Software Product Manager

Software Product Manager

Job ID: 2013-19740
# of Positions: 1
Posted Date: 8/19/2013
Job Location: US-MA-Boston
Position Type: Regular Full Time
Category: Product Management

Overview

Pearson has one defining goal: to help people progress in their lives through learning. We champion innovation and we invest in models for education that deliver on our promise for effective, accessible, and personal learning from early literacy, college and career readiness to professional education, through data informed instruction and inventive applications for mobile and digital learning.

Pearson, the world's leading learning company, has global-reach and market leading businesses in education, business, and consumer publishing and is listed on the London and New York stock exchanges (UK: PSON; NYSE: PSO).

Pearson is an Equal Opportunity and Affirmative Action Employer, and a member of E-Verify. All qualified applicants, including minorities, women, veterans, and people with disabilities are encouraged to apply.

Responsibilities

SUMARY -

The Software Product Manager will be a member of the product development team responsible for Pearson's MyLab and Mastering learning management system (LMS) integrations.

This Software Product Manager shares responsibility for planning, designing, and managing software development of Learning Management System (LMS) Integrations for MyLab and Mastering including coordinating and enabling creation of the customer-facing documentation and training materials. The Sr. Software Product Manager is active in all phases of software development, implementation, and production-from gathering customer input and requirements through user-interface design and specification writing, to quality-assurance acceptance testing of the software. In addition, the Software Product Manager will offer assistance to the editorial groups responsible for content strategy, design, publishing, marketing, and sales.

The successful candidate must be able to handle a high volume of work at all times, manage multiple complex projects and priorities simultaneously, and operate in a demanding work environment. The ability to work effectively in a collaborative team environment is essential. This position requires occasional travel to conferences and customer-feedback meetings.

SCOPE AND IMPACT OF JOB

Pearson's LMS integrations allow us to bring our MyLab and Mastering learning applications and their effective learning experiences to the LMS our customers use. Our thoughtful, scalable and seamless integrations allow students and instructors to focus on learning and teaching with the end goal of improving student outcomes.

Reporting to the Director of Product Management for LMS Integrations, the Software Product Manager is expected to exercise leadership in the design and development of specific product features and to participate as an active member of the team responsible with the design, creation, and operation of MyLab products in the marketplace.

PRIMARY RESPONSIBILITIES

Working across Pearson business units and their customers, define, track and prioritize software feature requests, in many cases working across multiple LMS business partners and market segments including:
- Manage the entire product lifecycle and collaborate with teams across Pearson to deliver product
- Research, specify and track market requirements for current and future products
- Gather requirements by conducting market research, visiting with customers on-site, and outreach to non-customers.
- Coordinate user testing and feedback through usability testing, user development conferences and focus groups
- Serve as a point of escalation for customer issues; triage defect and enhancement requests
- Perform acceptance and ad-hoc functional testing of new features
- Evangelize the product internally and externally
- Collaborate with Documentation team to identify documentation needed and support their documentation of the product
- Coordinate with Marketing to develop positioning, marketing collateral, websites, support conferences, and customer outreach
- Coordinate with Customer Experience to train team members and support customer outreach
- Train Sales and support sales activities
- Train Support and support customer issue troubleshooting

Working from a business partnership and data analysis perspective:
- Understand and analyze Pearson's contractual obligations related to LMS integrations
- Analyze data, develop and deliver reports specific to LMS integrations to fulfill Pearson's contractual obligations
- Collaborate with stakeholders across Pearson and with our LMS partners to develop, document and improve LMS-related business processes (eg, direct integration processes; LMS System Admin support processes)
- Analyze data, develop and deliver reports relevant to management of LMS integrations (eg, usage, reports by discipline/MyLab)
- Support LMS Integration partnership negotiations and related business dealings
- Monitor LMS integration projects' progress by compiling data from across the company; tracking activity; publishing progress reports; recommending actions and resolving problems.

Other responsibilities may be assigned on an as-needed basis.

Relocation is not available for this position.

Qualifications

REQUIRED KNOWLEDGE AND EXPERIENCE
- Bachelor's degree (or equivalent); advanced degree in Education/Instructional Technology preferred
- 3-5 years' experience in a software product management, UI design, business analysis, or similar role required
- Sales or marketing experience a plus

Skills/knowledge/abilities -
- Ability to build consensus among peers, across functional teams and within the reporting chain
- Adept dealing with highly complex issues relating to scalability, data management and system interactions
- Familiarity with Agile principles and practices
- A strong desire to improve education using new technology and enabling tools
- In-depth familiarity with software design, development, and release
- Experience with Agile processes, especially creating and managing user-stories, acceptance criteria, etc..
- Ability to translate high-level goals into clear implementation plans
- Excellent teamwork, oral and written communication, and organizational skills
- Must be able to work independently in an Agile environment
- Experience in educational publishing, educational technology, learning management system (LMS) administration or instructional design is a plus
- Experience bringing complex products to market a plus

Other:
- To perform this job successfully, an individual must be able to perform each essential duty satisfactorily and on time. Reasonable accommodations will be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.
- This person must be able to sit or stand at a personal computer typing and reading for the majority of the work day.
- Ability to handle a high volume of work in a short period of time, handle multiple priorities simultaneously and operate in a demanding work environment is important.
- This person must be able to manage the budget for a project and complete all requirements within that given budget and be able to manage a personal travel and expense budget including completing and submitting all required forms.
- Reliable attendance and punctuality is critical to successful performance in this role.