Product Manager

Product Manager

Requirements

• Must be a professional, persuasive communicator, able to gain the respect of the team, external stakeholders, and management.
• Excellent written, oral, presentation, and interpersonal skills.
• Experience working in or with product management.
• Experience working in the Agile Scrum framework and with project management methodologies.
• Comfortable with ambiguity and prepared to act with incomplete information.
• Thrives working collaboratively as part of a team in a fast-paced environment.
• Strong attention to detail while not losing sight of the larger goal.
• Leadership skills with the ability to effectively influence, persuade and negotiate.
• Understanding of technical concepts and ability to communicate them to non-technical audiences.
• Analytical and quantitative skills to use data and metrics to back up assumptions, surface recommendations and drive decisions. Ability to clearly communicate these data insights to others.
• Agile Methodology experience.
• Deep knowledge of web/software development and related technologies.
• Exhibits excellent judgment.
• Has relentlessly high standards (is never satisfied with the status quo).
• Strong attention to detail and a feeling of pride and ownership over the quality of our products.

Responsibilities

• Work in an agile environment, fulfilling the role of Product Owner and continuously refining and prioritizing the backlog; balancing stakeholder priorities with product health needs to maximize value and minimize risk.
• Engage a cross-functional team of stakeholders, end-users, engineers, UX designers, and product and portfolio leaders to understand the problems to solve, inform the product vision, and define software product requirements.
• Develop and communicate the software product roadmap based on the strategy, problems to solve, and stakeholder priorities.
• Collaborate with the Scrum team to translate the product roadmap into well-defined features and a deep product backlog of sprint-ready user stories with clear acceptance criteria to deliver on the roadmap.
• Participate and present in quarterly planning activities and bi-weekly portfolio steering committees.
• Define and surface risks, assumptions, and trade-offs associated with product features to guide prioritization decisions.
• Gather feedback about the product capabilities needed using interviews, conducting focus groups, instrumenting surveys, partnering with UX on usability sessions, reviewing online communities, working with internal tech teams etc.
• Knowledgeable on assigned product(s), including the technology used, integrations, and dependencies. Understand the latest relevant technologies, vendors, innovations, and forward-thinking trends.
• Participate in the RFI and RFP vendor selection process.
• Demo working software and facilitate effective sprint demos to stakeholders.
• Ensure product quality by testing software features to ensure they satisfy the acceptance criteria and work with stakeholders and end users to coordinate user acceptance testing activities.
• Provide support to product release activities, including documenting software release notes and coordinating change management to increase product adoption.
• Actively participate in the urgent resolution of any high-impact production issues.
• Understand and measure product health and use data to inform/defend prioritization decisions, and to ensure product quality and product service levels meet defined goals and measures of success targets.
• Maintain and build relationships with business owners, stakeholders, team members, and key vendors.
• Clearly communicates constraints, conflicts, requirements, compatibility issues, and items that could affect project outcome, final performance level, or product efficacy. Offers appropriate alternatives and contingency plans.
• Performs other related duties as assigned.

Preferred Qualifications

• Master’s degree or higher in a relevant field. MBA – Strongly Preferred.
• Experience in higher education, education technology, custom eLearning development, R&D, or a relevant field.
• Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO) or other equivalent certification (e.g., Pragmatic Marketing).
• Certified in change management.