Anthology Careers

Description

Product Specialist

Bangalore, India

The Opportunity: 

Anthology delivers education and technology solutions so that students can reach their full potential and learning institutions thrive. Our mission is to empower educators and institutions with meaningful innovation that’s simple and intelligent, inspiring student success and institutional growth.

The Power of Together is built on having a diverse and inclusive workforce. We are committed to making diversity, inclusion, and belonging a foundational part of our hiring practices and who we are as a company.

For more information about Anthology and our career opportunities, please visit www.anthology.com. 

The ideal candidate for our Product Specialist position has a solid understanding of users, the marketplace, and the competition and of future trends for the domain or type of system being developed. The Product Specialist writes and supports requirements for the product functionality being developed and prioritizes the product backlog. The Product Specialist is always available and actively engaged with the teams. 

The Product Specialist role requires working closely with key stakeholders throughout the organization and beyond, so this person must be able to communicate different messages to different people about the project at any given time. The Product Specialist works closely with the Product Management organization as a whole to understand the market needs. This person is responsible for conveying the market needs to the Scrum team in the form of Features and Product Backlog Items. The Product Specialist is also responsible for prioritizing the backlog based on business value and serving as the point person for the coders and testers on the Scrum team. The Product Specialist participates in standard Scrum ceremonies including stand-ups, backlog grooming, sprint planning, poker planning, release planning and release readiness. The Product Specialist is also responsible for signing off on features to ensure they meet the agreed upon acceptance criteria and overall market need. 

Primary responsibilities will include:

• Developing Features and Product Backlog Items for all new functionality, presenting Features and Product Backlog items to the product teams in grooming and design sessions, ensuring that new functionality meets the acceptance criteria, so the work can be designated as complete
• Assisting the Scrum team with release planning, functional research, and release testing. The Product Specialist is expected to have basic technical skills as well as college management industry knowledge and experience
• Assigning prioritized items (Features and Product Backlog Items) from the Product Backlog to the Scrum Teams (team or teams), participating in team planning meetings and is available to provide advice, clarification, and guidance during the execution of each Sprint
• Championing sufficient customer engagement during the development through, for example, product demonstration and customer feedback
• Inspecting, accepting, or rejecting completed work from the development Sprint
• Completing final sign-off of the product release at the different levels
• Owning stakeholder management, engaging with key customer contacts and with sales and marketing as required to ensure that all relevant inputs to the product backlog have been collected and prioritized
• Ensuring that the product backlog is constantly prioritized to secure delivery of maximum business value. In determining relative business value of the backlog items, the Product Specialist uses necessary inputs such as customer priorities and the need to address technical debt. The resultant product backlog is aligned with various stakeholders
• Product Knowledge – is or becomes a subject matter expert in the relevant product domains. It is expected that the Product Specialist will quickly become an expert in the product from a feature/functionality perspective
• Market Knowledge – developing an understanding of target market and user base and using this to guide product decisions

The Candidate:

Required skills/qualifications:

• Bachelor's degree or equivalent experience
• 2-5 years of relevant product management, product owner, or business analysis experience 
• Skilled at meeting facilitation and presentation 
• Familiar with Scrum methodologies and Product Manager/Owner role 
• Strong time management skills and project management skills 
• Must thrive in a fast-paced, time-compressed and dynamic environment 
• Experience writing acceptance criteria 
• Familiarity with requirements management tool, such as Team Foundation Server 
• Experience with requirements writing
• Strong communication and coordination skills 
• Fluency in written and spoken English

Preferred skills/qualifications:

• Experience in Story Mapping
• Scrum Product Owner certification (CSPO)
• Knowledge of Higher Education domain 
• Ability to facilitate multiple people towards a common goal
• Project management experience

This job description is not designed to contain a comprehensive listing of activities, duties, or responsibilities that are required. Nothing in this job description restricts management's right to assign or reassign duties and responsibilities at any time.

Anthology is an equal employment opportunity/affirmative action employer and considers qualified applicants for employment without regard to race, gender, age, color, religion, national origin, marital status, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity/expression, protected military/veteran status, or any other legally protected factor.