The Challenge
Prezi is looking for a Product Manager (PM) to work together with the cross-functional team (Engineers, UX Research, Design and Data Analyst) to ensure we are working to solve the most impactful problems and to help build the product right. The PM, along with cross-functional team(s) will focus on how to solve problems iteratively, at high quality and at scale.
The role of a product manager within Prezi has three main areas, 1) build the right product, build the product right, and 3) visibility of delivery.
To “build the right product” the PM must clearly understand “what” problems our users are facing and “why”. This is achieved by working closely with the cross-functional team, Go To Market (GTM) Partners and most importantly through listening to our customers. To “build the product right” the PM works with the cross-functional team to synthesize the signals from the “what” and “why” into increments of value delivered to the customer and business through the execution of Agile best practices. The PM is primarily responsible for providing visibility of delivery to other teams within the Product and GTM organizations on a sprintly and monthly rhythm.
In this individual-contributor product role, domain experience is a must. As are excellent communication, stakeholder management, and visualization skills. Demonstrable experience in cross-product-team collaboration, in this case, a tight collaboration with other PMs, is a key foundational ability.
Product Management – Responsibilities
- Represent Customer Context — Understand, help communicate and be influenced by Prezi’s key Value Proposition, Target Market, User Jobs and User Lifecycle
- Spend time developing greater understanding and empathy for Prezi’s Customer Context, through data, research and especially direct product usage
- Ensure proposals for initiatives show a high degree of alignment with Prezi’s Customer Context
- Help others understand Prezi’s Customer Context by documenting and discussing with others on an ongoing basis
- Accountable for Achieving Objectives — Understand and feel accountable for the definition, prioritization and delivery of initiatives that meet the Company’s primary objectives
- Explain how product initiatives align or diverge from these strategies
- Responsible for obtaining estimations on requirements
- Provides requirements on Data and Instrumentation
- Responsible for defining and prioritizing Epics, User Stories, and Acceptance Criteria
- Report on progress towards accomplishing relevant objectives
- Provide visibility of, and minimise effort invested in initiatives which are unlikely to contribute to accomplishing Prezi’s objectives
- Initiate proposals for improvement to Prezi’s products and/or services which increase the odds of meeting Prezi’s objectives
- Amplify customer-centric or technology risk findings from cross-functional product teams to other realms of Prezi in order to influence evolution of top-level company objectives
- Use Data, and Respect Subject Matter Expertise — Effectively use Qualitative and Quantitative Data appropriately to help inform Prezi’s decision making process
- Demonstrate facility and literacy in usage of Qualitative and Quantitative information. Explain the difference in suitability and usage of each type of data
- Know, or learn how to rely on subject-matter expertise to guide decisions when qual/quant data is lacking or ambiguous
- Contribute to the definition, refinement and measurement of metrics that provide insight into the User Context or progress towards meeting Company’s objectives
- Encourage a culture of experimentation and learning by exhibiting appropriate scepticism, curiosity and visibility critical to this way of working
- Help ensure that the work of cross-functional teams is appropriately instrumented (for data) to be able to not only measure success and failure, but also gain insights for future ideas
- Leverage experience and industry best practices to take decisions in ambiguous situations. Provides visibility into the lack of traditional data driving such a decision and subsequently validates a decision through experimentation or research
- Maximise Value — Drive to maximise the value created with least amount of effort by Prezi’s product teams
- Ensure potential value is realised as soon as possible through timely, incremental delivery
- Ensure that investments receive appropriate justification in the form of a Business Case that defines the “Why” and the “What”. Makes visible initiatives which have a weak Business Case
- Minimises risks by iterating on small increments, instead of working on large releases
- Prioritises the focus of an initiative towards impact, rather than delivery of scope
- Continuous View on Product — Maintain a high degree of visibility into ongoing tasks and projects
- Collaborate closely with Customer and Go-to-market teams at Prezi to ensure visibility into the tasks of the product organisation and vice-versa
- Provide regular updates of ongoing work to stakeholders and collaborators
- Ensure that teams are providing a high degree of visibility into ongoing discovery and delivery of product initiatives
- Provide visibility into the factors driving prioritisation of new or continued product development
- Responsible for tracking and providing visibility to stakeholders into team’s progress and impact on timeline of delivery during sprints and cycles
- Provides visibility into risks and works with stakeholders to resolve them
- Quality and Performance — consistently infuse cross-functional teams with accountability for world-class performance and quality, balanced with tactical iterative delivery
- Ensures internal readiness for new initiative/product roll-out..
- Assist in and encourage cross product end-to-end customer journey testing
- Develop success metrics focused on quality
- Hold self and product teams accountable to quality related success metrics
- Review and influence cross-platform test plans
- Support cross-functional troubleshooting and fix resolution
- Business and Product Strategy — Deeply understand, and aid communication and amplification
- Work with cross-functional product teams, and particularly other product managers to amplify how decisions taken by these individual or others align or diverge from these strategies
- Explain the strategies to teams and individuals to help ensure shared context and alignment
- Market Trends — Understand, help communicate, and be influenced by Technology and Market Trends
- Spend time developing greater understanding of Technology and Market trends
- Help distribute this understanding by documenting and discussing with others on an ongoing basis
- Collaborate with Product Marketing to ensure wide dissemination of and influence by these trends within the company
What we expect from you:
- Experience in developing an Authoring Tool or Productivity Suite – Highly Desired
- Experience in working in an environment that fosters “learning through delivery” behavior in a SaaS company – highly desired
- Experience exposing Customer mindset approach: The first three items on your priorities list is customers, customers and customers. It’s crucial to be able to inspire engineers to think about customers, and refocus product discussions back towards customers
- Understands the principles of Product Development and has a proven track record in delivering products
- Ability to display rational vs. emotional thinking on how to collect, organize and analyze information
- Skilled communicator: can distill complex ideas to make them universally understandable, have attention to detail and be willing to explain to others
- Ability to identify risks and make them quickly visible to support a transparent and highly collaborative environment
What you can expect from us:
- Competitive monthly salary and stock options
- Opportunity to work in a young and well-established international company where what you do has a direct and immediate impact
- Flexible working hours and vacation
- MEDICOVER – private health insurance at no cost
- Opportunity to attend international conferences to learn and improve
- Fun team with lots of varying interests and activities we often join to do together
- Occasional travel to San Francisco and conferences
- Free quality food (lunch and breakfast in at the restaurant and sandwiches in Prezi bistro)
- Free gym cards, bike repair service and bike storage
- Take advantage of the Prezi library and order books at company cost