Location: Preferred Bridgewater, NJ, New York City or Cary, NC
Virtual will be considered
Summary:
Preferred: Business analyst skillset, comfortable with managing functional requirements and specifications.
The Agile Product Management Associate (PMA) is responsible for the elaboration of features and user stories to align with business and operations expectations. You support and act on behalf of the Product Manager and Product Owner by breaking down the vision and high-level ideas/epics into features and, at times, underlying user stories. You refine the descriptions and benefit hypothesis to ensure the proposed outcomes align with the customer strategy and user experience. The Agile PMA gathers the customer needs and how they interact with MetLife’s product and market vision, facilitating the extraction of details from higher level ideas into specific and defined solutions.
The Agile PMA is a strategic thinker with business and operational knowledge, and the ability to interpret this knowledge into features and stories. Through consultative interactions, you understand the Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) that the business is trying to accomplish and ensure the features and stories you write will achieve those targeted results. Leveraging project management and relationship management skills, you bring the right partners to the table from technology, product, business, operations, and other areas, and ensure the timelines for gathering and delivery of the details are met. Being more of a specialist or technical expert, you might also complete configurations within different applications to enable new products, customer setups, and other changes.
As an Agile PMA, you partner directly with the Product Owner, agile team, gaining a deep understanding of the vertical end-to-end solution and the horizontal implications across the full experience. You proactively identify and address risks, being empowered to drive the right conversations and the right work.
An Agile PMA is:
- Detail oriented, gathering the appropriate level of feature and user story descriptions and benefit hypothesis
- Looking across the solution with a strategic mindset, always driving what is best for the customer
- Supporting the Product Manager and Product Owner, as they build out a healthy backlog for each capability area
- Challenging the status quo – leading to a better experience of tomorrow
- Able to build strong working relationships across business and technology to drive coordination and collaboration
- Responsible for all aspects of the pre-authenticated experience such as login/registration and the initial post-authentication experience (homepage, accounts, profile & preferences)
- The driver of the overall digital adoption strategy for our MyBenefits digital servicing experience
An Agile PMA’s focus on value is evident when we see them…
- Constantly reinforcing the customer experience and business value over just “getting it out”
- Focus on the highest priority items first, including clear benefit hypothesis throughout
A PMA’s fixation on clarity is evident when they:
- Focus on a consultative interaction around the problems being solved, the analysis and cause of issues, and providing options to the business
- Groom and arrange features and stories into iterations, helping to write clear objectives and outcomes
- Ensure proper operational readiness, including any detailed user guides, prior to feature release
A continuously employs agile practices that will sustain flow when they:
- Fill in gaps with testing, project management, and facilitation of operational readiness when needed to ensure holistic solutions are delivered on time
- Ensure the team has a healthy backlog of features to work on, and understands the priority order
A PMA’s champions Lean and reduces waste when they:
- Advocate for the business, reducing the amount of time required from the business SMEs
- Raise risks and dependencies that may create impediments down the line, solutioning next steps to overcome
A PMA’s leads by example when they:
- Act and think strategically, presenting themselves as a talent pool for new Product Owners
- Coach more junior Agile PMAs to grow in their skillsets, providing resources and partners to help in the learning process
Key Responsibilities:
The Work:
1. Gather and document the details of presented ideas/epics, distilling them down into actionable features and user stories
2. Act as a secondary check on the user experience, refining the user stories and ensuring the end solution will align with intended customer experience
3. Liaise with the agile team members, acting as the business advocate with technology partners
4. Ensure proper documentation is gathered and provided to partner teams in preparation for commercial and operational readiness
5. Provide details around business rules that need to be in place when developing and delivering features
The Interactions:
1. Assist and support the Product Manager and Product Owner as you build out the backlog and details of each feature and user story
2. Partner with Business Owners and their team members to ensure descriptions align with the customer and market needs
3. Manage expectations with partners, and ensure timely delivery of all artifacts required
4. Provide feature and story details to the agile technology team
