Agile Product Owner at Cigna

Key Responsibilities:

• Collaborates with stakeholders to ensure customer needs are understood and align the Data Engineering backlog to achieve those customer needs
• Collaborates with Product Manager and Portfolio Managers to ensure backlogs align to business and product roadmaps
• Has final decision-making authority on acceptance criteria for product functions
• Maintains and refines the inflow of work to the team (product backlog)
• ​Responsible for decomposing features into user stories and acceptance criteria
• Ensures stories clearly communicate customer/stakeholder needs to the Agile team; work with team to clarify stories as necessary
• Assesses business value and prioritizes all stories to ensure work focuses on those with maximum value and aligns with strategy
• Partners with the Product Managers by contributing to story mapping and brainstorming activities to prepare and decompose work for teams
• Ensures the outcome and value is clearly defined and communicated to support technical assessments of solutions with the development team
• Works closely with cross-functional teams to validate product hypotheses and make data-informed decisions
• Must be aware of other work being completed within the Release Train so that they can help teams proactively manage risks and dependencies and propose optimal solutions
• Understands and supports inter-team dependencies and escalates prioritization issues when necessary
• Clearly communicates release timing and delivery dates to Product Management, Portfolio Leads and Key Stakeholders
• Works closely with their Scrum Master to understand progress to plan, identify blockers and paths to resolution
• Reports outward on progress against PI objectives and is accountable for JIRA reporting quality  
• Supports UAT and business readiness activities to ensure new capabilities deliver expected value for internal and external stakeholders

Required skills and experience

• Agile Product Owner experience required
• Experience in healthcare industry required
• Bachelor’s Degree required
• Strong English language skills required
• Strong communication and data skills including SQL with ability to translate customer needs into clear data requirements
• Knowledge of agile methodology required
• Strong stakeholder management skills required with a focus on ensuring the team are building the right things and building them right
• Experience working in JIRA tool or an equivalent preferred
• Both technically deep and business savvy enough to interface with cross-functional partners
• Proven ability to develop strong working relationships and establish a high level of credibility across functional and lines of business
• High attention to detail and proven ability to manage multiple, competing priorities simultaneously
• Demonstrates strong decision-making skills and problem-solving techniques
• Demonstrates ability to work independently and as part of a collaborative team in a fast paced and changing environment
• Strong adaptive capability; ability to approach problems pragmatically and creatively in the phase of changing circumstances, resources and direction
• Strong analytical skills and proficiency in using data to inform product decisions and measure success
• Some degree of flexibility to work with International Health stakeholders across multiple regions and time zones