Product Owner - Commercial Enterprise
 West Bend Mutual Insurance Company | |||||||
 United States, Wisconsin, Madison | |||||||
| 1255 Fourier Drive (Show on map) | |||||||
 Jan 16, 2025 | |||||||
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Product Owner - Commercial Enterprise Job Locations
US-WI-West Bend | US-WI-Madison ID
2025-3093
Company Overview Recognized as a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Top Workplace for 12 consecutive years, including three years of being honored as number one! Join us at West Bend, where we believe that our associates are our greatest asset. We hire talented individuals who are conscientious, dedicated, customer focused, and able to build lasting relationships. We create and maintain an environment where you feel a sense of belonging and appreciation. Your diversity of thought, experience, and knowledge are valued. We're committed to fostering a welcoming culture, offering you opportunities for meaningful work and professional growth. More than a workplace, we celebrate our successes and take pride in serving our communities. Job Summary Excited about making a positive impact in the insurance industry? We're expanding and looking for a driven Product Owner to join our team. You'll work with key stakeholders to align product development with market trends, solve complex business challenges, and lead cross-functional teams to success. If you have strong analytical skills and a proactive mindset, this is the perfect opportunity to make your mark! Responsibilities & Qualifications **This position offers a hybrid work schedule. Candidates who are located within 50 miles of a West Bend office location will work a hybrid schedule for collaboration days, team meetings or other in-person events. The position can be based in West Bend or Madison, WI. A Product Owner will be responsible for driving the development and management of insurance products. The role collaborates with cross-functional teams to ensure that our products meet market demands, comply with regulatory requirements, and deliver value to our customers. The position owns defining the product vision, prioritizing demand, and overseeing the product development lifecycle to ensure successful product launches and ongoing product enhancements.
Responsibilities
1. Strategic Vision and Planning
* Analyze complex business problems to identify trends and craft a clear, compelling product vision that aligns with the broader business strategy.
* Communicate this vision and the associated roadmap across all levels of the organization to ensure alignment.
* Lead the development and adoption of the product roadmap, ensuring it supports the business strategy and guides organization-wide and quarterly planning processes.
2. Industry and Market Alignment
* Partner with stakeholders and stay up to date on research to ensure that product development is aligned with industry trends and market needs, leveraging your understanding of the industry to act as an informed expert within the division.
* Give tactical subject matter expertise to guide product decisions, ensuring alignment with both customer expectations and business outcomes.
3. User-Centric Design and Delivery
* Responsible for using customer research to understand customer needs and behaviors to develop actionable capabilities/features that will meet their needs.
* Develop customer journeys, wireframes, prototypes, and process maps with a focus on usability, accessibility, and delivering customer value in collaboration with customer experience team.
* Partner with cross-functional teams to conduct user research and experimentation efforts to validate product concepts and ensure that products are designed to meet real-world needs.
4. Collaboration and Communication
* Build strong relationships with stakeholders and effectively collaborate across teams to realize high-quality product outcomes.
* Champion team culture and innovation, ensuring that all stakeholders are aligned and engaged.
* Ensure clear and effective communication across all teams involved in the product delivery process, facilitating transparency and alignment.
* Adapt and respond effectively to changing circumstances, embracing uncertainty to drive progress and maintain focus on delivering value.
5. Data-Driven Decision Making
* Use data insights to drive decision-making at every stage of product development, ensuring alignment to business objectives and customer needs.
* Prioritize initiatives, epics, and features using qualitative and quantitative data to justify and guide decision making and backlog management.
6. Execution and Delivery
* Drive the execution of the product roadmap within the division, ensuring that the team meets delivery goals while balancing speed with quality.
* Champion agile methodologies with rapid feedback cycles to continuously improve product delivery and responsiveness to change.
* Accountable for backlog prioritization and writing effective initiatives, epics, features, and user stories with clear outcomes and/or acceptance criteria.
* Validate and accept work item completion based on acceptance criteria.
* Monitor and leverage standard WB Agile delivery metrics to assess flow, identify bottlenecks, and drive continuous improvement.
7. Risk Management and Planning
* Capture and document risks and assumptions, developing mitigation plans to ensure smooth product delivery.
* Plan with attention to detail and structured organization, balancing the demands of speed and quality.
8. Leadership and Influence
* Provide subject matter expertise, acting as a coach and mentor to the product delivery team.
* Lead by influence, collaborating across divisions and championing a culture of adaptability, innovation, and continuous improvement.
* Foster an environment where feedback is accepted and shared with a growth mindset.
* Act as a problem solver to keep the team focused on delivering value by identifying and addressing obstacles that limit the team's ability to maintain flow.
9. Technical Literacy
* Develop technical literacy to build rapport with development teams, ensuring that product decisions are informed by a solid understanding of the technology stack.
Preferred Experience and Skills
* 4 years of experience in project management, process improvement, creating and delivering business capabilities
* 5 years of experience in the insurance industry or supporting business or technology teams.
* Excellent communication skills, both written and verbal.
* Self-starter, who takes the initiative to exceed goals, uses analytical abilities, and possesses adaptability to change.
* Problem-solving and analytical thinking abilities with attention to detail.
* Demonstrated ability to manage multiple priorities and deliver projects within defined timelines.
* Ability to build collaborative relationships and interact with different levels in the organization.
Preferred Education and Training
* Bachelor's degree in business, insurance, engineering, or related field
* Experience working with an Agile/SCRUM framework #LI-LB1 EEO West Bend provides equal employment opportunities to all associates and applicants for employment and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability status, genetics, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local laws. This policy applies to all terms and conditions of employment, including recruiting, hiring, placement, and promotion. | |||||||