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Professional experience | iOS, Android & web

PepPsy

PepPsy is a workplace mental health and psychosocial risk prevention platform that combines field interventions, manager training, and a mobile app to improve employee well-being and social performance.

  • Product roadmap
  • Backlog
  • User story
  • Usability tests
  • UX
  • Agile
PepPsy app logo above four phone screens: the home screen ("Bonjour Marie"), the library, a 2-minute breathing exercise, and the well-being score.

✨ Overview

Role

Project Manager

Platform

iOS, Android & web.

Timeline

2022 - 2024

Deliverables

Product Backlog, User Stories, Acceptance Criteria, Usability Tests, Kanban Board, HR Analytics Dashboard, Podcast Shortcut, Release Validation

Overview

PepPsy is a mental health platform that companies offer to their employees. PepPsy sells to the company, usually through HR, and the employees are the people who use the app every day. At the time I led product, the app had 65K users.

That created two audiences with different needs. HR teams, who buy the product, need to see that it delivers value. Employees need to trust that what they do in the app stays private, or they won’t use it. Most product decisions I made had to work for both.

The product was built by a small team: the company director, three developers and me. Sales brought in what buyers were asking for, and usage data showed what employees actually did in the app.

Tools

  • Trello
  • Vercel
  • Figma
  • Make
  • Notion
  • Pipedrive

✨ The Challenge

Like any startup, PepPsy had limited time, money and developers, so nothing we shipped could be wasted. Every release had to count and stay within budget.

That meant three things:

Prioritise by business need. With three developers, we couldn’t build everything. Features had to earn their place based on what the business needed, taking in direction from the director, requests from sales and signals from usage data.

Keep a clear product vision. The team needed to understand where the product was going and why, so each piece of work fit the roadmap and not just the latest request.

Manage the backlog so it could be delivered. A good vision only helps if it becomes work the developers can build, test and release with confidence. I managed the backlog, validated every release and weekly checked roadmap, budget and milestones with the director.

Problem Framing

  1. Content that didn’t fit how some users work: transportation clients showed almost no video engagement, because their users spend the day on the road and can’t watch a screen.
  2. Two users with opposite needs: HR teams, who buy the product, need to see its return. Employees, who use it, need privacy to engage, so adding visibility for one risked trust from the other.
  3. Buyer needs reached the product second-hand: the sales team spoke to buyers, not the product team, so requirements had to be gathered through sales before they could become backlog items.
  4. Direction and delivery were hard to connect: roadmap, budget and milestones were set with the director, but three developers needed that turned into clear, testable work, with every release validated before reaching 65K users.

✨ The Solution

I introduced Kanban at PepPsy using Trello, so everyone could see what was being built, what was next and what was done. The board became the shared view of product development between me, the director and the three developers.

Each item on the board was a user story, written from the user’s point of view, with acceptance criteria that defined when the work was complete. That gave the developers a clear target and gave me a clear checklist when I validated each release before production.

It made communication within the team easier and delivery more predictable.

High Level Goals

  • Match content to how users work

    Give transportation clients a dedicated podcast shortcut, so the content fits people who can’t watch a screen.

  • Show HR the value without exposing employees

    Build an anonymous HR dashboard using usage data only, with no personal employee information.

  • Keep employee trust at the centre of every feature

    Treat privacy as a design rule, so more visibility for buyers never costs engagement from the people using the app.

  • Bring buyer needs into the product

    Gather requirements from the sales team, who hear what buyers ask for, and use them to decide which metrics the dashboard shows.

  • Turn the roadmap into deliverable work

    Manage the backlog and write user stories, including from three usability tests, so the three developers always have clear, testable work.

  • Release with confidence and predictability

    Validate every release before production and use Agile and Kanban practices to keep communication and delivery steady.