Launching Baze: Kenya's Next-Gen Entertainment Platform

As the central delivery lead, I led the end-to-end delivery of a major digital content platform serving video, music, podcasts, radio, and live events to mobile and web audiences. The platform integrated subscription billing, pay-per-view, ad-based monetization, and real-time content partner onboarding systems.

The delivery included:

Customer web and mobile apps

Content management systems (CMS) for partners and internal teams

Infrastructure setup on AWS cloud

Secure authentication flows including social login integration

Data migration and quality transformation standards

Full privacy, compliance, and content licensing structures

Target launch date was fixed, with go-live set by commercial requirements.

Phase 1 was targeted for launch within a fixed commercial timeline, while parallel readiness activities were initiated to support a broader Phase 2 rollout.

This was primarily coordinating product, engineering, QA, design, partner onboarding, and operational readiness.

Established core collaboration frameworks by introducing and evangelizing Jira, Slack, Confluence, and Google Docs workflows, enabling consistent cross-team visibility, delivery tracking, and operational readiness across product, engineering, and QA.

Structured and authored over two-thirds of the project’s process documentation (workflows, requirements, onboarding policies, monetization structures, platform standards).

Introduced delivery visibility practices (Jira, structured status tracking) despite resistance from parts of the technical team.

Prioritized tasks based on risk assessment to enable a practical Phase 1 go-live.

Actively managed stakeholder communication to align evolving technical realities with business expectations.

Led critical risk mitigation during outages (e.g., S3 infrastructure issues) and coordinated fallback launch strategies (e.g., partial rollout, web-first deployment).

Ensured regulatory and partner compliance through the creation of KYC, tax, copyright, and licensing documentation flows.

Prepared Phase 2 groundwork, including extended CMS capabilities, partner scaling structures, and platform optimization plans.

Navigating rapid scope evolutions between core features (content, monetization, migration) and peripheral platform enhancements (e.g., partner tools, escalations).

Building internal alignment frameworks (Jira, Confluence, Slack) from the ground up to stabilize communication and documentation workflows across loosely structured teams.

Establishing process standards and compliance documentation from scratch across onboarding, KYC, monetization, and content ingestion flows.

Managing project delivery under hybrid cloud/on-premises infrastructure complexity (AWS and localized servers).

Mitigating late-stage infrastructure risks, including unexpected downtime in critical cloud services.

Balancing conflicting timelines between platform readiness (web, mobile) and go-to-market commercial deadlines.

Driving functional delivery in an environment where formal engineering project management practices were partially missing.

Maintaining launch alignment across multiple interdependent services (authentication, payment systems, content migration, DRM workflows).

Building deployment readiness documentation (permissions justification, security exemptions, escalation matrices) while still in active development.

Negotiating operational trade-offs for partial rollout strategies under unavoidable last-mile delivery pressures.

Critical Phase 1 platform components (subscription management, authentication, partner CMS, monetization engines) were readied for go-live within the commercial deadline.

Deployment strategy was adapted to enable a structured, phased rollout, starting with customer web access and staged mobile activation.

Structural foundations were laid for future scaling, including multi-device access, expanded partner onboarding, and advanced revenue reporting.

Despite operational and technical setbacks, project delivery resilience was maintained through active leadership, continuous prioritization, and solution-focused communication.

Leading the project taught me critical lessons about delivery leadership beyond traditional product management, especially in high-pressure, complex environments:

Validate team capacity before committing to timelines. Early optimism must be balanced with structural readiness.

Prioritize QA as a strategic phase, not just a technical checkpoint.

Anchor stakeholder trust through honest, data-driven communication—not optimism.

Maintain system-level vision even when individual task flow becomes turbulent.

Hold boundaries around leadership roles to prevent silent burnout and invite healthier team dynamics.

Read between the lines. Emotional signals and silent risks often surface before issues hit Jira.

Presence often outpaces titles. Grounded leadership in uncertainty steadies both teams and outcomes.

Sometimes the biggest impact comes from building the systems no one asked for, but everyone eventually depends on.

These insights have deepened my ability to deliver not just projects, but resilient, scalable processes—and to lead with clarity, even when formal authority is absent.

Cross-functional project leadership under live deployment pressure

Crisis management and proactive mitigation of delivery risks

Systems design thinking across technical, operational, and business dimensions

Process building and documentation for scaling and compliance

Stakeholder communication and expectation management

Driving clarity and structure in low-process environments