Wise: Product Management track

Measuring progress/KPIs

• Understand the KPI structure for your domain
• Use dashboards to monitor KPIs and communicate them to the team
• Able to attach KPIs and measurement to the initiatives you work on

Impact and execution

• have shipped projects and can demonstrate measured impact
• operate fairly independently, with only some guidance needed
• You’re delivering mid-size initiatives within a thread with 1-3 engineers, from scoping to execution
• Depending on the thread, can steer large scale operational tasks (e.g. configuration changes impacting all operational teams)

Planning

• can run and communicate progress for the execution thread with 1-3 engineers, or/and a large operations team
• Can scope the required work and ensure it is executed well and in time

Leading

• can mentor partner engineers and operations

Opportunity discovery and prioritisation

• frame clear problem statements and articulate your potential impact if solved
• Fast learner, can onboard to the new thread or problem within a week if needed

Execution Standards

• have some skills in adjacent areas: Development, Operations, Compliance, Design or Analytics skills
• Acknowledged by the engineers and operations as a helpful and valuable partner
• communicate clearly with stakeholders about solutions, incidents and operational changes

Measuring progress/KPIs

• can build a KPI structure for the projects in your area.
• have a realistic understanding of which KPIs are addressable and which are hardly addressable.
• Can link projects in a roadmap to actual KPIs and Able to explain how your projects move these KPIs.
• create dashboards for monitoring progress, and your team/s are actively measuring and optimising the impact of projects.

Impact and execution

• have shipped and can demonstrate measured and significant impact with more than one initiative
• are capable of delivering 1-2 simultaneous initiatives as as part of a product engineering team in a quarter
• Able to operate autonomously reflecting someone with 2+ years in the role of PM

Planning

• can effectively run small-scale plannings in a wider team or discovery sessions to align the teams around a goal.
• Can connect your project delivery to wider goals and objectives and can effectively measure the impact through appropriate OKRs and or KPIs.
• Can build coherent and realistic delivery plans for medium scale projects and communicate them to the relevant audience.
• Can have structured monthly/quarterly planning sessions and get proactive feedback around the plans.

Leading

• coach some of the team members.
• Able to run ceremonies (planning, retros and so on) for the team.

Hiring and people development

• join interviews to hire people to your team.

Opportunity discovery and prioritisation

• can frame clear problem statements and articulate their potential impact if solved.
• Can demonstrate structured/effective methods for discovery and Able to synthesize and quantify customer feedback.
• Can identify and make strong decisions between impactful and urgent problems to solve without external intervention.

Execution Standards

• have skills in at least one of the following areas: development, design or analytics.
• Can scope the required work and ensure it’s executed well. can demonstrate how learnings apply to future vision or projects.
• understand the technical side of the solution well including what services were used and what was built.
• understand the components of the solution well, including the overall process flow, what underlying services are used and what was technically built.

Measuring progress/KPIs

• can build an enduring KPI structure for your area/domain.
• Able to link the team projects in the product roadmap to the domain KPIs and are able to explain how the projects move your domain’s KPIs.
• Can effectively diagnose customer problems and bring clarity and structure to solutions and impact. You’re hypothesis-driven and you validate problems and solutions before investing into them.
• Can define success KPIs ahead of designing a solution.

Impact and execution

• have delivered multiple (upwards of 2) large initiatives with engineers while leading a product team independently, should have spent 12-18 months leading a team or 3+ years experience externally as a PM
• You’re accountable, can consistently own an area and ensure the KPIs/execution are long lived or act as a foundation for further initiatives

Planning

• can build coherent, feasible and realistic delivery plans for large scale projects (duration of 6-9 months). know the difference between being customer-led to a solution vs the ability to step back and evaluate if we can actually deliver that to the market in a different way
• Can build a clear plan or roadmap for three or more relevant projects, with clear delivery plans for your area.
• Can be a feedback coach for at least one other team. provide consistent advice around direction and ability to deliver on OKRs that results in positive impact on their customers.
• Can consistently consider the second-order impact of your roadmap and adjust it accordingly.
• When you’re determining what and how to take a new feature or product to a market, you refer to market and/or competitor dynamics and look for the longer term feasibility and business viability.
• Can generate high value and product decisions form used research tools and analytics .

Leading

• coach team members and help them with feedback on a consistent basis for your team, including providing detailed feedback and action points.
• coach or have impact with structure beyond your immediate team
• Able to inspire the team around a longer-term vision.

