As a Product Manager at Backbase, you take ownership of the entire lifecycle of certain features and components: all through Discovery, Design, Development to ultimately Launch. In short - you focus on defining good feature strategies, executing against those features perfectly, and at all times make sure that what your teams delivery actually deliver value for users, Backbase customers and/or Backbase itself.
Although you are the owner and hold the accountability, at this level we expect the guidance of and collaboration with more senior PMs and Engineering Managers to be high. That being said, you have several years of experience and are a professional and independent worker. This means that you are comfortable working with your team and you understand and are able to navigate team goals and dynamics.
At Backbase you develop your PM capabilities across these 4 main domains which are heavily emphasized towards product execution:
Working with the team (providing direction and guardrails)
Working with the process (methodology, execution and decision making)
Working with the product (visioning/ideation & measuring success)
Working with people (stakeholder relations, coordination & collaboration)
Your main focus is to master your delivery power with your squad. This is the bread and butter of Product Management and you want to excel in it. Your focus is to create successful deliveries of tangible customer value and business impact together with the Engineering Manager and the team, by e.g. making tough prioritization and tradeoff decisions. You provide clear ongoing guidance with respect to the “what” and “why”. You provide valuable customer and business context, whilst being clear about things that are out of scope. And although EMs are accountable for team delivery, you retain the full accountability for the actual iterative value that the squad delivers.
In working with your teams, you are a proactive driver who understands team autonomy and lead them by aligning team members around a shared product direction and customer outcomes. You do this however together with the squad leadership consisting of an Engineering Manager, yourself with some guidance from more senior PMs and potential other senior roles attached to your group. You have a good theoretical understanding of setting goals and objectives, e.g. with OKRs. These you actively translate to clear sprint goals for the team together with your squad leadership. Understanding the identity and purpose of your squad is crucial, both for understanding their role in the wider Value Stream and managing the stakeholder landscape. This is critical when it comes to understanding cross-team dependencies and how you can solve for them (see working with people).
Your focus lies in finding solutions to (predetermined) problems inside the product line within your Value Stream. You however have the responsibility to clearly indicate what you and your squad are trying to achieve with your products. You are also able to define what success looks like. Critical will be measuring the squads' progress towards goals and milestones with e.g. burn down and burn up charts managed by the EMs. You also possess the skills to measure whether you’re achieving the intended impact of the product or feature you are delivering.
By collaborating with product leadership in your Value Stream, you understand the strategic objectives and play an active part in their translation towards tangible, iterative and valuable deliveries in your product. You work in smaller, more clearly defined product areas in close collaboration with your Engineering Managers, Designers, Scrum Masters and Engineers.
You mostly work on new features or iterations of existing ones. Inside tightly scoped areas (e.g. single squads, single or multiple channels (web/mobile)) you work to find solutions to problems that either have already been prioritized in your Value Stream, or you have uncovered yourself under guidance of a senior PM. If you’re breaking new territory you might need to adopt product discovery tools e.g. user story maps or use cases. At all times, you search for the business impact your products can make, and have a clear understanding of the market and key competitors in it in relation to the relevant product area.
Even though UX design is a fully fledged function in Backbase, you collaborate intensively to achieve the best possible and workable experience for users.
Successfully performing as a Product Manager for squads at this level means a laser focus on the shaping, planning and execution of a 3 month product execution plan. You however work closely with other PMs who also define what comes after, and you have an intimate knowledge of this longer runway. The expectation is not for PMs to be the end accountable for decision-making regarding the maturity of their product or problem area, however you should have a strong view on what desired “maturity” looks like, based on customer and market understanding. Additionally, you are not expected to have all those subsequent iterations (3 months plus) worked out and refined yet. And besides working jointly in your Value Stream for roadmap items to be executed on, you remain in the lead for the capabilities already owned by your squads and prioritize the maintenance and support of those continuously.
To be effective, a squad needs to understand who they are trying to impact, why, and how. They need to understand the business problem and what stakeholders goals are. In an ideal world, the team and stakeholders need to work together as one. There needs to be a short feedback loop so the team knows when they are on the right track and when they aren’t. The stakeholders need clear expectations and regular updates on progress and problems. Your skills at communication and facilitation are key to being successful in these areas.
A Product Manager and their team rarely operate in a vacuum. They usually have connections throughout the Value Stream, not only to their own stakeholders but to teams that they themselves act as stakeholders for (platform teams, etc.). A team may also be asked to collaborate with other teams on larger themes. These situations require a PM to flex their coordination muscles to ensure that ownership is clear and that they are aligned and working well with these related teams. You will identify early any dependencies or risks involving other value streams, and work closely with your peers in other value streams to successfully mitigate these dependencies and risks
Additionally excellent product managers are able to empathize with the customer, understand customer needs, and feed those needs back to the rest of the team. Within Backbase, the Voice of the Customer includes the ability to combine all feedback coming straight from customers (through direct conversations), or via Customer Success. Additionally, feature requests coming through the pre-established process is something to keep on top of at all times. But also the Voice of the Market is of utmost importance. You are on top of innovations in your area and you are able to assess quickly if it is worth investigating for Backbase.
3-4 years of product development/management related work, PM (PO) in software companies (or any other relevant transferable knowledge);
Relevant transferable skills and knowledge. Exposure to software project / product / development management.
