Associate Product Owner - Agile Transformation

Why Wellmark: We are a mutual insurance company owned by our policy holders across Iowa and South Dakota, and we’ve built our reputation on over 80 years’ worth of trust. We are not motivated by profits. We are motivated by the well-being of our friends, family, and neighbors–our members. If you’re passionate about joining an organization working hard to put its members first, to provide best-in-class service, and one that is committed to sustainability and innovation, consider applying today! 

Why Wellmark Technology? Wellmark is building innovative, modern solutions using cutting edge technology. We are driving organizational transformation and business strategy by empowering our technology team to innovate new and elegant solutions to enhance the customer experience. Together, we are leaning into the future, owning the outcome, and driving organizational change to transform how we work.

The Associate Product Owner is responsible for maximizing the product's value and the agile team's work by ensuring the team’s backlog is prioritized and aligned with customer needs and approved business cases. You will build strong partnerships with stakeholders through continuous communication and feedback to ensure their needs are represented, and the product outcomes are achieved. Develops and conveys the product’s vision to the agile team, outlining and prioritizing work based on business value realization metrics.  

This opportunity has one opening and will support two teams: the Strategy/Lean Portfolio Management and Agile Ways of Working teams. This includes writing features and user stories to ensure that we are driving strategy to execution. Success in this role will require strong cross-functional collaboration and strategic partnerships across the organization. The role will work closely with various business and agile teams and will need to effectively collaborate, build consensus, and drive initiatives with key support teams across multiple departments. The ideal candidate will prioritize high-value work and align with our program's performance objectives to maximize impact and efficiency. 

Preferred Qualifications:  

• Prior experience supporting cross-functional teams (either formal or informal). Ability to coach and mentor others through guidance or feedback.  
• Executive presence and comfortability influencing and gaining consensus among executive stakeholders.   
• Product development, product management, or similar experience that reflects general knowledge of the product development lifecycle (including measurement and management), strategic planning, and ability to collaborate with multi-disciplinary teams to create innovative, data-driven solutions.  
• Prior experience in a Product Owner role (either formal or informal) operating within a SAFe organization, including demonstrated experience with agile and/or lean product management competencies of value measurement, optimization, and eliminating waste. Experience using agile management tools (e.g., Jira or Azure DevOps).  
• Experience with agile business analysis, including documentation of features, user stories, and acceptance criteria. Ability to perform, document, and/or guide others through a series of related steps and take action to improve existing systems and processes. Flexible and adaptable to change.  
• Strong written and verbal communication skills with the ability to articulate complex information or solutions to stakeholders. Exposure to negotiation skills and techniques.  
• Ability to identify issues or inconsistencies; obtains relevant information, relates and compares data from different sources and identifies alternative solutions.  
• Demonstrated critical thinking, problem solving/troubleshooting and continuous process improvement skills.  
• Proactive self-starter with effective time management skills and the ability to independently organize and prioritize based on value.   
• Analytical problem-solving skills and attention to detail; ability to identify and approach complex problems from different angles and apply technical knowledge to policies/procedures.  

Required Qualifications:   

• Bachelor's degree or direct and applicable work experience.  
• Minimum 3+ years’ experience in a combination of:  
• Proven project management experience including managing project scope and schedule, utilizing industry standard project management methodologies.  
• Eliciting detailed business requirements.  
• Experience in a change management capacity aligned to an industry standard methodology.  
• Exposure to the development and execution of user acceptance test plans, scenarios, and cases utilizing industry standard testing methodologies.  
• Wellmark business acumen for specific product or division of this role.  
• Demonstrates ownership and commitment to projects; drives tasks and milestones toward successful completion and holds themselves accountable for project performance.  
• SAFe agile certification (e.g., Product Owner) obtained within 3 months.  
• Possess or is willing to pursue certified Product Owner Certification.  
• Experience successfully leading others through change.  
• Demonstrated facilitation and influencing skills to drive decision making among stakeholders with diverse perspectives and priorities.  
• Ability to work well in a team environment and be capable of building and maintaining relationships with other team members, departments, and customers.  
• Demonstrated ability to communicate complex information in a condensed manner to various stakeholders verbally and in writing to achieve shared vision and goals.  
• Strong problem solving and analytical skills.  
• Ability to identify risks and deploy appropriate mitigation strategies to meet stakeholder/functional requirements.  
• Strong group facilitation skills and presentation skills demonstrated through successful experience.  
• Consulting skills required with excellent communication, collaboration, and interpersonal skills.  
• Proficient in Microsoft Office suite.  
• Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC) knowledge.  

a. Maximize the product's value and the work of the agile team by working with them to ensure they have a clear vision of the priority and value of the work.  

b. Act as a strong, informal, dotted-line leader and mentor to the agile team through effective two-way communication, helping employees learn new skills, identifying and managing resistance, and being an advocate.  

c. Serve as the voice of the customer by creating a shared understanding of the product vision and customer needs through consistent communications with the team.   

d. Active leader in the agile team’s scrum events, including agile ceremonies such as stand-ups, story refinements, backlog grooming, and team retrospectives.  

e. Lead iteration review meetings to demonstrate the outcomes achieved to the product team’s stakeholders or customers.   

f. Ensure the team understands the product priorities and executes the highest value work through lean and agile product prioritization methods (e.g, WSJF, MoSCoW).  

g. Obtain insights, prioritize, and balance multiple stakeholder priorities, and synthesize complex information, to maintain product team alignment with the vision.  

h. Partner with stakeholders and customers to curate the product vision, product stack, and features to ensure that the next increment of value is executed.  

i. Author the product roadmap features by creating well-defined product requirements, including features, user stories, and acceptance criteria.  

j. Partner with stakeholders to assess value and prioritize features and stories to ensure work focuses on those with a maximum value aligned to the product strategy.  

k. Manage against and participate in the refinement of Objectives and Key Results (OKR’s) defined for the product team during each planning interval.  

l. Evaluate progress at the end of each iteration, including the ability to define Minimum Viable Products (MVP).  

m. Seek quantitative and qualitative information to comprehensively understand where the product team’s solutions are not optimizing value.  

n. Apply change management practices and tools in pre-planning and planning (features and user stories) to ensure impacted stakeholders and employees are prepared and equipped to adopt changes; consult with the Change Practitioner supporting Agile Release Train (ART) to monitor change readiness and adoption across the ART.  

o. Understand the impact the assigned product has on the customer and work collaboratively to ensure any change is properly managed.  

p. Obtain objective insights through research and analytics to analyze how a customer of the product is adopting, consuming, and benefiting from the product features.  

q. Other duties as assigned. 

All your information will be kept confidential according to EEO guidelines.

An Equal Opportunity Employer

The policy of Wellmark Blue Cross Blue Shield is to recruit, hire, train and promote individuals in all job classifications without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, veteran status, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity or any other characteristic protected by law.

Applicants requiring a reasonable accommodation due to a disability at any stage of the employment application process should contact us at [email protected]

Please inform us if you meet the definition of a "Covered DoD official".

At this time, Wellmark is not considering applicants for this position that require any type of immigration sponsorship (additional work authorization or permanent work authorization) now or in the future to work in the United States. This includes, but IS NOT LIMITED TO: F1-OPT, F1-CPT, H-1B, TN, L-1, J-1, etc. For additional information around work authorization needs please refer to the following resources:Nonimmigrant Workers and Green Card for Employment-Based Immigrants 

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