Product Specialist

Travel Alberta is the destination management organization of the Government of Alberta. We promote Alberta as a desirable place to travel, live, work, play, invest and learn. If you're passionate about helping this incredible province prosper and want to be part of an award-winning organization with strong corporate values, energetic team members and a great culture, Travel Alberta is the destination for you. Our work directly and indirectly benefits our province, driving visitation and revenue, diversifying the economy, providing jobs, encouraging economic investment, and enhancing quality of life for Albertans and their communities.

Position Summary

As a Product Specialist, you will be responsible for executing on the digital product strategy and roadmap to achieve Travel Alberta’s organizational mandate to drive Alberta’s visitor economy. Connecting with cross-functional teams regularly, you bring an entrepreneurial mindset and innovative approach in distilling business goals into a product vision, roadmap, and refined product backlog. Most importantly, you can help us build better products that people love to use.

The main accountabilities of this position include partnering with teams in the development lifecycle for a variety of digital products, analyzing and optimizing the user experience for Travel Alberta’s consumer and industry-facing products. Solving user problems alongside the UX Specialist, Product team members, IT and agency partners, this role requires awareness of current best practices to support the user experience and communication skills to express the future vision of Travel Alberta’s digital products.

**Primary Duties or Responsibilities**

**Product Management**
- Responsible for innovation and end-to-end launch of consumer and industry-facing products.
- Co-develop, own and execute on product roadmap. This includes understanding business objectives, market trends, and user needs to shape the direction and goals of the product.
- Facilitate user research and analysis to understand the needs and behaviors of the target audience.
- Report on user research to stakeholders and use the data to inform design or content decisions and strategy.
- Use design thinking and a deep understanding of the iterative user experience design process.
- Collaborate with cross-functional teams, both internal and external agencies, to gather requirements and develop solutions.
- Continuously seek out ways to improve the user experience, through user feedback and keeping abreast of industry trends and best practices. This includes staying up to date with new technologies and being open to feedback to improve skills.
- Accountable for overseeing the project budgets, including maintaining the product budget, tracking expenses, and ensuring the project stays within the allocated budget and help the Products Team make informed decisions about which features and initiatives should be prioritized within the product roadmap.
- Define and prioritize product backlogs, ensuring features and enhancements align with business objectives and user needs.
- Champion agile principles and methodologies, ensuring efficient and effective product development and releases.
- Develop and communicate clear user stories, acceptance criteria, and product roadmaps to guide the development team.
- Present solutions to stakeholders and seek feedback.
- Ensure the timely and successful delivery of product development or enhancement releases.

**Product Backlog Management**

**Stakeholder Partnership and Communication**
- Collaborating with agencies, internal teams and business partners to ensure that the end product meets the needs of the users while achieving business goals. This includes working with IT support, user experience, product managers, developers, and agencies to ensure that the design is technically feasible and can be implemented according to corporate standards.
- Provide day-to-day operational guidance and support to Travel Alberta's tourism product content Contact Centre to ensure this team is effectively supporting the delivery of Travel Alberta's tourism product content strategies.
- Work with Travel Alberta’s Destination Development team, Brand and Content Studio, and marketing teams to align overarching product objectives.
- Provide guidance and support to internal business partners, answering questions, and developing processes and documents to support self-service business model.

**Measurement and Reporting**
- Continually monitor, track, and optimize product performance with internal teams and agency partners to achieve business goals.
- Reporting performance to stakeholders and use the data to inform key product decisions and strategy.

**Required Qualifications**
- Bachelor’s degree or diploma in a relevant field, such as Business Administration, Communications, or Computer Information Systems. Product Management certification or training is an asset.
- 3+ years of experience in a product own