Product Manager

About this role

Job title: Product Manager

Summary:

The Product Manager is responsible for working directly with City departments to deliver government services that are simple, effective, and easy to use; managing the vision, roadmap and enhanced digital delivery of user-centered products to solve problems and modernize city services; researching, process mapping and analyzing data and systems to recommend product decisions; collaborating with service designers to do rapid prototyping and managing delivery of a product through implementation and its lifetime; and managing projects in coordination with cross-departmental and departmental teams.

This is an exempt, mid-management level position in the Department of Digital Service and Open Government. The incumbent exercises independent judgment in the planning, overseeing, and implementation of product management, business process, and software development.

Supervision received and exercised:

This position reports to the Director of Digital Service and Open Government and may provide direct or functional supervision to subordinate staff or to project teams.

Essential duties and responsibilities:

This list is meant to be representative, not exhaustive. Some incumbents may not perform all the duties listed while in other cases related duties may also be assigned.

• Prepares and assists with the development of strategic plans related to area of responsibility and addresses City-wide policy and management issues.
• Develops, defines, and manages the vision and roadmap for one or more of the city’s software and hardware products.
• Develops and shares clarity around what problem a product is solving and for whom; builds services with a strong equity lens to support everyone who needs access to services; ensures that the City’s products work for all members of the public without experience gaps.
• Runs user research sprints with users and usability testing workshops for products at varying stages of development and analyzes into site/product analytics.
• Manages the execution of the vision and roadmap on a day-to-day and sprint-to-sprint basis of products including managing priorities, grooming backlogs, and tracking task completion.
• Develops success metrics by defining what success looks like for the products and creates and manages the metrics to track progress during development and after deployment; understands and analyzes user and business needs to ensure outcomes are aligned with service vision and business strategy.
• Investigates and reviews data and analysis to look for problems and opportunities; feeds data into policy; articulates dependencies and accounts for them; unblocks delays and barriers; and manages feature tradeoff decisions across the product roadmap.
• Documents the City’s products and the processes; develops and oversees the design and end-to-end journey of services and business processes through user-centered design.
• Ensures that both qualitative and quantitative research inform the product, and that product definition is not just about opinion.
• Embeds human-centered design principles into every aspect of how the City is building the product.
• Develops strong stakeholder relationships at every level; manages resourcing in collaboration with the design and development teams; works with departments to help them understand Agile; leads and collaborates with cross-functional teams to explore, prototype and define the end-to-end product experience; and manages stakeholders so that the product team gets decisions and is supported at a senior level.
• Uses prototyping to identify powerful value propositions and determines how to execute them.
• Partners closely with city staff, with the department, across other departments, and outside of the organization (such as consultants and vendors) to ensure timely and efficient delivery of the product.
• Evaluates products in the market and makes recommendations; recommends buy or build strategy; evaluates different vendors and builds strong working relationships with vendor partners.
• Sustains an energized and inspired team; motivates without micro-management; ensures that teams keep forward momentum and balances the need for exploration and focused development as appropriate.
• Advocates diplomatically for the product’s users and their needs within the team and the wider organization.
• Participates in feature prioritization, scrum meetings, code review, and architecture discussions.
• Practices and enthusiastically shares Agile methodologies throughout all stages of the project lifecycle.
• Works with service designers to create functional prototypes to illustrate design or architecture options.
• Establishes best practices and standards for front end testing, and works to oversee adoption across the organization.
• Uncovers new opportunities for city staff to use data through user research; champions user-centered design and the importance of data for meeting user needs.
• Evolves the city’s data strategy, and sets data standards and governance for internal data use and the city’s Open Data Program
• Demonstrates the value of data-driven decision-making and helps departments to understand how to incorporate analytics into their performance approaches.
• Supports city departments to ensure that the data they need is accessible, useful, high quality, well documented, and timely.
• Support the city’s data infrastructure by building better data pipelines, supporting data integration, and improving our analytics practices.

Knowledge of:

• Strategic planning, systems, and project management.
• Information technology service delivery procurement and emerging trends.
• Principles and practices of user-centered design.
• Principles and practices of journey mapping and user stories.
• Principles and practices of change management.
• Experience using design thinking to solve complex problems and to identify and design based on customer needs.
• Experience conducting user / design research using qualitative customer insights and quantitative customer data to inform decisions.
• Experience using agile (Scrum / Kanban) to develop product.
• Experience managing product teams of diverse backgrounds towards a common goal.
• Budgeting procedures and techniques.
• Methods for monitoring, analyzing, and evaluating programs.
• Business process improvements.
• Principles of performance measurement.
• Principles and practices of effective supervision.

Ability to:

• Identify challenges and emerging issues faced by the organization.
• Position the City to effectively respond to the rapidly changing technological environment.
• Use a user-centered approach to make complicated technical concepts easier to understand.
• Promote a culture of high performance and continuous improvement that values learning and a commitment to quality.
• Establish and maintain a working environment conducive to positive morale, individual style, quality, creativity, and teamwork.
• Facilitate teams and leading decision-making processes in a collaborative environment.
• Actively use superior writing, graphical and in-person communications skills, and communicate clearly with designers, developers, engineers, and non-technical audiences.
• Gain cooperation through discussion and persuasion.
• Prepare and administer complex budgets.
• Lead interdepartmental committees and work programs.
• Define a compelling vision and design a measurable strategy to achieve that vision.
• Negotiate and assess complex proposals and contracts.
• Motivate cross-functional teams to build the right thing.
• Be curious, empathetic, and like to get to the root of a problem.
• Act as an empathetic coach, mentor, and advocate who helps partner with department staff to develop the skills to manage their own products.
• Work in a consulting capacity as well as running a product directly.
• Mentor and develop staff using a supportive and collaborative approach on a consistent basis.
• Communicate clearly and concisely and make effective public presentations.
• Explain technical concepts and processes in an understandable manner to end users.
• Establish and monitor staff performance and development goals, assign accountabilities, set objectives, establish priorities, and conduct annual performance appraisals.
• Deliver high ethical standards, be excited to work in the public interest, and serve the city staff and residents of San Rafael with humility, respect, and transparency.
• Work calmly and effectively under stressful situations.

Education and/or experience:

Equivalent to graduation from an accredited college or university with a degree in computer science, information systems, information technology, public policy, business, public administration, or closely related field and three years of experience working as a product manager for a digital product that is in use by people today. One year of experience serving as a lead or in a supervisory or management capacity is desirable. A Master’s Degree is preferred.

Physical demands:

The physical demands described here are representative of those that must be met by an employee to successfully perform the essential function of this job. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions. While performing the duties of this job, the employee is regularly required to sit and talk or hear. The employee frequently is required to use hands to finger, handle, or feel and reach with hands and arms. The employee is occasionally required to stand and walk. The employee must regularly lift and/or move up to 10 pounds and occasionally lift and/or move up to 25 pounds. Specific vision abilities required by this job include close vision, distance vision, color vision, peripheral vision, depth perception, and ability to adjust focus.

Work environment:

The work environment characteristics described here are representative of those an employee encounters while performing the essential functions of this job. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions. While performing the duties of this job, the employee is regularly exposed to video displays. The employee frequently works in evenings or weekends; typically, in inside environmental conditions. The employee occasionally may travel between worksites. The noise level in the work environment is usually moderate.