Hiring and people development

• join/lead interviews for PMs and other roles for your team and beyond, contributing to and helping to drive hiring processes.

Opportunity discovery and prioritisation

• have deep knowledge of the market dynamics (e.g. understanding what can drive a competitive advantage for your customer segment)
• deeply understand what customers do and why and can frame problems based on desired customer outcome.
• Able to use data and insights to proactively generate large impact projects — framing the problem, creating a plan and getting the team move on it
• Can turn all roadmap items into a prioritised list based on impact, effort and confidence level
• apply learnings to future vision or projects both within and beyond your immediate team
• proactively identify problems with other teams and functions

Execution Standards

• Able to operate autonomously without the need for regular unblocking in execution.
• have an opinion on and are able to constructively challenge the technical solutions applied to larger projects, engaging proactively with engineers.
• Able to help unblock other PMs struggling with execution of small/medium projects.
• strive for a great user experience and positively challenge designers, tech leads and analysts on the quality and speed of delivery.
• ensure regular Quality Assurance of your domain and new features.

Measuring progress/KPIs

• own and move metrics by ensuring teams have clear measurable results across a pillar or area that connect planned projects with a longer term vision.
• Can apply judgement to ensure plans and impact are proactively addressed by known threats and opportunities in the global industry.
• Can inspire a team to define KPIs and the emotional response of customers. Hold designers and developers accountable to surprise customers and make our product worth talking about.

Impact and execution

• own and have demonstrated impact in 2+ domains
• define and are able to execute large scale initiatives consistently across complex areas (crime fighting experience or payments via balances, scheduled transfers) via multiple teams, including leading any PMs within those teams (3x NorthAm delivery teams)

Planning

• can effectively run structured monthly and quarterly cross-team small-scale planning/discovery sessions to align on our mission. proactively seek feedback.
• own and get buy-in from the broader team at TransferWise to build a 12-month vision for your area. also help the sub-teams you lead to set up their plans and goals.
• Can effectively and regularly communicate the results of your team’s work to the wider team at Wise and proactively share learnings and best practices.

Leading

• Able and actively seek to coach and develop strong senior PMs not necessarily within your immediate domain.
• actively define shared approaches or frameworks that can raise the bar across multiple teams.
• Can lead up to 3+ PMs or analyst (group), who are high performing.
• have a growth plan for each report and are actively coaching them to improve/progress (including timely feedback 360s, GrowWise and performance management if required).
• Can coach the wider team (across functions) delivering actionable feedback that results in improvement in product delivery for teams.
• Feedback coach for at least 1-2 teams beyond your own, challenging and helping the team to focus on the highest impact areas and create feasible delivery plans.
• Can inspire multiple teams around a large domain.
• look ahead and develop a 12-24 month hiring roadmap for your squads.

Hiring and people development

• Able to run the hiring and onboarding of a PM (from job ad creation to offer accepted).
• join interviews for PMs for your group/area.
• You’ve hired and onboarded at least two PMs, running the process end-to-end through to onboarding with a clear plan and milestones.

Opportunity discovery and prioritisation

• Oversee the prioritisation for at least two teams
• Able to create clarity, cut through detail, and make decisions even in difficult and opinion-heavy situations
• influence studies across user research, product analysts and consumer insights to collect insights in areas of uncertainty
• Able to identify larger opportunities for incremental growth and cost reduction ahead of building a team and investing in large development time

Execution Standards

• establish and share practices and execute projects that involve multiple teams/tribes to extend impact beyond your domain.
• When releasing, you ensure high quality of the project/feature delivered and that other teams aren’t impacted negatively by the solution.
• You’ve shipped product that other teams can re-use or build on top of.
• have proof that the features/product you’ve shipped have had a positive customer impact.
• help two or more teams execute faster for example through more efficient systems design, design, operations or compliance.
• ensure regular Quality Assurance of your domain and new features.

Measuring progress/KPIs

• own and move the metrics of a large product area (i.e NorthAm or banking

Impact and execution

• Able to manage upwards of 3 PMs and delivery teams, with the scope across a region or a broad area of the product
• Can grow and inspire senior PMs.

Planning

• can build 12-month objectives for at least 5 teams.
• make sure teams in your product area understand how to set OKRs and that they have KPIs to help support these.
• Can form a convincing mission for the area you oversee and a clear way of achieving it.
• Can effectively run cross-team small-scale planning/discovery sessions to align teams on our mission.
• communicate your vision and plans in an inspiring and clear way across multiple organisation-wide touchpoints.

