Purpose of the Role
The Agile Product Owner is responsible for defining, prioritising, and drives cross-functional collaboration to deliver business value efficiently and effectively by managing the product backlog, driving the product vision, and ensuring strong alignment between business needs, customer expectations, and technical delivery teams.
The role enables Agile ways of working and ensures effective implementation of digital and capability-driven solutions.
Key Responsibilities
- Develop, refine, and manage the product backlog, ensuring prioritisation of high-value items.
- Serve as the primary liaison between business stakeholders and delivery teams.
- Ensure product goals align with organisational strategy, customer needs, and business priorities.
- Provide an end-to-end view of capabilities to be delivered and maintained.
- Own and communicate the product vision, ensuring alignment with business strategy and customer needs.
- Define user stories, acceptance criteria, and ensure clarity for development teams.
- Participate actively in all Agile ceremonies (planning, stand-ups, reviews, retrospectives).
- Ensure quality management processes align with capability requirements.
Competencies:
1. Relationship / Stakeholder Management:
The ability to develop and maintain productive relationships with stakeholders, across organizational boundaries, with key role players and customers’ displaying integrity and discretion when interacting with others.
2. Product Development:
Stays attuned to the needs of the market and developments in the finance sector.
Translates market knowledge into product innovations and new designs that are responsive to the needs of the clients
3. Execution or Delivery:
Must be able to plan, manage, monitor and evaluate specific activities in order to deliver the desired outputs
Attributes the candidate needs to show:
- Serve as the voice of the customer and subject matter expert for capability requirements.
- Builds strong relationships with internal and external stakeholders to manage expectations and integrate needs.
- Recommends and drives improvements in quality, process efficiency, and Agile practices.
- Identifies and resolves product or capability-related issues via the Gatekeeper
- Understands the Agile frameworks (Scrum, Kanban, Lean).
- Ensures that requirements definition and backlog prioritisation is understood and done.
- Understands the Product lifecycle management and roadmap development.
| Qualification Type | Bachelor’s Degrees / Diploma |
| Field | Business, Management, IT, Commerce |
| Specialist | Finance, Economics, Accounting and IT |
| Certifications | Agile / SAFe Related Certifications |
| Experience | 3+ years’ experience in Product Owner / Management or Related roles (Business Analyst, Scrum Master an advantage etc.) |
| NQF | Level 7 |
Desired Skills:
- Systems Analysis
- Complex Problem Solving
- Programming/configuration
- Critical Thinking
- Time Management