M-Pesa Africa – Value Management Officer at Safaricom Kenya

We are pleased to announce the subject career opportunity within Mobile Payments Africa (M-Pesa Africa) reporting to the Senior Portfolio Manager. 

 Role Description 

M-Pesa, is a pioneering fintech business and global market leader in mobile money. Starting from 2007 as a convenient means by which the unbanked and underbanked could make digital payments, M-Pesa has now grown to offer over 50 million active customers financial services, enterprise, merchant and retail solutions. We are proud of our work in enabling the digital economy in our markets, and in driving financial inclusion.

M-Pesa Africa is now making strides to deepen and strengthen its offering to consumers and businesses in our operating countries, making it easier for them to manage their money and get more from their limited resources. Your role sits within the Value Management Office who have the mission of supporting relentless improvement with lean-agile tooling, metrics and governance while maintaining operating policies and standards supported by coaching, mentoring and training to ensure method alignment and the optimal and continuous delivery of value.

Working within the scaled agile framework (SAFe), you will perform all aspects of the Value Management Officer role. You will be responsible for implementing lean governance and operations, helping the organization make better, more informed decisions that enables business agility. 

Unlike in a traditional Project Management Office, which is highly process driven, your role will be to help create an outcome focused Value Management function, supporting value delivery and flow through small, lightweight controls. Helping to culture shift towards agile values, you will focus on individuals and their interactions and create an environment that rewards the generation of value for customers in the quickest possible time.

 Key Role Responsibilities 

Support Lean Portfolio Management: 

• Exhibits the behaviors of a Lean-Agile Leader with a Lean-Agile Mindset
• Help transition our teams towards our Target Operating model, organising people around value and a common vision
• Help shift the funding model, moving away from traditional project funding towards directly fund value streams
• Support Portfolio Manager to prepare and facilitate key SAFe Lean Portfolio events
• Collaborate with Lean Portfolio Management, ART Leadership roles to ensure we deliver the best outcomes for our customers
• Support and help facilitate twice-yearly portfolio planning through our Participatory Budgeting events
• Ensure adherence to the agreed Lean-Budget Guardrails
• Help manage uncontrolled and unlimited portfolio demand by visualising work in process and matching demand to portfolio capacity
• Help the transition away from traditional governance and quality gates by moving our teams to a “build in quality” mindset and value focussed delivery
• Guide Product Management to create Lean Business Cases that are outcome-focussed and establish a sensible “minimum viable product” (MVP)

Support Agile Portfolio Operations:

• Help our Agile Release Trains execute and deliver by generating progress metrics that are used to improve value delivery and optimise flow
• Help co-ordinate our key PI Planning events and guide Agile Release Trains to prepare the necessary content to support a successful event
• Support preparation for other key Scaled Agile program level events, including:
  • Pre and Post PI Planning Sync
  • ART Sync
  • PO-Sync
  • Scrum of Scrums
  • System Demos
  • Inspect and Adapt Workshops
• Guide Agile Release Trains to comply with our agile governance model by ensuring:
  • the “definition of done” (DoD) is captured, communicated and used to anchor conversation in program level events
  • our Jira toolset is used correctly to capture additional compliance activities as necessary
• Become a Jira and Tools champion, supporting adoption and correct use of tools to improve data quality and decision making
• Help implement and operate “risk and dependency” processes within our Agile Release Trains (ARTs)
• Help implement Vendor Management processes within our Agile Release Trains (ARTs)

Provide Servant leadership:

• Provide data-driven intelligence to create valuable insights and positively influence decision making
• Create an environment of mutual influence, understanding and empathy
• Coach people with “powerful questions” rather than using authority and commands
• Think beyond day-to-day activities; apply systems thinking
• Support the teams’ commitments
• Be open and appreciate openness in others
• Encourage collaboration between teams, Release Train Engineer, Product Management and System Architects

Drive Relentless Improvement:

• Provide regular reporting and analysis to drive effective decision making and continuous improvement
• Support our drive for relentless improvement by supporting Inspect and Adapt workshops; assess the agility level of the ART and help them improve
• Support our Communities of Practice and the use of engineering and Built-In Quality practices

QUALIFICATIONS

Apply if you have: 

• Bachelor’s degree required
• Demonstrable competence using the JIRA and Confluence tools, backed with experience
• Relevant certified Agile qualification, for example, Leading SAFe, Scrum Master or equivalent
• Agile Experience including experience working with international organizations – minimum 5 years
• Contagious passion and commitment for driving innovation in a FinTech organization
• Communication and relationship management experience
• Excellent problem analysis and resolution skills to support work in reactive and proactive environments

What you can expect from us: 

• We believe in a fair and robust interview process  
• We have a robust flexible total reward scheme 
• Dedicated support and mentoring/coaching 
• Opportunity to develop and progress – plus a solid dedication to work-life integration. It all means you’ll have everything you need to advance your career and achieve your full potential.