Product Owner (Remote)

Updraft is an innovative cloud-based company that uses its award-winning software to solve the legal contracting, compliance, and legal practice challenges of listed companies and multinationals. Join our team of dynamic professionals as we deliver transformative growth by building intelligent tech solutions that change the practice of law. This is a great opportunity to work in a professional environment straight from the comfort of your own home.

Position Overview:

Work with an experienced team of highly-skilled specialists in an environment that is committed to Agile, open communication, and professionalism. The position will require you to plan, manage, and execute the legal product backlog. You will do this through constant collaboration and engagement with clients, internal business users, the Product Manager, the Tech Delivery Manager, and the Program Manager, while coordinating a team of legal specialists.

Our ideal candidate is an excellent communicator who is organized, results-driven, and will draw on their prior Agile experience to create, prioritize, and deliver quality user stories on the backlog, run all scrum ceremonies, and be a servant leader for the legal team. The successful candidate will also possess experience and knowledge of JIRA and be able to work comfortably on the platform to manage the legal backlog, sprints, and team velocity, and pull concise, clear, and transparent reporting data for the executive management.

Responsibilities:

1. Understand and translate the vision of the legal product and its roadmap into a product backlog with prioritized and detailed user stories.
2. Convert Business and Project Requirements into sizable legal tasks/user stories.
3. Write well-formed user stories with clear goals and acceptance criteria.
4. Maintain the product backlog/pipeline and adherence to task prioritization, ultimately responsible for the delivery of tasks.
5. Manage sprint allocations, daily stand-ups, definitions of ‘done’ & agile ceremonies (sprint reviews/retros/demos/etc.).
6. Collaborate with Product Manager and Program Manager to manage ad hoc requests and protect the efficiency of legal team delivery.
7. Manage the delivery of legal projects through the complete project lifecycle from inception to deployment, ensuring that delivery meets business and technical requirements and is within agreed time.
8. Establish and maintain effective relationships with management ensuring regular engagement in terms of understanding the business need, building shared understanding of the solution, and providing status updates to achieve successful outcomes.
9. Effectively coordinate and work with the team in an agile environment, providing implementation leadership and acting as the escalation point for all issues specific to implementations.
10. Monitor and drive progress through team meetings, agile ceremonies, and report status proactively to the business.
11. Plan and execute strategy, resourcing, recruitment, capacity, and performance on the JIRA platform (have a clear understanding and effective management of team velocity).
12. Provide regular and accurate progress updates, dashboards, and reports to the rest of the management team.
13. Ensure Agile Philosophy is followed and create an environment conducive to a self-managing and accountable legal team.
14. Act as line manager & be responsible for the legal team’s leave and performance management.
15. Act as liaison between internal business and clients, and legal & contact centre teams.
16. Record and log key product decisions, rationale, and risks.

Requirements:

1. 3+ years’ experience working as a Product Owner in an Agile environment.
2. 3 – 5 Years’ experience managing teams and projects.
3. Tertiary qualification in a relevant field.
4. Additional certifications such as Certified Product Owner and/or Scrum Master course.
5. Excellent planning, prioritization, and communication skills.
6. Excellent people skills.
7. Strong managerial skills, the ability to make decisions, deal with conflict, and manage different personalities.
8. A self-organized and driven individual who can deal with multiple ongoing projects at any point in time.
9. Must have a strong orientation towards continuous learning and enjoy working within entrepreneurial environments.

Beneficial:

1. Prior experience working as a manager in a legal tech environment (preferably as a product owner/scrum master/delivery manager/project manager) will be an added advantage.
2. Prior experience as a Scrum Master will be beneficial for the candidate.
3. Exposure and experience in managing delivery within non-software teams will be advantageous.
4. Experience in JIRA.

We will complement this knowledge with a thorough induction into our business and how we work.