General Description (Job Summary):

The mission of Product Operations at D2L is to partner with the whole organization to enable effective, outcome-oriented, market-driven product, technology, and services organizations.  The Product Operations Manager is a cross-functional leader with experience designing, building, and scaling processes and systems focused on empowering product, technology, and services teams to do the best work of their lives and sustainably deliver world-class products.

Reporting to the Director of Product Planning, this role will enable D2L’s efficient, effective, and agile product development lifecycle with a deep focus on light-weight process design and implementation, communication and training, and organizational acceleration. 

Major Responsibilities (How Will I Make an Impact?):

Product Planning

• Support building and iterating on an efficient product planning process that builds an achievable and measurable product roadmap that holds teams accountable for delivery
• Help product teams be successful in how they communicate and use data, research findings, vision & strategy in roadmap planning
• Work closely with support and sales to improve the customer experience as inputs to planning

Cross-Functional Collaboration

• Partner closely with product, services and technology teams to identify areas of friction in the product lifecycle
• Together, develop creative solutions to complex problems by applying curiosity, knowledge and judgment to identify approach and methods
• Discover, define and validate the needs of stakeholders to establish scope, success metrics and outcomes for the implementation of new processes
• Build bridges between Product teams, Sales, Marketing and other parts of the organization to drive productivity, efficiency, and hold teams accountable for high quality outcomes

Process Creation & Improvement

• Review and analyze the effectiveness and efficiency of existing processes across the Product Management and Software Development Lifecycles, such as product planning, product discovery, GTM, product metrics, end-of-life, etc., and develop strategies for future improvements
• Support or drive initiatives that improve the effectiveness and efficiency of internal processes allowing Product teams to sustainably deliver product and optimize time to value
• Identify opportunities to breakdown large process changes into smaller slices to reduce the burden of change and allow for quick iterations based on feedback

Grow a Data Informed Organization

• Create bridges between Business Intelligence and Product Management, Services, Support and other teams to leverage data to measure product success, experiments, research and customer engagement
• Analyze product performance to ensure traceability from market-need through design, development, delivery, and adoption of products
• Champion leveraging data to inform decision making at all stages in the product lifecycle

Communicate to Diverse Audiences  

• Create lightweight documentation of D2L’s processes that clearly articulates the value and is geared to the target audience
• Evangelize D2L’s processes and best practices across teams
• Facilitate cross-functional meetings to support idea generation, process roll-out and retrospectives

Competencies (What you’ll bring to the role):

• 5+ years working in or with Product teams
• Experience in Product Operations is preferred
• Proven ability to leverage analytics and quantitative methods to break down ambiguous problems and come up with recommendations
• Growth mindset with a desire to learn continuously across a variety of functional areas
• Strong agile project and process management skills with an ability to own planning, scheduling, and coordinating
• Consultative approach and proven track record of effective collaboration and influence at all levels of an organization, with the ability to achieve goals in a fast-paced and continuously evolving environment
• Strong active listening skills to build empathy and understanding with stakeholders
• Passionate about building a data informed culture and leveraging data to drive decisions

D2L Leadership Competencies

• Leads by Example with personal and professional integrity, high accountability and say/do ratio.
• Boundaryless collaboration and influence skills both within team, peer group and broader organization. Effective communicator with a proven track record of.
• Delivers Awesome Outcomes: Strategic mindset and business acumen, with strong prioritization skills and a focus on organizational outcomes vs. team tasks. Effective problem solver, able to achieve results individually and through others, in fast paced, deadline-driven environments.
• Talent Magnet: Talent-focused leader, with demonstrated ability to coach, build and lead a high performing, diverse team.
• Better, Smarter, Faster: An agile learner, with a growth mindset, attention to detail and organizational skills. An operationally minded leader, with a focus on continuous improvement and innovation.
• Wins Hearts and Minds: An effective communicator, with the ability to connect the why and the what. A change agent, with proven delegation, motivation, and team building skills.

Education Recommendations:

• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent in Business Administration or related
• PMP, Six Sigma, SAFe or Certified Scrum Master specialized certificate would be highly valued