Agile Product Owner Advisor - Express Scripts - Remote

The Agile Product Owner represents the "voice of the customer" at the team level, maintaining and prioritizing the product backlog, to ensure that the team is working on stories that maximize business value and delivers necessary fixes and functionality to all customers. They must have strong business understanding and past experience working with technology teams. As a Business Product Owner, this position will be accountable to the Operational leaders in PBM Services for driving product initiatives to help deliver strategic solutions and ensure product health and stability.

The role will be primarily responsible for the automation of client benefits. Solicitation of requirements from the business and clients will be crucial for success. This person will drive the business strategies into prioritized initiatives for the technology teams along with our business configuration teams and be able to respond to urgent issues in their specific function without losing focus on longer term deliverables.

Key Job Functions

Voice of the Customer

• Partner with business stakeholders to create and manage program backlog, understand customer experience and related business strategy, priorities, and business value pertaining to features in the assigned products backlog.
• Develop comprehensive understanding as the subject matter expert for assigned Agile Product Team / Scrum Team, keeping up-to-date with changing needs.
• Educate the scrum team about the "what" and the "why" of the business objectives from the perspective of the impacted stakeholder/s and persona/s.
• Maintain cadenced and ad hoc as-needed communication with product manager/s to ensure alignment between program and team objectives throughout product development lifecycle.
• Drive continual focus on product quality; ensure product meets quality requirements from a business/customer experience perspective.
• Close gaps in understanding about the customer intent in features and user stories.
• Ensure user stories align at a detailed level with the business objectives and expected results outlined in the feature at a high level.

Product Backlog Management and Prioritization

• Create Prog Epic and Support Creation of Features which clearly communicate customer / stakeholder needs to the development team, and will increase velocity and quality of the program.
• Assess business value and prioritize with focus on those with maximum value that align with strategy as defined by Business Stakeholders.
• Accept User Stories once they meet the team's agreed-upon Definition of Done.
• Streamline the execution of team priorities while maintaining the conceptual and technical integrity of the features / components for the team.
• Ensure all requests follow the defined process, are prioritized, well communicated, and delivered.
• Help the development team in identifying dependencies and tradeoffs as well as problem solving risks that may appear in the product backlog. Provide continuous updates of dependencies, risks and tradeoffs to Business Stakeholders.
• Ensure no additional work is added to the PI or to the sprint without consent of development team and of Product Management in keeping with clearly expressed business prioritization.
• Update Business Stake holders on status to align on delivery expectations.
• Partner with Business and Technology Product Owners to consult and advise business owners and stakeholders regarding work in progress as needed to ensure transparency and alignment.

Day-to-Day Scrum and Business Team Support

• Partner with Business Stakeholders to capture requirements for enhancements
• Participate in Business Product Owner (BPO) meetings to ensure alignment across all impacted BPOs from enhancements.
• Partner with Technical Product Owner (TPO) to socialize, facilitate and model SAFe Agile principles and practices in the development team context.
• Participate in Agile development team ceremonies (e.g. Daily Standup, Backlog Refinement, Iteration Planning, Iteration Review, and Iteration Retro).
• Assist with PI Planning readiness.
• Work with the TPO team on value-based decomposition of features into user stories.
• Draft team objectives for the PI.
• Contribute insights to program level feature grooming.
• Maintain open-door availability to Business teams and development team for questions, guidance and direction throughout the day.

Required Qualifications:

• Bachelor's Degree and 5+ years related work experience in Product Ownership, Product Management, Business Analysis or Management Consulting.
• Proficient in Microsoft Office tools
• Working knowledge of Agile methodology
• Experience interfacing with technology teams in an Agile environment
• Strong relationship management skills, including managing the expectations of multiple stakeholders
• Exceptional executive presence in written and verbal communications. Poise in front of large, executive audiences.
• Comfortable with ambiguity, able to manage with vision and purpose, and drive to a cohesive, collaborative result
• Strong organizational skills necessary to accomplish a large number of tasks within a specified timeframe
• Demonstrated ability to influence across a matrixed organization and develop trusting working partnerships with internal and external partners.
• Self-motivated, detail oriented, and willing to adapt to tactical needs in a fast-paced, changing environment.
• Accomplished decision-maker who is able to quickly make and execute well-supported prioritization decisions

Preferred Qualifications:

• Healthcare background strongly preferred
• Proficient in project management tools and methodology
• POPM - SAFe Product Owner/Product Manager certification
• Lean Six Sigma certification
• Change Management certification
• Experience with Jira software for creating and managing Prog epics

If you will be working at home occasionally or permanently, the internet connection must be obtained through a cable broadband or fiber optic internet service provider with speeds of at least 10Mbps download/5Mbps upload.

For this position, we anticipate offering an annual salary of 88,400 - 147,300 USD / yearly, depending on relevant factors, including experience and geographic location.

This role is also anticipated to be eligible to participate in an annual bonus plan.

We want you to be healthy, balanced, and feel secure. That's why you'll enjoy a comprehensive range of benefits, with a focus on supporting your whole health. Starting on day one of your employment, you'll be offered several health-related benefits including medical, vision, dental, and well-being and behavioral health programs. We also offer 401(k) with company match, company paid life insurance, tuition reimbursement, a minimum of 18 days of paid time off per year and paid holidays. For more details on our employee benefits programs, visit Life at Cigna Group.

About Evernorth Health Services

Evernorth Health Services, a division of The Cigna Group, creates pharmacy, care and benefit solutions to improve health and increase vitality. We relentlessly innovate to make the prediction, prevention and treatment of illness and disease more accessible to millions of people. Join us in driving growth and improving lives.

Qualified applicants will be considered without regard to race, color, age, disability, sex, childbirth (including pregnancy) or related medical conditions including but not limited to lactation, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, veteran or military status, religion, national origin, ancestry, marital or familial status, genetic information, status with regard to public assistance, citizenship status or any other characteristic protected by applicable equal employment opportunity laws.

If you require reasonable accommodation in completing the online application process, please email: [email protected] for support. Do not email [email protected] for an update on your application or to provide your resume as you will not receive a response.

The Cigna Group has a tobacco-free policy and reserves the right not to hire tobacco/nicotine users in states where that is legally permissible. Candidates in such states who use tobacco/nicotine will not be considered for employment unless they enter a qualifying smoking cessation program prior to the start of their employment. These states include: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Nebraska, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, Utah, Vermont, and Washington State.