Product Owner - Digital

Description and Requirements
Summary:
The Product Owner (PO) for the Employer Digital Team is responsible for the customer experience within our Employer/Sponsor, Benefit Administration, and Broker Portals. This role will share accountability with Product Managers for delivery outcomes and make decisions to provide the best customer experience. You lead the creation and alignment of business scenarios and supporting details for product feature development & testing, so they are clearly understood by the agile teams. You prioritize a backlog of items that will improve the stability and drive enhanced business value of the applications. You will use SAFE Agile to manage the flow of work, and Adobe Analytics to understand system usage & benefit drivers.
This is a critical role with significant accountability to build and manage relationships and responsibilities across the ART & Solution Train. POs work closely with the Scrum Master, team members, Product Management, Customers, Business Owners, and other stakeholders to create viable and sustainable plans. They constantly seek feedback from stakeholders & feedback tools incorporating the feedback into their plans.
This role plays an important role in ensuring MetLife provides an industry leading benefit administration portal for our customers. It will require a strong understanding of how insurance products are utilized by our customers, and how they can & should be able to service their employees benefit needs through MetLife Digital Portals.
A PO is:

• The voice of the customer and business needs at the team level
• A leader that prioritizes, defines, and shapes the work for the agile team
• Approver of work delivered (accepts as complete and usable at team level)
• A person able to translate business needs into technology solutions

• A person who ensures we are delivering business value through tracking of metrics and outcomes

A Product Owner's focus on value is evident when we see them...

• Building deep insight into our customers' needs, to support sound judgments about the utility of our solutions.
• Engaging our delivery teams in active exploration of solution options, and evaluation of trade-offs.
• Regularly re-examining our priorities to optimize the team's alignment with stakeholder and business demands.

A Product Owner's fixation on clarity is evident when they:

• Seek first to understand - our customers, stakeholders, and team members - and then to be understood.
• Make all the team's work visible, through progress updates, metrics and transparent processes.
• Fully convey the context, requirements and constraints that shape the team's delivery.
• Create accurate, unambiguous acceptance criteria to minimize the risk of misunderstandings about the work to be delivered.

A Product Owner continuously employs agile practices that will sustain flow when they:

• Maintain a backlog of well-refined work items for the team.
• Continuously identify dependencies that may impede the team's work, and proactively seek ways to resolve them.
• Respect the team's need for focus by leveraging regularly scheduled, time-boxed meetings and minimizing ad-hoc demands.
• Collaborating with Scrum Masters, development managers and other stakeholders to reinforce the team's control of their work.

A Product Owner champions Lean and reduces waste when they:

• Simplify our stories, requirements, and solutions, to maximize the amount of work not done!
• Educate themselves, the team, and others on how to recognize waste.
• Make continuous improvement a foundation of all our processes.
• Recognize that time is our most precious resource, and they protect it vigorously.

A Product Owner's leads by example when they:

• Act as a facilitator to help the team solve the conflicts that hold them back from progressing.
• Act as a Mentor, building trust and letting the team know you are available for them. Whenever they need advice or guidance, you can assist them.
• Act as a Negotiator to help analyze the advantages and disadvantages of each possibility and evaluate which trade-offs to make.
• Interprets the situation and can understand the atmosphere and knows when something needs to change.
• Exemplifies and models the desired behaviors in their daily interactions with the team
• Celebrates wins with the team and fosters ways to let the team members demo their work proudly to leadership audiences.

The Work:
1. Work with Product Management to decompose epics & features, assess ing value and prioritiz ing the work
2. Ensure work focuses on those stories with a maximum value, aligned with product strategy, roadmap, and key milestones
3. Help refine, prioritize, and accept the work delivered by an Agile team to ensure the outcome meets the defined acceptance criteria
4. Develop use cases, scenarios and supporting details for the product features at the appropriate level so they are clearly understood by the development teams
5. Make decisions to solve product related problems, trade-off discussions, to stay on track to committed outcomes. (acceptance, prioritizing, making trade-offs, etc.)
The Interactions:

Able to take all forms of input and synthesize (not influenced by "hierarchy") - Seek Diverse Perspectives
Willing to observe, analyze, and make recommendations - Seek Diverse Perspectives
Communicate factually. Navigate conversations to align on a set of data inputs that drive identification and prioritization of work.
Take ownership, influence at all levels, access all stakeholders equally (don't ask for permission) - Seize Opportunity
Maintain stability throughout the iterations and add appropriate feedback as needed - Enable Solutions
Understand that they don't have to be the technical expert but can work with the team members to understand and prioritize technical stories - Enable Solutions
Able to identify, access and connect among key stakeholders and experts - Seek Diverse Perspectives
Know how to get things done through others, and provide the clarity needed to accomplish it - Deliver what matters
Driven and motivated by our customers and the business to focus on the right outcomes - Deliver Results
Able to make decisions on information that is available at that time. Be comfortable with progressive elaboration and discovery (Progress over perfection) - Manages Ambiguity
While some POs may have direct reports, Product Owners are leaders not managers. POs do not direct the team but see themselves as a member of the team and are able to adapt their leadership approach to enable and empower the team to solve problems and deliver outcomes - Empowerment & Collaboration
The salary range for applicants for this position is $80,000-120,000.
Benefits We Offer
Our U.S. benefits address holistic well-being with programs for physical and mental health, financial wellness, and support for families. We offer a comprehensive health plan that includes medical/prescription drug and vision, dental insurance, and no-cost short- and long-term disability. We also provide company-paid life insurance and legal services, a retirement pension funded entirely by MetLife and 401(k) with employer matching, group discounts on voluntary insurance products including auto and home, pet, critical illness, hospital indemnity, and accident insurance, as well as Employee Assistance Program (EAP) and digital mental health programs, parental leave, volunteer time off, tuition assistance and much more!
About MetLife
Recognized on Fortune magazine's list of the 2024 "World's Most Admired Companies", Fortune World's 25 Best Workplaces™ for 2024, as well as the 2024 Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For ®, MetLife , through its subsidiaries and affiliates, is one of the world's leading financial services companies; providing insurance, annuities, employee benefits and asset management to individual and institutional customers. With operations in more than 40 markets, we hold leading positions in the United States, Latin America, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East.
Our purpose is simple - to help our colleagues, customers, communities, and the world at large create a more confident future. United by purpose and guided by empathy, we're inspired to transform the next century in financial services. At MetLife, it's #AllTogetherPossible . Join us!
Equal Employment Opportunity/Disability/Veterans
If you need an accommodation due to a disability, please email us at [email protected]. This information will be held in confidence and used only to determine an appropriate accommodation for the application process.
MetLife maintains a drug-free workplace.
$80,000-120,000