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Job summary


The Product Portfolio Manager is responsible for creating, maintaining, enhancing and managing technology tools and products that deliver value and differentiated capability to Oliver Wyman consulting teams and directly to our clients. A good Product Portfolio Manager is deeply concerned with the quality of the experience and how a person feels when they are using it, never settling for its good enough or it gets the job done or its just how its always worked. Caring deeply about the day-to-day experience for any and all users is tantamount to the role.

Product Portfolio Managers sit at the intersection of business, data, design, engineering, security, operations, support, and marketing. Product Managers have a deep understanding and deep respect for each of these disciplines, but they do not overstep their bounds. They serve as the connective tissue that brings together strategic business goals, human-centered design, future-forward engineering, streamlined operations, best-in-class support, and high-adoption marketing.

A Product Portfolio Manager is responsible for guiding the development and management of a product throughout its lifecycle. They work closely with cross-functional teams, including engineering, design, commercial and user groups to ensure the successful creation and launch of a product. Product managers conduct market/user research, define product strategy, gather requirements, prioritize features, and collaborate with the development team to oversee the product's implementation. They also monitor the product's performance, gather user feedback, and make data-driven decisions to improve its functionality and user experience. Ultimately, a product portfolio manager ensures that what is being created is worthwhile in terms of the time, money, and energy expended, ensuring that the product or service meets both user needs and business goals.

This role has the responsibility to oversee and manage OW internal and external facing assets (e.g. capabilities, features and functions, interfaces, code, testing, training, and associated documentation) within the Transportation & Services Practice area in the Americas. The Product Portfolio Manager will be accountable for the entire lifecycle of assets assigned, including the business case and disciplined investment processes for assets, leading their planning and development, promoting awareness of them, maintaining and supporting their use, and tracking their profitability and utilization.

This role requires interacting with a diverse range of people and being effective in interactions with clients both in project work and sales initiatives, internal consulting staff and project teams as well as internal or contractor developer/digital teams.

This role serves as an important member of the sectors it supports (e.g., Rail, Aviation, Logistics) and is part of the TNS Practice within Oliver Wyman. There is a dotted line affiliation with the Digital practice within Oliver Wyman. The job reports to the OW partner in charge of products within the assigned sector.
The current job opening is for a Product Portfolio Manager role within the Rail Sector.

Qualifications


Product management background with industry experience in the sector assigned (e.g., Rail) preferred but not required

Bachelors degree in information technology or a related discipline or equivalent relevant work experience

Demonstrated success delivering results in prior Product Management roles or similar roles that require leadership by influence and the ability to work productively with a large and diverse constituent base

Experience in Management Consulting a plus but not required

Key Responsibilities

The key responsibilities can be broadly categorized into four roles:

Asset planning and commercialization

:


Ensures existing products have appropriate accessibility, training, documentation and content for maximum value creation in the sector (project work, direct client delivery, IC development, etc.)

Oversees asset pipeline for development and enhancement

Defines new asset requirements and prioritizes functional upgrades based on project demand and other sources of input

Estimates resource and cost requirements for asset efforts in light of potential returns

Develops detailed roadmap and business case for the development of assets

Supports project proposals and engages in high priority client conversations around assets

Leads efforts to increase asset penetration across relevant topics

Leads development of appropriate marketing collateral to increase asset awareness

Identifies opportunities to promote use cases across topics/sub-topics

Serves as central point of contact for all assets within a PG / region

Supports asset pricing discussions, if applicable


Development of assets and associated offer(s):


Integrates assets into broader consulting services to create unified offers (i.e., not standalone data/software)

Leads development of assets with a good understanding of technical requirements

Ensures development follows MVP, prototyping practices to avoid waste

Delivers assets with focus on user experience and usability

Manages vendors or internal development/UX teams to ensure high-quality asset releases

Codifies / standardizes assets developed on projects

Maintains up-to-date information and knowledgebases related to the assets and taxonomy

Catalogues new assets and assigns a maturity stage to existing assets.


Delivery assurance:


Provides support to project teams on asset use and handover

Supervises projects in developing / enhancing assets, ensuring that the work meets appropriate standards

Engages in client conversations and project team meetings as a domain expert

Establishes protocols and processes for any assets that clients may continue to use after the end of the project


Governance and reporting:


Defines KPIs for each asset that represent actual value creation for Oliver Wyman and clients (direct revenue for the asset, consulting revenue impossible without the asset, increased success in BD, time and cost savings for projects using the asset, etc)

Tracks and shares these KPIs with relevant teams as appropriate

Proactively drives active portfolio management, recommending to leadership which assets to put on ice, and where further investment can bring outsized returns

Reviews KPIs and detects improvement opportunities

Monitors the use of the asset platform and wikis

Periodically chairs asset status reviews and provides upward reporting

Actively identifies opportunities to capture and deploy reusable IC and assets from consulting projects

Metrics to be included:

# of project teams using IC and tools managed by this position

# of tools with documentation and self-serve availability for the team; individual tool usage frequency

# of billable days to projects as IC SME

Skills


Management skills


Demonstrated leadership skills and ability to lead and work effectively with multidisciplinary and cross-functional teams in a matrix organization and to oversee product development teams from the conception of a product to its development and implementation.

Excellent project planning and management skills and proven experience via successful project and business development opportunities

Ability to manage competing priorities and effectively deliver against timelines in a fast paced environment. Product development can come with many demands from various parties, including customers, superiors and team members and the Product Portfolio Manager must balance demands against the budgets, resource constraints, deadlines and project and client priorities.

High level of communication skills written and verbal. Demonstrated ability of good communication skills across a range of stakeholders to ensure that expectations are understood and that team members are clear about requirements and accountability.

Excellent problem-solving skills, which can be applied to asset creation, curation and commercialization

Capable to function in a strategic and project management role but also willing and able to lean in and assist in execution (requirements gathering, coding, testing, training, etc. )

Critical thinking skills that allow conceptualization and effective development decision making that will lead to the products success including critical risk assessments and mitigation.


Technical skills


Project Management and delivery of technical assets using an agile approach

Significant experience with technical deliverables e.g. software deployment or analytic models

Interest in advanced technology, data science, software development, systems engineering

Some experience with programming e.g. Python, Javascript, R, SQL, HTML, CSS

Ability to use complex analyses to identify trends, conclusions and recommendations