Enterprise practice lead (product management) (remote from anywhere in co)

Department Information

Together, we innovate for a stronger Colorado. The work of employees at the Governor's Office of Information Technology (OIT) is challenging and diverse because the needs of agencies, customers and Coloradans constantly evolve. But our focus never changes: improve the lives of all Coloradans through innovation and collaboration. We're building one of the nation's leading government IT organizations by reimagining how we support agencies, building first-of-their-kind applications, and creating an inclusive, collaborative culture, together. Join us in the important work of providing equitable access to services. Watch this video to learn more about how we're Serving People. Serving Colorado.

Description of Job

IMPORTANT NOTE: Please review your application to ensure completion. For the most equitable applicant experience, OIT’s hiring team considers only the contents of your application to review your qualifications. Please do not include any attachments (such as resume or cover letter) with your application as these items are not used by OIT’s hiring team.

The Enterprise Practice Lead, Product Management sets the standard for how product management is practiced across OIT and builds the community of product managers who meet it. OIT is moving from project delivery to product teams that stay accountable for outcomes after launch. Product Managers (PMs) in those pods need a shared standard, a peer community, and a path to grow. The Enterprise Practice Lead builds all three.

Where the PM embedded in a pod owns what gets built and why, the Enterprise Practice Lead owns how product management is practiced at OIT: the standards, tools, training, community, and career infrastructure that make every PM better at the job. OIT's position is that product ownership belongs with government employees rather than contractors, and that building that capability takes deliberate coaching, standards, and community. This role leads that work.

What this role is.

You convene practitioners, write standards with them, teach, coach, and tell leadership where practice is weak and why. Standards earn adoption through your expertise, since the role has no reporting line over the PMs it serves. You won't run a backlog, a sprint, or a project plan. If your experience is mainly in project management or running agile ceremonies, this role is unlikely to fit.

Where the role sits.

Guilds at OIT enable consistency, quality, and community across a federated team structure. Directors of Technology (DTs) manage the people in their pods, including performance evaluation. Enterprise Practice Leads guide and support practitioners and advise DTs on craft. This role reports into OIT's enterprise standards and governance organization and works alongside the other Enterprise Practice Leads.

Your first 90 days.

You will meet the PMs across pods, assess how product management is practiced today, and agree with them the first set of standards and the operating rhythm of the PM community.

What you'll do

• Convene and coach Design and run the product management community of practice (the PM guild): regular convenings, peer critique, shared retrospectives, and the culture of a discipline that takes its craft seriously. Keep track of who is in the community and make sure PMs can reach the guidance, training, and tools they need.
• Set standards with practitioners Write and maintain standards with practitioners: how prioritization is done and documented, how backlogs and stories are written, and what planning cadence to expect. Ground them in outcomes rather than activity tracking, and include shared framing tools such as problem statements, product vision documents, and success measure frameworks.
• Set tooling standards which tools PMs use, how they are configured, and what consistency looks like across the portfolio, without locking teams into setups that do not fit their context. Work with Enterprise Architecture on guidance for using AI tools in product work.
• Translate Enterprise Architecture product principles into guidance, templates, playbooks, and examples of strong backlogs and prioritization rationale that PMs across pods can adapt in their own agency contexts, without having to interpret enterprise strategy themselves.
• Build capability Develop training programs that build sustained, statewide capability through ongoing practice rather than one-time workshops, including the shift from gathering requirements to owning outcomes. Build and maintain a career pathway and competency framework that gives PMs legible growth from early career through senior practitioner, using the GDS Digital and Data Capability Framework as a reference point.
• Diagnose and advise Identify patterns of weak practice across the portfolio, such as backlogs driven by stakeholder requests instead of user needs, prioritization that is implicit instead of documented, and product ownership effectively outsourced to a vendor. Tell a practitioner skill gap from a structural problem in the pod or a problem in the agency partnership, and design a systemic response to each pattern. Advise DTs on the professional development needs and craft performance of the PMs in their pods: what good looks like at a given level, how to give useful feedback, and how to recognize whether a weak backlog reflects a skill gap, a structural constraint, or unclear agency priorities.
• Give credible craft feedback to DTs and Product Directors who may have no PM background, in a form they can act on. Optional addition: Define a small set of measures of product management maturity across pods, track them over time, and use them to decide where support is needed.

