Product Owner - Claims

Company:

Want to work for a company with unparalleled financial strength and stability that offers "large company" benefits with an exciting, friendly, and "small company" atmosphere? Our companies, as members of the Berkshire Hathaway group of Insurance Companies, provides opportunities for professionals interested in just that.

A Brief Overview
This position is responsible for identifying, organizing, prioritizing, and assessing work for a software delivery team to support our Claims Department. The Product Owner's responsibilities include gathering feature requests, scheduling releases and coordinating sprints. Abilities include identifying user needs and working with cross-functional teams to manage product releases. Responsible for facilitating communication between stakeholders and delivery team(s), as well as helping clearly define what should be built on behalf of the relevant business team(s) and why. Expected to interact with subject matter experts across multiple departments and to support the BA/QA professionals on the team in creating users stories and developing test plans built around the product and project requirements.

What will you do?

• IDENTIFY PRODUCT TEAM GOALS: Collaborates with key stakeholders to define goals and create an execution plan for development projects, focusing on outcomes rather than solutions. Works with business and technical teams to establish and validate requirements throughout development process. Clearly expresses user needs in the form of product requirements to the team. Ensures that the product team understands the business and technical objectives and that the proposed solutions are aligned with customer needs. Provide vision and direction to the product teams and stakeholders throughout the product life cycle, ensuring alignment with business objectives.

• USER STORIES AND RELEASE PLANNING: Translates product initiative requirements to functional team members by defining user stories for the team. Maintains and applies understanding of work process dependencies into functional requirements. Drives product release planning and sets expectations for delivery of new capabilities, features, and functionalities. Creates the overall sprint release plan with input from the team. Refine, prioritize, and sequence the product backlog based on changes, team progress, and customer and/or stakeholder feedback. Works with other technology team members from Software Development, Infrastructure and Security to recommend and provide trade-off considerations for technology solutions and approaches. Participates in sprint review and provides direction to the team for final deployment.

• PRODUCT TEAM GUIDANCE AND DIRECTION: Provides overall leadership, guidance, and support of software product delivery team(s). Works with Scrum Masters and Technical Leads to help direct, motivate, and guide the delivery team(s). Works with BA/QA professionals to support the development of project test plans, test scripts, and the organization of the testing efforts for the team. Prepare and maintain the project planning/sprint planning tools such as milestone plans, resource alignment maps, burndown charts, and the necessary backlog stories so that teams have adequate visibility and information on work that is planned and how the work is progressing. Review and provide feedback to test plans and test cases to ensure changes which are made to the application meet the acceptance criteria maintain application integrity.

• AGILE CEREMONIES: Along with Scrum Master, leads various Agile activities and ceremonies including daily stand-ups, story review, release and sprint planning sessions, status meetings, sprint reviews, demos, and retrospectives. May assist Scrum Master to help mitigate impediments impacting the successful team completion of its goals. Along with Scrum Master and Technical Lead, oversees and manages sprint scope, timeline, quality, goals, and deliverables that support business goals.

• COMMUNICATION AND COLLABORATION: Works closely with and ensures regular communication with Program and Portfolio Managers, internal stakeholders, project sponsors, and other technology teams to ensure smooth on-boarding of work. Acts as a coordination and facilitation point for organizing work efforts. Ensures that the product backlog is visible, transparent, and clear to all, and shows what the delivery team will work on next. Develop, manage, and communicate status for product plans, timelines, team velocity, and deliverables to stakeholders and other appropriate individuals and teams. Serves business needs by communicating complex work to management, requirements to technology partners, and potential development implications to business teams as needed.

Education
Bachelor's degree in related field or equivalent work experience.

Experience
Five or more years related work experience.

Required Knowledge

• Knowledge of Agile methodologies (Scrum, Kanban, etc.)

• Knowledge of software development practices and procedures

• Experience working in application lifecycle management tools such as DevOps, JIRA, or Rally

• Professional experience as a Business Analyst, Business Team Manager, Project Manager, or Scrum Master

Preferred Knowledge

• Experience with business analysis or project management

• Familiarity with continuous delivery and continuous integration

• Insurance industry and product knowledge

• Understands the underlying business processes that support a P&C commercial insurance operation

• Experience with Guidwire ClaimCenter or a similar cloud native claims handling application

Required Skills and Abilities

• Strong team facilitation skills

• Strong interpersonal skills including conflict resolution skills

• Strong sense of ownership and accountability

• Excellent oral and written communication skills with all levels of the organization

• Ability to explain and defend a view point and persuade others to a defined position

• Ability to prioritize work objectives and goals

• Be able to think strategically

• Learn quickly

• Work independently

• Work well with others

• Work with remote team members

• Respond well to demands on time and resources

• Identify problems and make decisions, train personnel, and organize workflow

• Maintain confidentiality

• Delegate, plan, prioritize, and meet deadlines

• Design and use computer programs to analyze data

We want you to be involved! We offer Employee Resource Groups for volunteering, connecting with others, social gatherings, and professional development. We also regularly seek employees input through companywide surveys.

We care about your health and wellbeing! Our Wellness program is integrated into the Company culture with an online wellness portal that offers a year-round, one-stop-shop to manage and track all areas of health, our Omaha office boasts a complimentary state-of-the-art onsite fitness center, and a robust wellness program.

Benefits, Perks and more! We offer retirement and savings plan with immediate enrollment with 100% employer match up to 5%, Medical, Dental and Vision for regular, full-time employees and eligible dependents, a dedicated Learning & Development program for employees to grow personally and professionally, 100% upfront Educational Reimbursement program, subsidized downtown parking, competitive time off policies including parental leave, an Employee Assistance program and much more!