2023 – 2025 · Montpellier, France · Hybrid
Product owner (PLENR) — internal
CGI — Global leader in digital services and consulting
PLENR — a gamified responsible-IT training platform — is a SaaS product built at CGI to complement the eco-design training path. The existing path, an awareness module since made mandatory then training split across four profiles (architect, developer, UX/UI, business and project manager), is capped at half a day so as not to tie teams up: too short for the hands-on practice a subject that looks theoretical at first actually demands. PLENR fills that gap with course material, quizzes by trade and eco-design challenges on real cases, before being offered to clients under licence.
The product owner role was taken on in June 2023 on an unfinished first version, through to leaving the project in August 2025. Handover then taking the work in hand from June to October 2023, complete rebuild and MVP from October 2023 to April 2024, go-live and commercialisation from April to September 2024, industrialisation and a three-year roadmap from September 2024 to August 2025. A load of 10 to 20 % alongside client engagements until September 2023, then 30 % dedicated, raised to 50 % in early 2024 to hold the MVP milestone.
Roles held in turn: project manager, salesperson, responsible-IT reference, architect on the simpler tasks. Product owner remains the title kept — the heart of the work is creating an eco-designed SaaS product from scratch.
Achievements
An inherited project with no technical foundation
A two-month handover with the departing developer, then taking in hand an unfinished first version, tied to his personal accounts (hosting, Firebase, Google authentication) and documented by a single framing email of around fifty lines. No CGI requirement met, and supervising the two apprentices impossible for want of experienced contributors' availability. A unanimous decision to rebuild completely and revisit the architecture choices.
Structuring the project's engineering
Moving from the day's work discussed in a daily meeting to a tooled backlog: a Git repository, first user stories, tests, standardised branch management, a delivery process. Two business analysts brought in for the MVP's detailed specifications, and escalation to a vice-president to obtain the development and production environments.
- 5 compliance milestones cleared
Compliance with internal hosting standards
Clearing the five milestones required by the internal hosting providers: architecture approval, technical architecture document, cloud risk plan, security review, data confidentiality. Three architects brought in temporarily for the architecture document and for provisioning the Azure services on a subscription dedicated to the project.
- 190 man-days invested up to the MVP
MVP delivered to production on the committed milestone
Release held to the committed date, in April 2024, after two senior developers were obtained in January on a progress alert. Internet exposure, Azure AD authentication through Keycloak, continuous integration and deployment chain to acceptance and production.
Security audit cleared before go-live
A security audit run following the release. Every finding fixed and re-delivered during May 2024, along with the first defects reported by the trainers. Go-live in training from that re-delivery: each session opens with a presentation of the platform, and access is handed to each person trained.
- 90 % compliance at the second audit
Eco-design of the platform, measured
Services automatically shut down in production in the evening and restarted in the morning; shutdown in acceptance with a morning restart only. An Azure greenhouse gas emissions dashboard put in place and tracked after each delivery — it was that tracking which revealed that not all services were shutting down properly in the evening. A definition of ready incorporating design impact analysis, a definition of done incorporating tooled eco-design tests (EcoIndex, Lighthouse, WAVE). Two eco-design audits on the platform: 80 % compliance at the MVP, 90 % at the second, in early 2025.
- 4 clients pitched
Commercial pitch and licence model
Building a sales pitch and a licence model based on the number of users. Presented to four clients, including a demonstration at one client's head office before its eco-design reference developers: the substance judged entirely relevant, the form severely criticised — spelling mistakes, alignment flaws, dead links. Every piece of feedback put into the backlog. The training offering enriched with a SaaS licence proposal in tender responses.
- 60 developers competing
An engagement sold around an eco-design challenge
An engagement sold to a tyre manufacturer wanting to hold an event around eco-design, in April 2025. Evaluation access opened for a week to three CSR and eco-design representatives to win the decision, then a challenge day on blank accounts: around sixty developers, architects and designers competing over an afternoon, all profiles together. Positive feedback on substance, fresh comments on form — instructions misunderstood, spelling mistakes, one challenge failing on certain machines.
- 10 developers hosted in rotation
Development restarted on bench resources
With no immediate client, rebuilding a team from developers on the bench matching the technology stack, from September 2024. The onboarding process was optimised to make stays of two weeks to three months productive. Around ten developers hosted in rotation, two business analysts at one day a week, some twenty contributors and trainers on the educational content.
- 9 months of roadmap held
Three-year product roadmap
A roadmap built on client feedback, identified improvements and the features cut from the MVP, detailed for the 2025 financial year: opening to partners and external authentication in the first quarter, content enrichment in the second, gamification and a hint system in the third. A monthly release, a definition of ready and a definition of done. The roadmap was held for nine months through to leaving the project, with a delegated product owner appointed alongside.
- ~100 user stories prioritised
Backlog prioritisation and user story writing
Prioritising a backlog of around a hundred user stories, writing them and following the development through to production, at a rate of one release a month.
Skills applied
- Confluence
- Continuous integration and deployment (CI/CD)
- Designing steering dashboards
- Eco-design lead for a digital service
- Eco-design measurement tooling
- Gitlab
- Jira
- Pre-sales and commercial pitch
- Product ownership
- Product roadmap
- Project management
- Team management
- Technical architecture document