Transcript
Transcript: Product Management in Action: A Job Bank Case Study, Part 1
[Title card: Product Management in Action: A Job Bank Case Study
Part 1 of 5: Context
Who am I?]
My name is Mina Riad.
[A text appears on the screen: Mina Riad. Product Manager, Employment and Social Development Canada]
I am a Product Manager at JobBank.gc.ca at Employment and Social Development Canada. Job Bank is a program that offers 3 main services in English and French:
First, it helps job seekers find employment by serving as a public job board of job opportunities across Canada.
[A screenshot of a webpage appears on screen (https://www.jobbank.gc.ca/findajob).]
Job seekers can use its various job searching tools such as Job Search, Job Alerts, Job Match, Resume Builder, and the Mobile app to find suitable employment.
[A screenshot of a webpage appears on screen (https://www.jobbank.gc.ca/employers).]
Second, employers can use Job Bank to post their job vacancies and find qualified candidates.
[A screenshot of a webpage appears on screen (https://www.jobbank.gc.ca/trend-analysis).]
Third, Job Bank disseminates labour market information (LMI) and provides Career Planning tools to help users make informed decisions related to careers, education, training and hiring.
[Title card: What is my role as a product manager?]
Like any other Government of Canada program, Job Bank operates in a hierarchical vertical structure. However, in addition to that we are also functioning under a parallel horizontal structure
[A graphic of the horizontal structure appears on screen.]
to manage Job Bank as a product. This allows us to ensure that all aspects of the program & product are aligned and working towards the same goals.
Due to its complexity and size, Job Bank consists of 11 sub-products or product groups responsible for developing and maintaining these sub-products.
For example, one product group works on developing and updating the Job Bank for Employers module, which allows employers to post jobs. Another product group works on developing and updating Job Seekers tools
[A screenshot of a webpage appears on screen (https://www.jobbank.gc.ca/findajob/match).]
such as Job Match, which help these users find and apply for the right job.
[A screenshot of a webpage appears on screen (https://www.jobbank.gc.ca/home).]
Another product group is responsible for the Career Planning tools, which help students, career transitioners, and job seekers plan for their next career stage. Each product group has a Product Lead, and product leads report to the Product Manager for Job Bank which is me. They also update the larger product team during weekly scrums to ensure that all the different pieces contribute to the larger vision and that all product dependencies are considered.
[Title card: Cross-Functional Team at the Job Bank]
If we look at these product groups, they consist of individuals with a diverse skill set. Usually, a cross-functional team skill set depends on the type of product it manages. For example, in our Job Bank context, our software/web product team consists of:
- Product Lead
- User Experience/UI Designer
- Web Content Writer
- Data Analyst
- Partnerships and Stakeholders Relations Representative
- Operations and Client Support and Feedback Representative
This group works closely with the IT team to continuously improve their product.
The IT team consists of:
- Software/Web Developers,
- Testers,
- DevOps Engineers,
- Database Administrators,
- Network Administrators, etc.
They also liaise with senior management to ensure their work remains in sync with departmental priorities and program objectives.
On a daily basis perspective, my role as a Product Manager entails the following activities:
- Updating regularly the product's work plan to reflect any priority changes and maintaining a backlog
- Prioritizing, through consultation with the team members, the work items
within the sprint (release cycle)
- Providing updates on the status of work items within a release cycle during scrum meetings
- Engaging with different product team members (subject matter experts such as UX designer, content writer and data analyst to get their input on any required work item and actioning their recommendations
- Reviewing and understanding all business requirements before they are submitted to the IT team
- Continuously monitoring the product's key performance indicators via dashboards and reports
On a more global view, as a product manager, I am responsible for:
- Identifying the product audience and personas and understanding their needs, based on user research, user patterns, data analysis and feedback
- Identifying key stakeholders and consulting them as required
- Setting a vision for the product and communicating it via a product canvas and the identification of the different epics/features that make up the product
- Developing and maintaining a medium and long-term plan for the product
based on a backlog and communicating it via a product roadmap.
- Designing performance metrics for the product
- Organizing regular meetings with the product team
[Title card: End of part 1 of 5]
[The CSPS logo appears onscreen. A text appears on the screen: canada.ca/school. The Government of Canada logo appears onscreen.]