Leading

• lead three or more PMs and guide analysts to perform strongly through for example performance improvement, coaching and matching people with problems effectively.
• Feedback coach for at least two teams, one being in a different tribe.
• Able to inspire the company around a large area of the business.
• Able to create a performance culture where poor performance is managed out fairly and quickly – across all disciplines in the squad.
• look ahead and develop a 12-24 month hiring roadmap for your squads.

Hiring and people development

• Able to create and get buy-in for team structure changes and scaling plans, as well as executing on those plans to grow teams.
• contribute to hiring and people development processes across the wider product team. This means pushing for improvements in processes when needed, ensuring we’re able to hire and onboard people who have an impact in a timely manner and grow their impact during their journey at Wise.
• Able to retain high performing PMs and know how to spot signals of future attrition and burnout.
• proactively build network of long-term potential hires.

Opportunity discovery and prioritisation

• Oversee prioritisation for at least three teams
• influence and set direction on how the Wise product roadmap should adjust in response to the competitive landscape and global trends when necessary
• help identify opportunities for building capability in the wider team, around analytics, design or tech as needed to solve the most important product problems
• Able to move people from a team to another within the squad when necessary to move the most impactful projects

Execution Standards

• help teams overcome their blockers across the tribe.
• help three or more teams execute faster for example through more efficient systems design, design, operations or compliance.
• Able to hold three or more teams accountable on quality of execution.
• contribute to solving issues preventing necessary functions to integrate the tribe successfully.
• help scale the team through hiring and people management.
• Can incubate and develop new functional domains within your squad as required (sales, compliance, product controllers).

Measuring progress/KPIs

• are accountable for ensuring long-term vision and metrics exist at the squad level

Impact and execution

• can manage upwards of 5 PMs and cross functional teams, with accountability for impact across multiple regions or broad areas of the product.
• Can grow and inspire group PMs.

Planning

• can define 12-24 month tribe objectives and a convincing longer term vision as well as a feasible way to achieve it.
• Can ensure all teams in your tribe/area understand how to set objectives and make sure they have key results that support them.
• Can communicate the tribe’s vision and plans in an inspiring and clear way across multiple organisation-wide touchpoints.
• Can lead working with other Wise functions (CS, operations, security etc) to support the development of operational capabilities and manage the trade-offs with product.
• Can support squad leads in developing 12 month objectives for their domain.

Leading

• lead five or more PMs, at least two of them being Group PM level, who are leading people.
• lead initiatives outside of the tribe/area that contribute to the Wise mission (for example improvements in hiring processes).
• have a clear plan for how to grow and scale your organisation over the next 2-5 years including vision and a feasible plan for growth.
• initiate and drive cultural change where needed to ensure optimum environment for teams to have impact.
• Able to inspire the company around a large area of the product and business.
• Able to hire or develop – strong independent squad leads (PD or strong group PM).
• You’re recognised as inspiring at the mission level by the company.
• create a performance culture where poor performance is managed out fairly and quickly – across all disciplines in the squad.
• develop performance measures / criteria for evaluating the performance of squads and manage this proactively, and use this to identify and resolve “people” performance issues.
• Able to act quickly on performance issues within the squad.

Hiring and people development

• Part of leading product team growth strategy including hiring and people development.
• have a leading role in developing the PM culture: new frameworks, approaches, contribution to overall Wise strategy together with other leads.
• contribute to hiring strategy across wider disciplines including design, analytics, engineering and more.
• proactively build network of long-term potential hires.
• retain high performing PMs and know how to spot signals of future attrition and burnout.

Opportunity discovery and prioritisation

• initiate and challenge larger opportunities prioritised across the company
• contribute to the framework with which we invest our time to grow volumes
• Able to move people from a team to another across the company when necessary to move the most impactful projects
• Can inspire people to move from a team to another across the company when necessary to staff the most important things.

Execution Standards

• help teams overcome their blockers across your tribe and wider teams as well, to create and ensure an optimal environment for product teams to have impact.
• Can hold over five teams accountable on quality of execution.
• Can get depth fast to help 3-4 squads move faster (system design, design, operation, compliance, finance).
• Can hold 3-4 squads accountable on quality of execution.
• Can incubate and develop new functional domains within product (sales, compliance, product controllers).
• Can develop a cross-functional structure for the tribe – that ensures teams and squads are supported – across product, eng design, operations etc.
• Can build processes across Wise that unblock growth and execution – e.g hiring, attrition, 2 year assignments.