What you'll bring

• Experience shaping how product management is practiced across multiple teams, beyond a single product or team.
• Ability to lead without management authority. Standards earn adoption when PMs find the guidance useful, and the role has no reporting line over them.
• Ability to build a genuine community: PMs across pods who feel connected to a discipline, share failures without fear, and invest in each other's growth.
• Ability to coach and influence senior people, including senior PMs, and to give credible craft feedback to DTs and Product Directors who may have no PM background themselves. Performance advice is useful when it is specific.
• Ability to hold standards while staying pragmatic. Maintain universal craft expectations while recognizing that agencies at different maturity levels need different kinds of support. Good standards bend to context without breaking.
• Ability to distinguish craft problems from delivery problems. Know when a PM's backlog is weak because of skill gaps, structural constraints, or unclear agency priorities, and respond differently to each.
• Deep practitioner knowledge of product management: backlog ownership, prioritization approaches (now/next/later, RICE, value versus effort), outcome-based roadmapping and goal setting, what good looks like in iterative delivery from discovery through live, and what it means to govern a product instead of a project.
• Knowledge of user-centered product development: how research findings from service designers become backlog inputs, how to tell what users need from what stakeholders request, and how to hold that distinction under pressure.
• Knowledge of government digital delivery practice (guidance from GDS, 18F, USDS, and peer state digital service organizations) and of how Colorado agencies plan, budget, and make technology investment decisions, enough to set standards that work inside legislative, procurement, and political constraints.
• Hands-on fluency with the tools PMs use (for example Jira, Airtable, Figma, Miro), enough to choose standard configurations across a distributed portfolio, judge when a tool does not fit a team's context, and help a PM who is new to a tool become productive quickly.
• Knowledge of career pathway design: what a product management competency framework looks like across levels from entry-level to senior practitioner, and how to build growth paths that do not require leaving the discipline.

Minimum Qualifications, Substitutions, Conditions of Employment & Appeal Rights

A wide salary range is posted for this position and any job offer is based upon a salary analysis to comply with the Colorado Equal Pay for Equal Work Act. The salary analysis considers relevant experience, education, certifications, and state seniority as compared to others doing substantially similar work. While all offers are compliant with the Colorado Equal Pay for Equal Work Act, there is no guarantee an offer will be at the top of the posted range based on the salary analysis.

This is a skills-based job announcement. The required minimum qualifications and/or education (if substituting for the proven experience, knowledge, and skills), are as follows:

Minimum Qualifications:

A minimum of five (5) years of experience in product management, working in or leading cross-functional teams using iterative, user-centered methods, including experience improving how practitioners across more than one team work, through standards, coaching, training, or community. A track record of working across disciplines (design, engineering, policy, or operations) to deliver services that work for real people.

Substitutions:

Additional appropriate education will substitute for the required experience on a year-for-year basis, but cannot completely substitute for these qualifications. Training or Certification related to the work assigned to the position will be assigned credit towards substitution for experience and/or education, but cannot completely substitute for these qualifications. If the minimum qualifications include a degree requirement, additional appropriate paid or unpaid experience will substitute for the required education on a year-for-year basis.

Preferred Qualifications:

Certification in product management, such as Pragmatic Institute Product Management. Experience working within a digital service agency or a government-adjacent technology firm, successfully translating mission-driven policy goals into actionable product backlogs. Experience in modern procurement practices, with the ability to structure vendor requirements so they stay outcome-oriented and iterative instead of locking the state into rigid, fixed-scope contracts. Background in user-centered design (UCD).

Conditions of Employment:

OIT employees must comply with any screening procedures in place at state agency locations where they might perform work. A pre-employment background check will be conducted as part of the selection process. Post-employment background checks will be required for specific agencies as business needs dictate, which may include a polygraph exam, fingerprint-based criminal history search, reference checks, and a drug test. This position may require travel within the specified geographic area, and to locations across the state as needed.

Supplemental Information

If this posting indicates “remote from anywhere in CO” in the title, periodic reporting to the primary state work location designated for the position is required. All remote work must be performed in Colorado. While candidates from out of state will be considered for this role, the candidate selected for the position must relocate and reside in Colorado on the first day of their new position. A reasonable timeframe for relocation will be established on an individual basis, while considering business needs, and determining a start date.

We know it's important to support each other, and that means having a healthy balance of work and personal time. Visit our benefits to learn more about some of our great offerings that allow us all to have fulfilling lives. Visit our How to Apply webpage to learn more about our application process and what to expect after you apply.

The State of Colorado strives to create a Colorado for All by building and maintaining workplaces that value and respect all Coloradans through a commitment to equal opportunity and hiring based on merit and fitness. The State is resolute in non-discriminatory practices in everything we do, including hiring, employment, and advancement opportunities. The Governor's Office of Information Technology is committed to the full inclusion of all qualified individuals. As part of this commitment, our agency will assist individuals who have a disability with any reasonable accommodation requests related to employment, including completing the application process, interviewing, completing any pre-employment testing, participating in the employee selection process, and/or to perform essential job functions where the requested accommodation does not impose an undue hardship. If you have a disability and require reasonable accommodation to ensure you have a positive experience applying or interviewing for this position, please direct your inquiries to our ADA Coordinator at OIT_HR@state.co.us or call (303) 764-7900. This posting may be used to fill multiple vacancies based upon business need. The Governor's Office of Information Technology does NOT offer sponsored Visas for employment purposes.