Part of the Ekehi project team documentation series — International Women's Day Initiative, March 2026.
Ekehi is a business resource platform for women entrepreneurs in Nigeria and across Africa. The problem it solves is real: funding exists, grants exist, credit schemes and training programmes exist, but finding them is genuinely hard, especially if you are not already connected to the right people. Ekehi puts all of that in one place. A searchable, filterable directory of funding opportunities, credit products, and training resources, built mobile-first.
We are a team of 15 people. We have a Product Lead, Engineering Lead, Design Lead, Lead Maintainer, and a Backend Lead. My role on this project is People Manager, handling workflows, team synergy, and making sure nothing falls through the cracks.
Sprint 1
Sprint 1 is the foundation sprint. The team was running two things in parallel: the infrastructure work that the entire product depends on, and shipping a responsive landing page as the visible deliverable for this sprint. So while the DB schema, Supabase setup, authentication, and sector taxonomy were being handled in the background, there was already something users could land on by the end of the sprint.
The workflow started with the design team producing high fidelity designs which then got handed off to be built in code. On the engineering side, the tasks this sprint covered the DB schema and ERD sign-off, setting up the Supabase project, configuring admin authentication and role setup, email service configuration, and locking the sector taxonomy that will be used across all filters on the platform. The wireframe sign-off was also part of this sprint to make sure all screens were reviewed and edge cases were documented before dev work went further. Seed data sourcing is also running in parallel, which means sourcing 40 or more real, active funding opportunities that will be in the platform at launch.
On the frontend side, what we have shipped so far is a responsive landing page. I personally worked on the mission section of that landing page.
My Role as People Manager
Outside of contributing code, I handled the coordination and tooling setup for the team.
I set up our ClickUp workspace. That meant building out the Ekehi Space, creating folders for each sprint, and configuring all the custom fields: priority levels, effort sizing, MoSCoW categories, status dropdowns, owner fields, due dates. I set up the views the team actually uses day to day. Board view for a quick status snapshot, Workload view to check capacity across the team, and filtered List view to pull up blocked items fast.
Our ClickUp workspace is shared across multiple teams in the organisation so everything I configured had to be scoped specifically to our Space. That required ensuring I get it right without affecting anyone else's setup.
Beyond the initial setup, the day to day management of ClickUp was also on me. That means making sure tasks are actually being updated, statuses reflect what is really happening, and owners are assigned to everything that needs one. A ClickUp board that nobody updates is useless so part of my job was consistently following up with the team to keep it current.
I was also filtering by blocked tasks regularly. Anything sitting on blocked for too long gets a follow up from me. Either something needs to be escalated, a decision needs to be made, or someone needs help and has not said so yet. That filter became one of the most useful things in the whole setup because it tells you exactly where the friction is without having to go through every single task manually.
Working with my project lead throughout Sprint 1 meant a lot of back and forth on task progress, making sure what was logged in ClickUp matched what was actually happening and flagging anything that looked like it was falling behind before it became a real problem.
Lessons Learnt
Working with a team of 15 people across different functions taught me fast that collaboration only works when everyone is actually showing up for their part. When people do not turn in their tasks as at when due, it does not just affect their own work, it affects whoever is waiting on them downstream. And in those moments, leads have to step up and fill those gaps whether that was in their original job description or not. That is just the reality of building something as a team under a deadline.
Be specific when you need something from someone. A vague request sits in someone's inbox for days. A message that says exactly what to open, what to click, and that it will take two minutes gets done the same day.
And last one: the people manager role has real work in it even during a sprint where there is nothing to demo. Keeping the team unblocked, tracking what is at risk, making sure decisions happen when they need to. That is what makes the sprints after Sprint 1 possible.
Big respect to everyone on the Ekehi team, all 15 of us. Especially our Product Lead, Engineering Lead, Design Lead, Lead Maintainer, and Backend Lead for keeping things moving. It has been a solid Sprint 1 and we are just getting started.
TEE Foundation | Tabi Project | International Women's Day Initiative | March 2026
Top comments (0)