Senior Product Owner — Learning Support Programme · Ministry of Education

Digital products,
ready to run.

Two decades connecting product ownership with hands-on delivery — shaping priorities, coordinating complex workstreams and carrying high-stakes digital products through implementation into sustainable business-as-usual ownership.

Adam Jordan  ·  MBA (Distinction)  ·  Wellington  ·  September 2026–August 2027 engagement
$580m
Regulated separation programme led
8 months
Real-time payments delivered — zero defects
$1b+/day
Daily payments de-risked in migration
45%
Faster delivery cycle time
650
People mobilised at programme peak
01

Fit for the work

The Learning Support Programme’s digitisation workstream is making it easier to request and manage support, replacing fragmented application and workflow processes with a clearer service and a single source of usable data. That needs more than backlog administration: it needs senior product leadership that can navigate business and technical complexity, keep delivery moving, and prepare people, processes and support arrangements for a confident transition into business as usual.

That combination is the thread through my work: enterprise product ownership, Agile delivery leadership, risk and dependency management, stakeholder alignment, operational readiness and enduring ownership models. The four studies below reuse evidence from regulated banking, a national digital marketplace and current public-sector delivery, mapped directly to this engagement.

02

Capability coverage

01Major trans-Tasman bank02Tier-one retail bank03National digital marketplace04Large public-sector agency
Product ownership & prioritisation
Agile delivery leadership
Risk & dependency management
Technical & business coordination
Transition to BAU
Stakeholder engagement & governance
Public-sector experience
● demonstrated in the case study  ·  capability areas drawn from the Senior Product Owner engagement
03

Case studies

01Major trans-Tasman bank · regulated payments

Making a critical payments business separation-ready — and provable to the regulator

Context

Under a formal prudential requirement, the bank had to demonstrate to the central bank that its New Zealand payments and settlements operations could stand alone in a separation event. The endpoint was not a document — it was a compliant operating model the bank could formally attest to, across a multi-year, multi-country programme touching operations, technology and third-party legal agreements.

What I did
  • Led delivery and operating-model uplift across the payments & settlements portfolio.
  • Orchestrated local and Group stakeholders across vendor governance, workforce planning, budgets, approvals and risk resolution.
  • Stood up separation-ready capability across new cloud payment platforms; drove operational readiness and NZ run ownership.
Outcome

A compliant, separation-ready operating model the bank could attest to the central bank — with materially stronger local ownership and resilience of critical payments platforms.

~$580m
programme
~650
people at peak
Multi-country
coordination
Regulator
attestable
Stakeholder EngagementDelivery RiskOperational ReadinessGovernance
Why it matters for Learning SupportShows delivery leadership across business, technology, vendors and governance, with the operational model and run ownership treated as part of the product outcome rather than post-project administration.
02Tier-one retail bank · New Zealand

Re-platforming a bank’s real-time payments in eight months, with zero defects at go-live

Context

An ageing payments estate of 100+ services and mainframe applications, serving 1.3m customers, had to modernise to meet new central-bank intraday and industry no-recourse rules — reducing risk and cost while improving resilience of a system where failure is not an option.

What I did
  • Shaped the 5-year payments strategy and won executive approval and investment for a re-platform to a modern payments framework.
  • Recruited and led a 42-engineer delivery organisation across seven build / test / run teams; embedded agile, DevOps, CI/CD and automated testing.
  • Negotiated a world-first co-development partnership with the platform vendor; built a data-driven migration simulation to de-risk cutover.
Outcome

Delivered in 8 months for $8m with zero defects at go-live and no remediation incidents since; de-risked $1b+ in daily payments through migration. Recognised with a global industry innovation award.

8 months
to delivery
$8m
budget
Zero
defects at go-live
$1b+/day
de-risked
Agile DeliveryTechnical CoordinationTransition to BAURisk & Dependencies
Why it matters for Learning SupportDemonstrates hands-on delivery planning and coordination across build, test and run teams, including a controlled cutover and a stable product transition with no remediation incidents.
03National digital marketplace · ~4m members

Rebuilding a delivery system — and the accountability culture underneath it

Context

A consumer marketplace serving ~4m members was slowed by unclear role expectations, fluid accountability, centralised decision-making and inconsistent practices across teams — blurring ownership and dampening speed to value.

What I did
  • Designed and implemented a Strong Accountability Model — new Product Owner and Agile Practices Lead roles, and self-managing value-stream squads aligned to the 5-year strategy.
  • Embedded experiment-driven practices (continuous dual-track discovery, thin-slicing, A/B testing) and instrumented the change with clear metrics: cycle time, PO–sponsor expectation gap, and practice maturity.
  • Built enduring capability — Product Owner toolkits, a PO Guild, continuous-planning routines and a data-driven capital-development cost model.
Outcome

A 45% reduction in delivery cycle time within three months, rapid adoption of new practices, and the flexibility to re-align the portfolio around eight strategic initiatives at pace — with measurable customer outcomes: 10%+ uplift in buyer purchases, 300% ROAS, and 580,000 site returns from real-time marketing.

45%
faster cycle time
5
value-stream squads
400+
staff impacted
10%+
buyer uplift
Product OwnershipBacklog PrioritisationAgile PracticesStakeholder Alignment
Why it matters for Learning SupportDirect evidence of building effective Product Owner practice: clear accountabilities, continuous planning, prioritisation routines, discovery and delivery disciplines, and a community that sustains capability beyond implementation.
04Large public-sector agency · Aotearoa New Zealand

Stabilising delivery on a critical ERP estate — and clearing the path for transformation

Context

A shared SAP estate underpins finance, procurement, asset management, payroll and HR, with six business functions pushing change into one tightly-coupled environment. A severe testing bottleneck and out-of-sequence transport imports were causing code overwrites, instability and delivery risk — just as a major ERP transformation loomed.

What I did
  • Established the product operating model and ways of working for corporate-services technology delivery — operating rhythms, multi-criteria prioritisation and visibility-of-work routines — and built in-house delivery capability.
  • Authored a risk-based analysis of the payroll testing strategy, recommending SME-led business-process validation over sole reliance on the system integrator.
  • Refined the integrator selection approach around SAP Activate and shift-left quality principles; advocated a blended in-house / vendor model to protect continuity and institutional knowledge.
Outcome

A more stable, well-run BAU environment with clearer prioritisation and lower payroll-remediation risk — the foundation a major ERP programme needs to deliver its new payroll and workforce-management systems into.

6
functions, one estate
Risk-based
decisioning
Continuity
protected
Live
public-sector work
Public SectorProduct Operating ModelOperational SupportEnterprise Platforms
Why it matters for Learning SupportCurrent public-sector experience balancing transformation with live operational needs, establishing prioritisation and visibility while protecting continuity across a complex enterprise platform environment.