Purpose

The SAFe Product Management (PM) is a team responsible for defining and supporting the building of desirable, feasible, viable, and sustainable products that meet user needs over the product-market lifecycle by:

• Collaborating with a wide range of people to identify and define customer needs,
• Understanding the Solution Context,
• Developing the Program Vision, Roadmap, and Features required to meet these needs,
• Supporting the ARTs in delivering value through the Program Kanban and Continuous Delivery Pipeline

Key accountabilities

• Works closely with key stakeholders to understand and influence the product roadmap. Is responsible for gathering and prioritizing feedback to influence the product roadmap.

• Defines and shares the product vision to the Train that will shape the solution. Defines the Train scope and roadmap and makes sure deliveries fit end users' expectations.

• Participates to the ART Increment, presenting the vision, highlighting the key features and upcoming milestones; approve PI objectives and establish business value.
• Supports the Epic owner with creating the MVP and defining the Feature set

• Manages the ART backlog: defines, refines, prioritizes, reviews and validates items. Manages impediments, priority changes and impacts on the Train delivery roadmaps;

• Works together with the System Architect to understand enabler work and sequence the architectural runway. The Product Manager owns the backlog and is responsible for prioritizing the work at Train Level (using WSJF)

• Coordinates the different product increment prioritization on the train ordered by business value (based on WSJF)

• Forecasts, validates and monitors the Train Budget. Is accountable for capability management (identifying and proposing resources to properly size feature teams in the Train.

• Manages the ART backlog partition between feature teams. Cooperate with the POs and teams (if needed) to resolve prioritization / scope conflicts.

• Along with the RTE, is a key entry point for communications and relations with external stakeholders (Trains...)

• Is responsible to communicate with procurement, cybersecurity, HR, finance and enterprise architects. (Check if not for the Epic owner?)

• Evangelizes and promotes the product(s)/solution(s)

Skills needed

• Knowledge and execution of the entire process of understanding and satisfying customer needs in a business viable way. Based on 7 main components: market and customer understanding, marketing strategy, value proposition, portfolio management, pricing, product launch and marketing communications
• Business needs and IT solutions connection: Ability to understand a business need from a customer or from a business analysis and to analyze how existing or new Syensqo IT solutions can fulfill these business opportunities
• Product/Service Lifecycle Mgt: Ability to define a succession of strategies as a product goes through its product life cycle
• Requirement Management: Ability to document, analyze, trace, prioritize and agree on requirements and then control change and communicate to relevant stakeholders
• Project Management Fundamentals: Knowledge of the different aspects of a project and how they are applied in Syensqo: project organization, project Initiation, planning, estimating and scheduling, executing, monitoring and controlling, risk management, project closing
• Communication Advanced: Ability to communicate orally and in writing at an advanced level, manage meetings and workshops efficiently and deliver presentation
• Conceptual Thinking: Ability to solve problem or think based on the cognitive process of conceptualization—is a process of independent analysis in the creative search for new ideas or solutions, which takes as its starting point that none of the accepted constraints of "today's reality" need necessarily to apply to or to shape the future
• Persuasion: Ability to change a person's (or a group's) attitude or behavior toward some event, idea, object, or other person(s), by using written or spoken words to convey information, feelings, or reasoning, or a combination of them
• Priority Setting: Ability to set the right priority to tasks, based on different criteria (Customer priority, Syensqo priority, feasibility, sizing & phasing)Also, has the mandate to make decisions at the highest level.

• Being able to manage agility and business needs on the highest organizational level

• Business aware; setting priorities based on maximizing the value for the customers and Syensqo

• Understands MVP (Minimal Viable Product) thinking

• Strong experience of Agile/Scrum methods, especially SAFe (or similar)

Who should hold the position?

The SAFe Product Management has a very strong and detailed knowledge of the business and product, and requires experience in setting vision, roadmaps and following up deliveries, ensuring they meet the business goals.

The position requires excellent communication & presentations skills, to manage the expectations of the Portfolio, Customers, ART teams and other train stakeholders.

They need to have a strong Agile experience (ideally as a product owner)

They interact with the customer and must be able to integrate appropriately the feedback received.

Typical profiles

• Entrepreneur
• Product Manager or Senior Product Manager
• Project Manager or Senior Project Manager

Time dedicated to the position

100%

Training Curriculum

• Agile Fundamentals & Scrum Basics
• Professional Scrum Product Owner
• Agile Scrum for new teams
• SAFe PO/PM
• Preferable LEAN training courses

Common Anti-Patterns for SAFe PM

• Bias towards specific Epics / Features (non-economic view)
• Insufficient commitment; not taking sufficient time for preparation of the Program Backlog and Kanban
• Too detailed view on the flow of work (user-story level); doing the work of Product Owners
• Unclear Features as input for PI Planning
• Inability to make economic trade-offs (order-taker)
• Lack of alignment with Business Owners, Epic Owners and other stakeholders
• Not defining Features based on benefit hypothesis; inability to validate value and potentially pivot