Senior Director Product Ownership – adidas APP

Overview

GENERAL PURPOSE

As a Senior Director Product Ownership at adidas Digital you are responsible for the quality and strategic impact of an entire domain of digital APP products. Together with your product owners and agile teams, you work on continuously improving and evolving the product domain, maximizing the value for the customer and the company.

Partnering with IT and markets to define a robust product domain roadmap, managing capability expansion increments and leading the teams towards definition of new functionalities & best practices are a few examples of the activities that will be expected from this role. Additionally, you will be the strategic interface to all global key stakeholders, including Global Markets, Brands, Global Digital IT and DBC Senior Management for the product domain, driving consumer engagement and satisfaction, as well as incremental revenues out of delivering digital experiences.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES 

SCOPE:  ACCOUNTABLE FOR AN ENTIRE PRODUCT DOMAIN (>4M € BUDGET)

• APP PRODUCT STRATEGY & DELIVERY

• • Be accountable for the success of the product domain, considering the value for the consumer and the company (ROI).
  • Drive the strategic evolution of the product domain as part of the adidas digital ecosystem and in line with companywide strategic goals.
  • Define the vision and roadmap for the product domain, considering the value for the consumer and the company, and its role within the digital adidas ecosystem.
  • Be accountable for product delivery in line with the roadmap and committed delivery dates.
  • Identify and solve dependencies within and beyond your product domain to ensure efficient delivery.
• STAKEHOLDER MANAGEMENT

• • Represent the business for the product domain, fostering strong relationships with key global stakeholders to ensure that their views and requirements are captured in the product backlogs of the domain.
  • Act as the ambassador for your product domain, showcasing the key functionalities to markets and other strategic stakeholders, driving product adoption and assuring operational excellence together with IT peers.
  • Manage relationships outside the product domain efficiently to ensure that he product teams can work autonomously.
• BACKLOG MANAGEMENT

• • Drive the evolution of the domain backlog in collaboration with the product owners in your domain.
  • Influence backlog priorities in the own domain.
  • Influence roadmaps and backlogs from other domains.
• MONITORING

• • Be accountable for monitoring, optimization and enhancement of the configuration, features and functionalities related to the product domain.

• PEOPLE MANAGEMENT

• • Build the appropriate structure to be able to manage the respective organization effectively, identify and develop the future talents and create realistic succession scenarios for key positions.
  • Ensure appropriate leadership skills are present at every level by creating a motivational and supportive work environment in which employees are coached, trained and provided with career opportunities through development.
  • Continuously monitor and evaluate team workload and organizational efficiency with the support of data and team feedback and make appropriate changes in order to meet business needs.
  • Provide team members/direct reports with clear direction and targets that are aligned with business needs and DBC objectives.

• • Global and Local Market teams
  • Global IT and Global Operations
  • Global DBC and Brand organizations
  • Global and Local Sales organizations
  • Group functions
  • External vendors
  • DBC Senior Management (SMT)

REQUIREMENTS

EDUCATION & PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

• • Ideally Master degree with focus on Business Administration, Communication or IT or related areas, or equivalent combination of education and experience
  • 12+ years of professional experience in multi-national business environment (thereof 6+ year experience in a Digital and/or eCommerce environment)
  • 2+ year of experience in product management, working in an agile/SCRUM mode
  • Experience working with stakeholders and experts at various organizational levels
  • Experience in creating strong internal business cases to support investment and internal resource requests
  • Proven experience in managing global projects
  • 5+ years of experience in leading a team

SOFT-SKILLS

• • Exceptional communication skills, comfortable presenting to stakeholders at various organizational levels both in person and remotely
  • Distinctive strategic mindset and ability to prioritize and delegate high numbers of tasks with varying workload and importance
  • Ability to handle ambiguity and untangle complex situations into actionable activities
  • High resilience and solution oriented attitude
  • Excellent leadership skills

HARD-SKILLS

• • In-depth knowledge of the domain and its ecosystem
  • In-depth knowledge of Agile working methods e.g. Scrum/Kanban
  • Comfortable working with enterprise-level platforms and technologies
  • In-depth understanding of digital IT products and capabilities
  • Fluent in English both verbally and written

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AT ADIDAS WE HAVE A WINNING CULTURE. BUT TO WIN, PHYSICAL POWER IS NOT ENOUGH. JUST LIKE ATHLETES OUR EMPLOYEES NEED MENTAL STRENGTH IN THEIR GAME. WE FOSTER THE ATHLETE‘S MINDSET THROUGH A SET OF BEHAVIORS THAT WE WANT TO ENABLE AND DEVELOP IN OUR PEOPLE AND THAT ARE AT THE CORE OF OUR UNIQUE COMPANY CULTURE – THE 3CS: CONFIDENCE, COLLABORATION AND CREATIVITY.

• CONFIDENCE allows athletes to make quick decisions on the field, to reach higher. For us at adidas confidence means acknowledging that we don’t have all the answers. But we are willing to take risks, we try new things. And if we fail, then this is part of our learning – it helps us improve.
• COLLABORATION. Every elite athlete relies on partners: coaches, teammates, and nutritionists. We, too, know that we are stronger together. Winning as one team takes open and candid dialogue, inclusiveness and trust in each other’s abilities and talents.
• Being the best sports company in the world takes CREATIVITY. No great athlete succeeds by copying their predecessors’ training plans and strategies. We have to be open to new ideas, explore, gain an edge and stand out. Only then can we succeed.