Aminat Afolabi
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Case study 02 · StacStart × iDICE · Learning platform

One platform, two very different learners

How we remodelled StacStart's learning platform to serve its paying academy and a federal skills programme at the same time, and what I chose to build first.

Role
Product Manager. Led product and the engineering team on the rebuild
Team
StacStart engineering, with Product Lead Damilola Abudu
When
2026
Status
Live stacstart.com ↗

In 30 seconds

The problem

A platform built for academy cohorts who sign up and pay suddenly had to take sponsored learners at programme scale.

What I did

Led the rebuild: set scope and priorities, ran sprints with engineering, and moved the team onto Jira.

Where it is

One platform now runs the StacStart academy and the iDICE programme, with 50,000+ iDICE learners onboarded in Northwest Nigeria.

01

Context

StacStart was my first shipped product as a PM. Then it got a much bigger job.

StacStart is Conclase's learning and talent platform, serving learners in Nigeria, Kenya, Uganda and Ghana. The MVP I shipped brought learning, hiring and communication into one place: courses with IntelliTutor, an AI job-matching engine, in-platform messaging between recruiters and applicants, and a shared dashboard for recruiting teams.

StacStart was then contracted to deliver training for iDICE, the Investment in Digital and Creative Enterprises Programme. It's a Federal Government of Nigeria initiative implemented by the Bank of Industry. Its Skills to Jobs training is free for learners, and StacStart is the implementation LMS for the Northwest region.

The scale50,000+ iDICE learners in Northwest Nigeria are now onboarded onto StacStart.
The iDICE Scholarship listing on StacStart: fully funded, digital and creative programmes, applications open, with eligibility criteria
The iDICE programme on StacStart. Fully funded for learners, with eligibility and a programme assessment before training.
02

What was in the way

The platform assumed one learner at a time, paying, with support over WhatsApp. None of that survives programme scale.

  • Admission and class assignment happened one learner at a time. There was no bulk admission.
  • Tutors could see every student, not only their own.
  • A phantom assignment-submission bug was confusing grading.
  • Support ran through one person's WhatsApp, and certificates were issued by hand.
  • Payment sync with Flutterwave was failing on the Kenya side.
  • One email couldn't hold both a student and a job-seeker account.
03

Framing the problem

This wasn't a new product. It was a second journey through the same product, and it couldn't break the first.

The academy was already running on StacStart, with paying learners mid-course. iDICE learners needed to arrive with accounts ready, skip payment entirely, land in the right class with the right tutor, and get support at a scale one WhatsApp line could never handle.

Explore · The two journeys

Same platform, different starting points. Shaded steps are where iDICE learners differ from academy learners.

Academy learner

  1. Finds StacStart and signs up
  2. Pays for the programmeThrough Flutterwave
  3. Joins a cohort and learnsCourses, IntelliTutor, tutors
  4. Submits assignments and gets graded
  5. Earns a certificate
  6. Gets matched to jobs

iDICE learner

  1. Account created in bulkFrom programme data, through a Brevo-to-StacStart integration
  2. No payment stepThe programme is free for learners
  3. Assigned to a class and a tutor
  4. Submits assignments and gets graded
  5. Earns a certificate
  6. Job readiness, CV builder, recruitmentLater in the programme

With programme-scale classes, tutors need

  • To see only the learners assigned to them
  • Grading they can trust, without phantom submissions
  • A support channel that isn't one person's phone

Without it

  • Every tutor sees every student on the platform
  • Grading questions and support requests pile up in WhatsApp

Simplified view of the requirements the rebuild had to meet

04

Prioritisation

Onboarding first. If learners can't get in, nothing else on the roadmap matters.

With a tight timeline, I sequenced the work by when learners would actually need it. Bulk provisioning was the most important new build. Job-readiness stages only become relevant months after a learner starts, so they moved down the plan.

Now Plan

  • Bulk account provisioningBrevo-to-StacStart integration. The critical path.
  • Bulk admission and class assignment
  • Tutors see only their own learners
  • Fix the phantom submission bug
  • Support ticketingInstead of one WhatsApp line
  • Certificates without manual work

Later Deferred

  • Stages 10 to 15Job readiness, CV builder and the recruitment pipeline

Wider platform Known issues

  • Flutterwave payment sync on the Kenya side
  • One email for both a student and a job-seeker account

The stabilisation plan as scoped. For what has shipped, see Outcome.

05

Decisions and trade-offs

Four calls, each with a cost I chose to pay.

  1. One platform, two journeys

    What I chose
    The academy flow and the iDICE flow live in the same product.
    What it cost
    Every change has to be checked against both journeys before it ships.

  2. Bulk provisioning is the critical path

    What I chose
    A Brevo-to-StacStart integration that creates learner accounts in bulk, built before anything else new.
    What it cost
    Onboarding came before polish on other parts of the experience.

  3. Later stages wait their turn

    What I chose
    Job readiness, the CV builder and the recruitment pipeline (stages 10 to 15) moved later in the plan.
    Instead of
    Building the whole learner journey before launch.
    What it cost
    That time is borrowed. Those stages have to land before learners reach them.

  4. Jira as the team's single source of truth

    What I chose
    A Jira-based SDLC workflow: structured backlog, sprint planning, clear task ownership and progress tracking.
    What it cost
    A new way of working to adopt in the middle of a deadline.
06

The technical side

Most of the hard parts were about identity, data and money moving between systems.

  • Bulk provisioning. Learner records come from programme data and become StacStart accounts through an integration with Brevo, the email platform, instead of thousands of individual sign-ups.
  • Account model. One email couldn't hold both a student account and a job-seeker account, a structural limit that matters once learners move from training towards jobs.
  • Payments across borders. Flutterwave sync failures affected Kenyan learners. I recommended Kora for collecting payments from Kenyan students into a Nigerian account without setting up a separate Kenyan entity.
  • Delivery structure. In Jira, epics and sprints are separate dimensions: each story carries its epic link, and sprints are independent time-boxes. That way the team could see both what a feature needed and what was due this sprint.
07

Working with people

I sat between the programme's needs and the engineering team's capacity.

I led the engineering team through the rebuild: scoping, prioritising and running sprints. I worked closely with Product Lead Damilola Abudu, who is also iDICE's Northwest Program Coordinator, so the programme's realities on the ground fed straight into what we built. Alongside product, I also served as StacStart's Program Coordinator from February to August 2026.

08

Outcome

One platform now runs StacStart's academy and the iDICE programme, and the team ships through a shared, visible workflow.

  • Remodelled LMS serving academy and iDICE learnersBoth journeys on one platformLive
  • Jira-based SDLC workflow for the software teamDelivery became more transparent and the team moved fasterIn use
  • iDICE learners onboarded, Northwest NigeriaOn the rebuilt platform, alongside the academy50,000+

I was named Conclase's Staff of the Quarter for Q2 2026.

What I'm watchingThe deferred stages. Job readiness and the CV builder have to be ready before the first iDICE learners reach that point in the programme.