Senior Product Owner at Rainforest Alliance

Position summary:

The Rainforest Alliance is looking for a performance oriented, data driven, and collaborative Senior Product Owner responsible for the implementation and continuous optimisation of the organizational capability to deliver multiple digitally enabled business services. The Senior Products Owner will be part of our global Engagement, Supply Chain team.

These digitally enabled business services could be for internal use by Rainforest Alliance employees and/or external use such as members or certification bodies. Examples of external services are member registration, licensing, traceability and certification body management. An example of an internal service is the digital workplace.

Responsibilities: 

• The Rainforest Alliance’s Core Values are Impact, Change, Collaboration, Openness and Trust and as such they form the basis of the behaviours we demonstrate;
• Ensure digitally enabled business services of the Rainforest Alliance are relevant, user-friendly and deliver value to our customers, members and staff;
• Rainforest Alliance is currently replacing its Certification and Assurance software with third party software solutions in combination with mobile applications. As a Product Owner, you are responsible for setting, prioritizing, and evaluating the work to replace the current software and manage the Certification Technology Eco system
• Lead the product roadmap providing for a set of products, indicating when new product features are planned for delivery
• Work with the portfolio director on defining the product roadmap and share results with  the stakeholders;
• Develop with the Product manager an engagement plan
• Manage expectations of and maintain good relationships with all the stakeholders involved in creating and delivering the services (technology, external service providers), as well as organisational architectural experts (e.g. process, solutions and data architects);
• Work with the release manager and stakeholders around the product implementation schedule and set priorities within the different product streams
• Assess impact of dashboard and communicate progress with senior stakeholders
• Promote design thinking, lean and agile ways of working
• Provide direction setting for a software development teams and / or configuration management teams
• Manage and develop staff

Delivery

Analyse business processes to optimise their efficiency / value delivery in close partnership with the business owners, enterprise architects and business process modellers as appropriate; Set priorities in the development of product with the product owners

• Assessment of Quality and fit for purpose configuration management plan, to be able to implement new software solutions
• Create the more complex prototype mock-ups, or guides design team in their creation;
• Translate complex IT solutions into digestible concepts for business stakeholders, and complex business process into functional IT designs;
• Discuss technical challenges of IT solution with the Development Team;
• Coordinate the prioritisation of delivery steps, and develop detailed planning in partnership with project managers, business owners and delivery partners;
• Write, or guide creation of acceptance criteria and acceptance tests as part of user stories;
• Manage the ongoing backlog of updates. 

Qualifications: 

• Master’s degree, preferably in supply chain management, business administration or a technical field.
• At least 10 years’ work experience and 5+ years experience as a Product Owner
• Knowledge of MS Office and proficient in Excel;
• Deep understanding of Lean principles, thinking and methods; Scrum way of working, Design thinking;
• Experience with Certification management systems and / or processes, preferably in an agricultural settings.  Activities include member registration, certification against global standards and Certification body management.
• Experience working in a global, culturally diverse team is essential;
• Excellent interpersonal skills with ability to interact culturally, linguistically, and diplomatically with diverse internal and external individuals; 
• Results-driven, accurate, structured and good analytical and communication skills; 
• Team & Relationship Building: Building and maintaining (internal and external) contacts that are useful. Builds trust, rapport and cooperation with persons inside and outside RA; Works in partnership with other colleagues, responds to request for assistance respectfully and helpfully, contributes to team environment and supportive workplace and;
• Fluency in English, both verbal and written. French and/or Spanish is a plus.
• Experience with managing staff