Catherine Brogan
Verified Expert in Product Management
Product Manager
Omagh, United Kingdom
Toptal member since January 10, 2022
Catherine has over 15 years of experience bringing new B2B hardware and software products to market and working in various sectors, such as engineering, learning, health, insurance, and government. She is adept at quickly understanding the strategic market fit, conducting discovery, determining the scope, and implementing a scaleable MVP. Catherine brings passion to the vision and is a servant leader, ensuring her teams are supported to be their best.
Project Highlights
Expertise
- Cross-functional Collaboration
- Market Fit
- Minimum Viable Product (MVP)
- Objectives & Key Results (OKRs)
- Product Discovery
- Story Mapping
- Strategy
- User Journeys
Work Experience
Senior Product Manager
Diaceutics
- Led the pivot of the existing tech stack, identifying software that would deliver desired UX and user journeys while re-using the existing one and minimizing the need to build from scratch.
- Performed market research to understand the competitor landscape, conducted impact mapping and initial discovery with labs to understand the value proposition, and developed a product strategy with the CEO to address SOM.
- Collaborated closely with the head of design, creating new concepts and testing prototypes with users.
- Worked cross-functionally with marketing, sales, engineering, SMEs to deliver a successful end-to-end product solution and onboard new customers.
- Reviewed external vendors, developed scoping materials, and worked with contractor development teams to deliver the product.
Senior Product Manager
Fluke
- Built a new IoT platform. Managed the portfolio of requirements for multiple products and the front-end application for one of these products.
- Sought opportunities to build generic APIs, re-use and extend front-end features via components, and create feature flags in the front-end application.
- Onboarded an existing software product, connected existing hardware, and launched two new sensor hardware products. These two new sensors had targeted revenue of $4 million for year one.
- Influenced without authority by working between product managers and product teams and achieved a buy-in to deliver common platform services, thus reducing silos and infrastructure costs.
- Managed delivery and development remotely across two separate global engineering teams, one of which was an external contract team, by leading with enthusiasm and creating a sense of ownership.
- Led product differentiation in the product team by evaluating market value, use cases, and value journey across software and hardware products, identifying goals, metrics of success, and cross-sell opportunities.
- Led go-to-market activities with customer services, SMEs, marketing, and sales. This included targeting specific sectors, geographies, competitor analysis, and pricing.
- Collaborated with the design and engineering teams, developing prototypes, conducting usability research, VOC, and overseeing delivery from concept and testing to alpha and beta roll-out.
- Established a trusting partnership with a third-party sensor manufacturer, Everactive, to align on deliverables and ensure challenges, such as certification, supply, shipping, and assembly, could be quickly overcome.
- Worked with engineering teams, expanded existing platform services, and created a web application, delivering the first iteration within four months.
Lead Product Manager
Learning Pool
- Introduced a new planning and prioritization process to the company.
- Developed product strategy for existing products using data, revenue models, and usage information.
- Built, along with the CTO and CEO, a new product strategy for Stream, a new learning experience platform (LXP). Done in response to research with business buyers and users, business needs, market research, and the threat of new tech disruptors.
- Collaborated closely with the sales and marketing teams to launch Stream LXP, research pricing, and prepare go-to-market materials.
- Oversaw delivery, which includes a chatbot and a recommendation engine, while working closely with the engineering team of Steam LXP.
- Delivered a beta release with early adopters, resulting in one year of secured significant revenue.
- Managed and mentored the new product team members to ensure the continued success of the existing products.
- Wrote and published blogs and use cases about how a company could use the new learning experience platform.
- Conducted surveys with prospects from market leads and identified pain points and opportunities.
Product Manager
Allstate
- Oversaw the delivery of a new customer-facing application used by 15,000 Allstate insurance agents in the US to manage their staff.
- Managed a successful integration with more than nine legacy systems.
- Conducted user discovery and user testing, which resulted in an alternative method for increasing compliance.
- Negotiated a transformation of processes by leading the extreme programming (XP) team, which interfaced with a Waterfall project.
Operations Lead
Allstate
- Built a release management team, processes, and plans.
- Managed major releases without a roll-back over a period of 18 months.
- Oversaw updates to two gateway applications used by 15,000 insurance agents daily.
Business Planning Officer
Education Authority | Northern Ireland
- Collaborated with heads of services to propose a new methodology for identifying and planning services in line with a new policy.
- Trained heads of departments across all regions on the new methodology and supported them in its implementation.
- Analyzed government deprivation data and assembled a data schema that the heads of departments could re-use.
- Created a business planning framework that leveraged outcome measures and provided samples of key performance indicators.
Research and Development Officer
Education Authority | Northern Ireland
- Designed and developed a new system in response to a new education strategy. Created the concept of the new application. Implemented and led a pilot, gathered feedback, and rolled it out iteratively across Northern Ireland.
- Achieved a buy-in from other education bodies in Northern Ireland and onboarded all schools in the region.
- Secured long-term funding for software development and maintenance.
- Gathered statistics and reported trends and overall achievements to the Minister of Education using data collected by the system.
Research Contractor
Self-employed
- Worked on behalf of different voluntary and public sectors.
- Researched and wrote a report "Experience of Older People in the Healthcare System" on behalf of the Office of the First Minister and deputy First Minister (OFMDFM), the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission (NIHRC), and Age UK.
