- Role: Product Manager
- Venture: African Management Initiative (AMI)
- Location: Nairobi, Kenya
AMI is a pan-African entrepreneurial social business that is pioneering a scalable approach to workplace learning and skills development for Africa. AMI empowers African managers, entrepreneurs and young professionals through practical and accessible learning and development tools. We help businesses develop productive and motivated workforces, we help entrepreneurs build thriving enterprises, and we help job seekers develop new skills and advance their careers. AMI is expanding rapidly. We have successfully raised investment, established offices in Nairobi and Johannesburg, engaged clients in East, West and Southern Africa, and have trained over 20,000 people in 11 countries in Africa.
About the role
The Product Manager will report directly to the Chief Product Officer and be responsible for the overall development processes related to AMI’s learning platform. In coordination with the CPO, the Product Manager will spend time with customers and prospects (and do significant user testing), lay out strategic roadmaps with key customer needs addressed, and create plans to develop them and ensure they are implemented successfully in the market. You will be the intersection of business needs, user experience and technology.
The Product Manager represents the “voice of the customer” by maintaining and prioritizing the backlog to ensure that the team is working on stories that maximize business value and deliver necessary fixes and functionality to all customers.
Depending on experience, the PM may also have a role in managing the product associates who look after engagement and technical support for the learning platform and ensuring technical support processes and documentation are in order.
Responsibilities
- Development of core technical product
- Inspire and motivate the development teams to deliver innovative and exciting product solutions with an appropriate sense of urgency
- Responsible for defining scope of development for new product features and on-going feature enhancements including all management of backlog and project management activities.
- Responsible for writing and prioritizing user stories
- Responsible for managing trade-offs as well as definition of acceptance criteria
- Understand and deliver upon product vision and OKRs (objective and key results)
- Process Management and Improvement – Define and manage a well-defined project management process and champion ongoing process improvement initiatives to implement best practices for Agile Project Management
- Product communication and user feedback loops
- Work with key stakeholders across the company to ensure successful product releases
- Conduct technology product training across the business
- Act as an ambassador for the product internally and externally, and as the primary technical contact for queries related to the product
- Follow and adhere to all governance processes and secure deployment approvals
- Ensure critical customer focus working with marketing, programme and sales teams to link product to customer needs and ensure market alignment
- Establish and maintain a high level of credibility with Executive Team
- Manage technical product team
- Manage the work streams of Product Associates to deliver seamless user support, user feedback and critical platform testing
Sound exciting? Here’s who we are looking for:
Skills
- Proven leader, motivator, and effective decision maker enhanced by creativity and a detailed understanding of technology product management so they can manage the backlog effectively
- Strong interpersonal skills – As someone influencing several departments and seeking feedback from a range of stakeholders, you need strong interpersonal skills. You will be an effective communicator at all levels.
- Strategic thinking – You will need to analyse and implement the strategic roadmap for the product and make difficult decisions. You will be able to understand business needs and translate them in to development priorities and plans.
- Analytical skills – You will need to research and analyse market, platform and user feedback data and make use data to influence decision making
- Technical product management – Familiar with Scrum and Agile project development
- Initiative and execution of tasks. MUST be able to work independently, take initiative to solve problems and proactively address issues and follow tasks through to completion
- Personal – Motivated, self-starter, independent worker.
Qualifications & Experience
- Bachelor Degree in information management, computer science, or related field. Significant experience will be considered in lieu of degree level qualification
- Experience in technical project management
- Experience in data analysis, project management and user feedback are an asset
- Experience managing or supervising other people (preferred)
