)

3. Form and maintain product SME teams or focus groups to prioritize ideas and elaborate high priority ideas

4. Ensure that the product can be adopted by end users by balancing priorities across

a. Strategic goals (changing the product to help change the practice)

b. Functional extension (making the product do more of what end users need)

c. Responding to feedback (making the product function the way users require)

d. Quality improvement (making the product more reliable, consistent, etc.)

5. Ensure the needs of all stakeholders are identified and acknowledged

6. Prioritize appropriate stakeholder requests for development on the Product Backlog

7. Collaborate with the development team to identify technical and non-functional requirements; prioritize these stories on the Product Backlog, with input from the development team, alongside stakeholder requests

8. Define acceptance criteria for user stories

9. Participate in release planning

a. Identify the release plan goal(s)

b. Ensure the Product Backlog is populated with sufficient stories with acceptance criteria and high-level estimates to meet the release goal

c. Propose release schedule and cost

d. Collaborate with the team to plan stories in all sprints in the Release Plan up to the team's capacity

e. Ensure the release plan fulfills the release goal

f. Obtain stakeholder feedback on the release plan prior to approval

g. Approve the release plan with other stakeholders as needed

h. Modify the release plan as new information emerges throughout the sprints, and ensure stakeholders are aware of the updates to the release plan and any impact to their requests

i. Continuously add new stakeholder requests to the Product Backlog and re-prioritize as needed

10. Conduct/participate in workshops including

a. End user feedback from broader user groups to share and gather ideas

b. Story elaboration - Working with Business Analysts, development team and focus groups to add details

11. Participate in delivery team workshops

a. Help explain goals and ideas

b. Explain business value of stories

c. Make decisions about idea delivery proposals

d. Decide among options

e. Decide whether and when proposals are sufficient to meet needs

12. Attend all Scrum ceremonies including daily standups, story elaboration, sprint planning preparation, sprint planning, sprint reviews and retrospectives. Understand the development team's progress and be available to answer the team's questions and provide direction in a timely manner

13. Accept stories as complete at the end of each sprint, verifying that all acceptance criteria have been met and the story has achieved the objective

14. Ensure that the Product Backlog is always

a. Complete - Has all ideas captured and represents the needs of all stakeholders

b. Organized - Reflects reasonable groupings of ideas by value, constituency, business strategic goal, etc.

c. Prioritized - Contains current organizational thinking about sequence of delivery

d. Current - Continuously prioritizes Product Backlog Items (PBIs) as new work is identified

e. Estimated - Each PBI has a high-level estimate created by the development team

f. Elaborated - Has full detail required for the next 1-2 sprints including clear acceptance criteria

15. Advocate funding for the product

a. Ensure funding decision makers have a clear view for how the product adds value

b. Ensure stakeholders have sufficient understanding to influence decision makers

16. Communicate with Product Owners and delivery teams from integrated or adjacent products

a. Collaborate with other Product Owners in the same end-user communities and/or business area

b. Collaborate with other Product Owners that supply data or have other dependencies with your team

c. Share ideas and plans, review plans for connection points, and coordinate integration milestones

d. Decide/define product boundaries

17. Effectively implement small Minimum Viable Products (MVP) to obtain early and frequent stakeholder feedback

18. Stay current with the Agile industry and Product Owner best practices: Read and recommend valuable Lean and Agile books, blogs, articles, etc. to continuously increase the team's Agile maturity; contribute to the development of a team culture of continuous learning and improvement

KNOWLEDGE/SKILLS

1. Experience with developing product strategy, direction, and alignment with interfacing products

2. Ability to manage, prioritize and deliver on changing stakeholder expectations

3. Ability to create release goals, and create and maintain release plans that meet stakeholder needs

4. Advanced interpersonal skills - able to establish strong working relationships and promote bi-directional communication within and across teams

5. Strong leadership and organizational skills with excellent written and verbal communication skills

6. Ability to apply advanced principles, theories and experiences, and contribute to the development of innovative ideas and practices

7. Ability to effectively facilitate discussions at various levels and suggest alternative approaches

8. Ability to effectively manage challenging situations through negotiation and conflict resolution

9. Ability to demonstrate and build transparency and provide visibility to stakeholders

10. Ability to develop and grow trust across the team and stakeholders

11. Understanding of all facets of the software development life cycle including planning, development, quality assurance, change management and release management

EXPERIENCE REQUIRED• Undergraduate degree or equivalent experience• Minimum of 1-3 years of Agile practical usage in the role of Product Owner; 3+ years preferred• Product Management experience preferred• Experience with Agile Lifecycle Management (ALM) tools (JIRA, Rally, VersionOne) preferred