Job description

Our client is a leading digital production agency, working with both South African and international client accounts.

They are looking for a dynamic and resourceful product analyst/product owner to join their project delivery team and own the end-to-end delivery of key business and client projects.

You should know the internet like the back of your hand and understand internet technologies; terminology; and the workflow of a typical digital project lifecycle. You should have experience working in an environment involving developers and creative teams.

You will work closely with the development, creative and project management teams. The solutions director will oversee your work. As part of your product analyst responsibilities, you will analyse client project requirements; assist with providing costings and solutions that match these requirements; make appropriate recommendations during the UX/prototyping phase that will positively impact the design process.

As part product owner, you will be the ultimate custodian for the delivery of high-quality solutions for your client projects. You will drive the client requirements gathering and communication management; the QA process; tools; and solution testing for your projects. Basically, owning the end-to-end solution. For larger and more enterprise/complex projects, you will be supported by the solutions director and a project manager to assist you with the client servicing and risk management aspects to the project.

Client vision

‘To create a global creative technology company that has a passion for creating innovative digital solutions that work and to be recognised as the industry leader in delivery excellence.’

Client core values

• Deliver excellence
• Show integrity
• Be passionate
• Take initiative
• Develop innovation

Key duties and responsibilities

Some of the main responsibilities of this position will now be covered in detail, to give you an idea of the depth of the role and expectations thereof:

• Proposals and cost estimates – assist the sales process by scoping the initial client requirements to provide accurate cost estimates and detailed proposal documentation.
  Requirements planning – one of your most important responsibilities is to ensure that every project the client delivers is properly analysed, scoped and the right solution proposed based on various factors including client requirements and budget. Business requirements are normally captured in a Statement of Works (SOW) document.
• Functional planning – this includes interpreting the SOW and business rules/requirements and together with the development team, you formulate the right solution. This can be done by analysing client analytics metrics, as well as discussions with key stakeholders, including the client stakeholders; client target users (where possible); development team; project managers; and our designers.
• Wireframing/UX design – inputting into and creating interactive wireframes using tools (i.e. Adobe XD; Axure; Balsamiq) which lays the foundation for the creative UX design process. Working with designers and developers to solve complex UX decisions for the solution you’re planning.
• Product management – working together with client stakeholders and your internal project team, you will own the product backlog. Using tools like JIRA to manage your projects, will be an important aspect to the role, where you will breakdown projects into Epics or User Journeys; user stories; tasks and features which outline the functionality requirements and business rules/logic. Acceptance criteria will be added to all tickets forming part of the QA Test Plans, against which manual testing is done.
• Project team management – you will manage the project team for your individual projects from a product owner perspective, not a managerial perspective. Your team (including clients; contractors; developers; QA’s; designers) should look to you as the go to person for any questions concerning your projects. You will also be responsible for reviewing contractor cost estimates, before getting them approved
• Testing/QA – you will oversee the solution from a quality perspective and conduct QA testing and highlight bugs/tasks where the product does not match your solution.
• Risk management – When business conditions change or new features requested may affect scope, you need to revaluate how it could impact the project and provide cost estimates based on these new requirements.
• Documentation – produce quality documentations of a consistently high standard, that can be shared with clients and which clients find easy to understand.
• R&D – keep abreast of the latest technologies, best practices and standards. Conduct knowledge sharing sessions with the team. It’s important that you understand the capabilities of the various CMS platforms we work with, to ensure that you can recommend the right platform solution to client project and upsell new functionality and/or opportunities based on what the CMS capabilities can offer.
• Time tracking and reporting – on all projects you will be responsible for ensuring that your entire project team are logging their time on a daily basis, so that you can pull monthly timesheets and report against Project actuals vs Project budget/costs. You will work with the finance department to ensure that quotes and invoices are sent.

Requirements

Key requirements and personal skills

• A degree or similar qualifications
• Three+ years of experience within an IT, development or agency environment
• Experience interfacing with clients and managing client expectations
• Experience working with Waterfall/Agile/SCRUM methodologies and ability to refine and merge processes accordingly
• Experience tracking sprint roadmaps versus timelines to gauge project progress
• Experience using project management tools like Redmine/JIRA
• End to end project testing and ability to implement ‘Testing & QA’ processes
• Excellent website analytics; data analysis and numerical skills
• Knowledge of SEO best practices is advantageous
• A good knowledge of the terminology and technical aspects related to internet technologies. Ideally (but not mandatory), you need to understand what most of the following terms mean and in which context to use them: Content Management Systems (CMS); Databases; ASP.Net; PHP; HTML; JavaScript; AJAX; SQL; Mobile frameworks; API’s; SEO; and Hosting
• Understanding of CMS products like Umbraco (very advantageous); EPiServer; Sitecore; WordPress; Drupal
• Advanced skills in Microsoft Office (Excel, Word, PowerPoint) and MS Project – are essential
• Experience creating high quality, well-formed and well-written documentation
• Razor sharp eye for detail – you don’t miss anything!
• Military-like organisational and time management skills, with the ability to very comfortably juggle multiple projects/tasks
• A team player with good interpersonal skills to deal with various personalities
• Excellent command of the English language, both written and verbal
• A passion for the online industry a true digital enthusiast!
• Prepared to travel, if necessary

If you feel that you meet the requirements above and are interested in this position, please apply online.

Although we endeavour to reply to all applications, this is not always practicable. For this reason, if you have not heard from us in two weeks, please consider your application unsuccessful.

Posted on 21 Nov 08:54