- Researched and wrote an "SME Training Needs Analysis" report for Omagh College and Omagh Business Enterprise Office.
- Researched and completed reports "Feasibility Study of Cross Border GP Out of Hours Provision" for CAWT and "Evaluation of Success of Drugs Education Program" on behalf of the Northern Ireland Education and Library Boards.
Project History
Accelix Data Platform, LIVE-asset Portal, and 3562 Sensor
https://www.accelix.com/Spearheaded the development of the Accelix data platform, the Fluke 3562 screening vibration sensor, and the LIVE-asset portal application. Led crafting and implementing the strategy with a head of global product.
I led the implementation of the strategy in terms of the integration of hardware and software. As a result of developing the platform and a feature flagged web application, it was possible to:
• Remove product software silos and consolidate the team around the vision of connected reliability.
• Map product differentiation and create cross-sell opportunities.
• Reduce software architecture and development costs.
• Create new revenue, estimated at millions of dollars in the first year.
• Deliver hardware-agnostic software microservices, therefore, enabling faster onboarding of new hardware sources.
Learning Experience Platform Stream
https://learningpool.com/solutions/learning-experience-platform-stream/Led the discovery, prototyping, and development of Stream, a new learning experience platform. The platform is an alternative product offering to traditional learning management systems.
DXRX: New Front-end Application and Replacement of Existing Back-end Services
http://www.dxrx.comLed the development and implementation of an application DXRX to respond to changing business imperatives, data, and user feedback.
METHODS
• Reviewed third-party providers with the technical lead, selecting Sanity, a headless CMS.
• Managed the sunsetting of the existing system and data migration and moved toward a services architecture.
• Worked across the solution discovery process to execution, collaborating closely with the engineering and the UX teams in the scrum, detailing the scope, creating user stories, conducting UAT, and responding to the team's inquiries.
• Communicated and evangelized the product strategy, the roadmap, and new features and demo-ed progress as much as possible, for example, in lunch and learns, via company blogs, and in cross-functional meetings.
• Supported colleagues across marketing, sales, and specialist areas by responding to queries and developing digital recordings and written collateral for training purposes.
Accelix IoT Platform & Sensor Development and Launch
Led the development and launch of a new IoT platform, Accelix, an application called LIVE-asset portal that initially supported third-party sensors and two new vibration sensors, Fluke 3562 and Fluke 3563.
METHODS
• Implemented the strategy via documentation that scoped plans for services and written epics that were used for stories.
• Expanded the existing platform services and created and delivered the first iteration of Accelix and LIVE-asset portal within four months.
• Influenced without authority by working between product managers and products to achieve buy-in to deliver the common platform services, product differentiation, cross-sell opportunities, and cross-feature development between different products.
• Sought customer feedback to inform initial and future iterations of the IoT platform and the LIVE-asset portal by gathering quantitative metrics, conducting interviews, and implementing usability tests.
• Managed the early adopter expectations (sensor manufacturer).
• Worked closely with the chief architect to define functional and non-functional requirements within an AWS microservices infrastructure.
• Led the working group with a team of product managers on pricing models of new hardware and software going to market.
Education
PhD in Architecture
Queen's University of Belfast - Belfast, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom
Skills
Tools
Confluence, Zoom, Jira, Slack, Google Analytics, Pivotal Tracker, Balsamiq Mockups, SPSS
Paradigms
User Testing, Agile Product Management, Agile Project Management, Key Performance Metrics, Agile, Scrum, XP, Kanban, Quantitative Research, Marketplace Platforms, Cross-platform
Other
Microsoft Teams, Miro, Microsoft, Research, Product Discovery, User Journeys, Story Mapping, Qualitative Research, Interviewing, Competitor Analysis & Profiling, Minimum Viable Product (MVP), User Stories, Product Roadmaps, Cross-functional Collaboration, Web UI, Business Strategy, Product Development, Stakeholder Management, Strategy, Product Management, Technical Product Management, User Feedback, Voice of the Customer (VoC), Qualtrics, Wireframing, Gherkin, Data Analysis, Market Fit, APIs, Feature Backlog Prioritization, Remote Work, User Metrics, Aha!, Business to Business (B2B), Product Vision, Budget Management, Team Management, Team Leadership, Competition Research, Product Strategy, Critical Thinking, Release Management, Budgeting, Planning, Data Reporting, Go-to-market Strategy, Objectives & Key Results (OKRs), Web Applications, Product Portfolio Manager, Business Models, Data Visualization, Product Analytics, User Research, Product Leadership, Offshore Team Management, Ideation, Dashboards, Reporting, Documentation, Market Research, Market Strategy and Research Product Manager, Prototyping, Hardware Integration, Platforms, Feature Planning, Product Branding, Pricing Models, Product Ownership, Troubleshooting, Conflict Resolution, Training, SQL, Contract Management, Amazon Web Services (AWS), People Management, Healthcare Product Manager, Data Management, Vendor Selection, Machine Learning, Natural Language Processing (NLP), Design Systems, Data Migration, Third-party Management, Discovery, Cloud Platforms, Global Product Management, Project Scoping, Scope Management, API Design, Product Launch, Product Design, Lean Product Development, Feature Prioritization, Generative Pre-trained Transformers (GPT)
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