Associate PM in Loughborough

Job description

Associate Product Manager

Join the Access Family and see how we make software ideas become a reality!

Our core value of ‘Love work, Love life’ has been central to our success and so we’re looking for people to join us who share our passion for making things better every day, to help us achieve 2 million users of the Access Workspace platform.

Are you ready for the challenge?

 What are we all about?

At Access we love software and how technology never stays the same. It's this obsession that drives us to work closely across sectors to understand the business needs of our customers - from professional services to manufacturing to not for profits and more.

We're passionate about helping our customers stay one step ahead of the challenges facing their industry and business. That's why over 1 million users and over 60,000 organisations rely on Access software to help their organisation thrive.

This role will sit in the Not For Profit (NFP) arm of our Non Profit and Education (NPE) Division, whose goal is to transform the way charities work, helping them increase their income and impact. We are probably the largest provider of charity tools in the UK, working with over 1,700 amazing charities across our product portfolio in both the EU and Australasia.

An understanding of charities is a bonus, but a desire to make a real difference is must.

About you:

You are a learner at heart with a thirst to keep learning and developing. You are curious about why a feature is required and are prepared to ask questions to understand the problem or the key job to be done. You are not afraid of asking questions and are open and transparent in your approach to sharing knowledge.

The APM role is the key link between the customer and our development team, typically fulfilling the Product Owner role within Agile Development Teams, focusing on how best to build and support the key objectives defined by the Product Manager on behalf of customers the market and our Access strategy.

You will act as the representative of the Product Manager and with sufficient understanding of the market, the customer and the business to make sound, informed decisions.

With responsibility for creating and signing off your product stories by defining and checking the agreed acceptance criteria, you will prepare and execute sufficient tests to satisfy yourself that the stories are of good quality and ready for release.

As a member of the Development department you will be required to ensure that the department responsibilities are met - maintaining a high standard of quality in its procedures, processes and the software produced.

Day-to-day, you will:

Develop and maintain a sound understanding of customers’ business processes and requirements
Adopt a user centred approach to our product development, checking with our customers at every stage of the development process.
Be the representative within your squad for the Product Manager across a variety of Epics as required
Gather the requirements from the Product Manager and other Stakeholders, and own the conversion of the requirements into stories and supporting documents

Run workshops with your squad to flesh out the stories – work with the team to write up those stories and acceptance criteria
Clearly identify and describe product backlog items in order to build a shared understanding of the problem and solution with the product development team
Prioritise your product backlog items in order to deliver maximum outcome with minimum output
Determine whether a product backlog item was satisfactorily delivered
Ensure transparency into the upcoming work of the product development team

Work collaboratively with other development teams and stakeholders to ensure that dependencies are managed and issues and risks are communicated
Create, run and promote your product and features via our monthly releases and product Go to Markets.

As a well-rounded Associate Product Manager, your Skills and Experiences likely include:

Willingness and initiative to keep learning, sharing knowledge and challenging the status quo.

Flexible and pragmatic, able to respond to shifting priorities, demands and timelines by using effective analytical and problem solving skills
Experience and drive to understand and feel our customers, drivers, pain points and workflows, to ascertain the success criteria for an objective and minimum viable product to deliver the most value.
Demonstrates good behaviours: positive, results focused, assertive, commercially aware and driven to continuous learning/improvement
Strong communication, influencing, negotiation and collaboration skills
Demonstrates sound judgement, able to make decisions independently whilst recognising when to escalate for more senior approval

Proactive, works at pace, goal orientated with a strong delivery/milestone focus
Identifies issues early and prioritises appropriately
Possesses a strong commitment to quality
Strong analytical and problem solving skills
Able to grasp technical concepts and new product functionality quickly

Ability to take on the user perspective and to reflect this within the stories
Ability to interpret a high level specification into user stories
Thorough knowledge of agile development methods, processes and best practices
Willingness to adapt to fast changes in work priorities when required

What does Access offer you?

We are a growing software company and we deliver on what we say we do! We take the development of our people very seriously! We will work with you to carve out your success plan and an opportunity to accelerate your career and make a real difference.

In addition to our standard benefits of 25 days holiday, a match contributory pension and healthcare you will get:  

A Competitive Salary
Giving Back/Charity days

Quarterly Socials
6 weeks Sabbaticals (after 6 years of service)
The Access Group Big Break: our all-expenses paid holiday to Spain

Become part of our amazing Access family!

At Access we're all about helping everyone Love Work and Love Life because we believe people can only be at their best when they can be themselves, love what they do and do what they love.

We love the fact that we’re all different. Having more diverse perspectives at work improves how we run our business, helps us support our customers, and when you think about it, it's just more fun. So, no matter what makes you individual, as long as you’re qualified, we can’t wait for your application.