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Institute of Advanced Technological and Commercial Studies

Careers

Digital product owner

Between users, the engineering team and management, someone decides what gets built first. The digital product owner holds that arbitration: turning needs into features that are shipped and measured.

Deciding what gets built first

A product is built from observation: what users actually do, where they stop, what they work around. The product owner turns those observations into clearly written features, each with a verifiable acceptance criterion. They then order that work by value delivered and effort required, an arbitration they own in front of management as much as the team. After delivery comes measurement, which confirms the decision or invites revisiting it.

  • Gather a need from real users and formalise it
  • Prioritise a backlog by value delivered and effort required
  • Write a specification with verifiable acceptance criteria
  • Run team rituals and measure usage after delivery

Products being built here

Financial applications

Payment, savings, credit, insurance: products used daily by hundreds of thousands of people.

Service platforms

Transport, delivery, health, education: two-sided markets where experience decides adoption.

Internal business tools

Line-of-business applications used by whole teams: time saved is measured directly in hours.

The format, stated plainly

The stated duration matches the programme followed at its intended pace, from the first block to the final defence. Taught hours are those of instructor-led sessions; credits place the programme on the catalogue's common scale. The three hold together and read at a glance, which is exactly how they are used.

Senior technician and supervisor

qualification level
5
months of programme
10

Led by an instructor.

taught hours
700 h

1 credit = 25 h of work, 10 of them taught.

credits
70

Framework of the « Digital Product Owner » qualification, code TP50.

competency blocks
5

The skills map

This map shows where training time goes. A wide block concentrates practice, a short one locks down a precise point; both are needed, and the framework states which weighs what. It is the information a department head asks for when considering sending a team member on a programme.

Competency blockWhat it coversTaught hours
Gathering and framing requirementsInterviews, use cases, user stories, acceptance criteria190 h
Prioritisation and backlogValue, effort, dependencies, trade-offs, short roadmap170 h
Working with the technical teamCadence, refinement, acceptance testing, defect handling, debt180 h
Measurement and improvementUsage indicators, user feedback, simple experimentation120 h
Professional conductSaying no, arbitrating, holding a scope commitment40 h

Towards product responsibility

Every row in this table comes from the official catalogue: title, duration, credits, taught hours and yearly or one-off fees. Nothing is rounded and nothing is hand-entered. This is the table you take to an employer to request funding, or to an adviser to weigh your options.

ProgrammeDurationCreditsTaught hoursFees
Management and Project Management programme — Bac+5 level · Master's degree2 years1201200 h6 500 000 GNF per year
User Experience Design and Digital Creation · Bachelor's degree2 years1201200 h4 800 000 GNF per year

What comes up in an admissions meeting

Do I need to be able to code?

The role requires understanding technical constraints, not resolving them. Many product owners come from the business they equip — banking, logistics, health — and that ground knowledge is their main asset.

How does this differ from a project manager?

A project manager runs an operation that ends; a product owner keeps a product alive that continues. Both qualifications exist in the catalogue, and many careers move from one to the other depending on the organisation joined.

Digital product owner — Careers | IHETC — IHETC