Product Manager for the LMS team

Purpose of the Role:

The Product Manager for the LMS team is responsible for owning and driving the full product lifecycle of the institution’s Learning Management platforms.

This role acts as the strategic bridge between technical teams and business stakeholders, ensuring that all LMS platforms evolve in alignment with institutional goals and deliver maximum business value.

Minimum Requirements

Experience:

• 5 - 7 years of experience in Product Management, Business Analysis or Application Ownership with at least 3 years’ relevant experience in a complex, multi-functional environment.
• At least 3 years’ experience with Agile/Scrum delivery methodologies.
• An understanding of how organisational change management supports successful project implementation would be advantageous.

Duties and Responsibilities

Stakeholder Engagement & Requirements Management

• Act as the primary liaison between business system owners, end-users, and technical delivery teams.
• Lead requirements elicitation and translate business needs into user stories or functional specifications.
• Champion a user-centric, data-informed approach to product development and support.

Agile Product Delivery & Execution

• Actively lead & participate in Agile ceremonies and support backlog refinement, sprint planning, and reviews.
• Work with internal teams and delivery partners to plan, monitor, and validate feature delivery.
• Ensure delivered solutions meet business expectations, quality standards, and architectural governance.

Product Strategy, Vision & Roadmap

• Contribute to defining and communicating a clear product vision and roadmap aligned to institutional strategy.
• Prioritise product initiatives and backlog items based on business value, user needs, and resource constraints.

Performance Monitoring & Continuous Improvement

• Define and track key product performance metrics such as adoption, usage, issues, and stakeholder satisfaction.
• Identify opportunities to optimise business processes through automation and improved platform use.
• Stay current with vendor roadmaps and assess new capabilities for institutional value.

Delivery Planning, Reporting & Decision Support

• Translate strategy into executable delivery plans, schedules, and commitments.
• Consolidate and standardise reporting to provide visibility of risks, progress, and opportunities.
• Assess risks and trade-offs, drive corrective actions, and communicate decisions clearly to stakeholders and leadership.

Governance, Change & Compliance

• Establish and enforce product governance, including change control, release management, and impact assessment.
• Ensure compliance with IT, data, and security governance requirements (e.g. POPIA).
• Support change enablement, communications, and adoption to drive effective use of enterprise platforms.

People, Capability & Product Leadership

• Provide product leadership and mentorship, supporting skills development and knowledge transfer.
• Promote consistent product processes, tools, and ways of working across teams.
• Support with recruitment, onboarding, training of team members where required.

Culture, Collaboration & Ways of Working

• Foster a culture of collaboration, continuous improvement, and innovation.
• Build team cohesion and role clarity, preventing overlap and role creep.
• Run engagement or pulse checks and implement improvement actions to strengthen team effectiveness.

Functional and Behavioural Competencies

Technical / Functional Competencies:

• In-depth understanding of the LMS solutions/platforms.
• Ability to work with technical teams on solution design, integration, testing, and release management.
• Proficient with Azure DevOps or similar tools for backlog and release management.
• Knowledge of business process design and optimisation.

Behavioral Competencies

• Strategic thinking with strong business acumen.
• Excellent communication and stakeholder management skills across technical and non-technical audiences.
• Strong sense of ownership, initiative, and follow-through.
• Ability to manage competing priorities in a dynamic, evolving institutional context.
• Problem-solving orientation with a bias for collaboration and innovation.