Amex GBT’s Product Planning & Performance Team is dedicated to optimizing the intersection between the product, technology, and business, translating strategic priorities into tangible delivery roadmaps. We build value for leaders and teams by establishing governance, processes, and rhythm of business ceremonies, driving trust, visibility, accountability, and ownership. We are responsible for designing and implementing streamlined planning processes using common frameworks and tools that are adopted across product and enterprise services teams to identify dependencies, secure resources, visualize roadmaps, contextualize OKRs (Objectives & Key Results) / KPIs (Key Performance Indicators), and effectively deliver commitments in each development period.  

 
As the Senior Planning & Performance Manager for Product teams, you will be accountable for driving planning best practices and facilitating the rhythm of business ceremonies that enable executive decision-making. You will enable teams to consistently deliver the best possible products, clearly aligned with overall strategy & objectives, by running effective planning processes, and continuously improving by assessing our outcomes. You will be a highly effective communicator with a passion to enable and guide the direction of the team in close partnership with Product, technology, analytics, and finance leadership. 

What You’ll Do  

• Own planning process, governance, and tooling implementation for your assigned teams, delivering operational excellence across all product tech, and stakeholder teams 

• Fully align your team’s initiatives to GBT’s strategic priorities  

• Enable teams to define, plan and deliver world class features, products, and platforms by embedding planning best practices across all touchpoints in collaboration with partner functions 

• Facilitate cross-team dependency mapping, enabling roadmap commitment decision-making 

• Manage risks/constraints and influence overall delivery timelines for planning milestones and gates 

• Provide product leadership with a holistic portfolio view, celebrating wins, flagging risks, and escalating blockers 

• Drive high quality plan documentation standards, coaching stakeholders on best practices 

• Build effective enablement and knowledge-sharing programs/materials that enforce and reaffirm planning processes 

• Analyze plans, allocations, changes, and carry-over at the end of each development period for your assigned teams to iterate and improve planning 

• Oversee the common backlog intake process for our area by ensuring that submitted opportunities are evaluated in a timely manner by the right people 

• Analyze stakeholder requests to product teams in aggregate to understand broader areas of investment opportunity  

• Facilitate long-term capacity, resource, and allocation planning by assessing strategic priorities, product backlog, and team profiles 

• Partner with stakeholders in the finance teams to help assess the business impact of initiatives in the product roadmap as well as areas in need of more investment 

• Partner closely with internal and external Product, Tech, Analytics, Program Management and Business Operations stakeholders and leadership 

• Lead communications and relationships with partners throughout the Product organization 

• Define and embed product ops best practices within your area, providing clear visibility into roadmap delivery health and OKR/KPI performance and ensure they are effectively communicated 

• Facilitate Product and OKR/KPI review ceremonies 

• Identify product process, governance, tooling, and feedback loop opportunities, partnering with accountable stakeholders to deliver continuous improvements 

• Proactively identify areas of operational improvement with your area, building solutions that we scalable cross-team 

What We’re Looking For

• Bachelor's degree in business, Computer Science or related technical field, or equivalent professional experience 

• Experience as a Product Operations Manager/Business Operations manager/ Program Manager/ Product Manager   

• Strong background in business and financial analysis 

• Excellent interpersonal skills 

• Self-starter, accustomed to working in a changing environment 

Driver of operational excellence 

• Validated experience designing and implementing effective planning processes and operations systems 

• Proven ability to define and develop outcome-driven programs 

• Understands and participates in the product/tech development lifecycle 

• Understands when to apply Agile methodologies vs. traditional methodologies to achieve the best development outcome 

• Thinks holistically to find opportunities around policies/ processes to increase efficiency across organizational boundaries 

• Aids with a whole-systems approach to analyzing issues by ensuring all components (structure, people, process, and technology) are found and accounted for 

• Assesses bottlenecks in work processes within teams to streamline and simplify workflows 

• Strong ability to drive discussions among multiple business and technical teams to scope and schedule Product & Technology workstreams 

• Experience collaborating with Product Managers, Engineers, Technical Product Managers, and other team members from broad cross-sections of organizations 

Impactful communicator 

• Can clearly communicate process and program impact, benefits, and changes to stakeholders to improve knowledge, change attitudes and behaviors, and improve the working conditions and quality of life for affected teams 

• Gains stakeholder trust by effectively addressing their concerns to further long-term interests 

• Confirms comprehension and understanding of complex information and impact to the business by correctly and clearly answering routine questions 

• Creates clear, concise, and organized communication materials (e.g., policies & procedures, guidelines, presentations, messages) 

• Considers and understands the audience’s specific needs and comprehension level to find the right message and delivery method, limiting or explaining technical language 

• Communicates a compelling rationale and narrative to peers and partners 

Data-driven decision maker 

• Experience building business cases and opportunity valuation models.  

• Experience building capacity plans, performing data analysis, and influencing senior leaders to make prompt decisions based on said plans and analysis 

• Experience leveraging data visualization tools to help influence stakeholders