Ece Isel, Product Manager in Ankara, Turkey
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Ece Isel

Verified Expert  in Product Management

Product Manager

Location
Ankara, Turkey
Toptal Member Since
May 26, 2020

Ece is a data-driven product manager with 19 years of experience in technology enterprises and startups, managing the entire product lifecycle from launch to growth to maturity. She is experienced in delivering competitive product strategies for real-time, large-scale web applications. Ece has a combined experience in product development, building and specifying web-based business applications, collecting and interpreting product data, and designing and developing products using that data.

Project Highlights

Comodo ONE: A Top Security Service Platform with Over 500,000 Endpoints
Led the product lifecycle management activities for Comodo ONE, which was recognized as a Trust Award finalist in the Best Managed Security Service category for the 2018 SC Awards.
Comodo Added to Gartner Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) Magic Quadrant
Gartner, Inc. has added Comodo’s Advanced Endpoint Protection (AEP) solution to its Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) Magic Quadrant in recognition of the company’s completeness of vision and ability to execute.
Global Online Marketplace with >100M + MAUs and Top 3 Social Media Network with >500 M MAUs
Led the product development process for the detection of bad actors and transactions with off-platform signals and mitigating damages based on off-platform signals. Over one million requests are processed per month.

Expertise

Work Experience

Product and Data Analytics Lead

2021 - 2022
Trust & Safety Laboratory
  • Worked with a leading P2P marketplace (150 million active users) and top five social media companies to build the technology for detecting bad actors and transactions with off-platform signals with a mission to make the web safer for everyone.
  • Led market interviews to frame the trust and safety problems and developed product ideas to productize existing professional services business. Scoped the MVP with prototypes and validated new identity product ideas with more than 20 interviews.
  • Worked with clients to understand business needs, used SQL (on BigQuery) to retrieve the data, performed all data cleaning processes, and translated all client requirements into interactive dashboards in Tableau, saving 20 hours of manual work.
  • Managed to validate the product-market fit with big platforms and converted three leads to paying pilots even before developing the product idea.
  • Prepared PRDs, developed user stories, defined acceptance criteria, prioritized the product backlog, and tracked project status to ensure delivery of high-value products by embracing lean product management principles.
  • Collaborated closely with engineering, policy, and operations teams and made day-to-day decisions to ensure quick and scalable implementation, make tough calls on prioritization, and drive implementation.
  • Owned the product strategy and delivery by creating and prioritizing the product roadmaps and turning them into release roadmaps to direct development efforts among the engineering team and other internal stakeholders.
  • Fostered a culture of collaboration, managed team dynamics, and set clear team goals and OKRs to create successful solutions development and an exciting work environment and experience.
  • Initiated the software process improvement, evangelized the use of Jira and Confluence, and trained the team on Agile methodologies.
  • Led existing professional service engagement and took the project management role to ensure the delivery of high-value outcomes besides being the principal product manager for the new product development efforts.

NFT Marketplace Product Manager

2021 - 2022
UCollex International
  • Worked closely with customers, growth and engineering teams, and technology partners to define and execute the NFT marketplace product roadmap, user flows and scenarios, feature priorities, and everything included to launch a new consumer experience.
  • Designed all product experience and core product modules and features from scratch and built new exciting features such as Mystery Boxes, Virtual Spaces for NFTs, and auction processes on NFTs.
  • Defined all product requirements documents, user stories, and interactive Figma prototypes. Performed refinement sessions and sprint planning activities with the development team.
  • Collaborated closely with the management to create alignment on the user flows, designs, requirements, and development timelines.
  • Owned the product strategy and delivery by creating and prioritizing the product roadmaps and turning them into release roadmaps to direct development efforts among the engineering team and other internal stakeholders.

Director of Product Management

2020 - 2021
Anunta Tech
  • Led the product development lifecycle process of the first complete virtual desktop solution on the market. The solution provides both automation and services to deliver secure modern workspaces.
  • Led the product development lifecycle of the SaaS-based AIOps platform, EuVantage, enabling the user to proactively identify and resolve potential performance issues, resulting in a seamless end-user experience and improved productivity.
  • Led the partnership with technology leaders—Microsoft, VMware, and Citrix—to build the technology for managed desktops as a service and digital workspace solutions provider.
  • Successfully migrated 500,000+ remote desktop users to the cloud environment globally and managed 200,000+ users globally.
  • Implemented a straightforward and tailored product prioritization process to create a theme-driven strategy roadmap and turned them into product roadmaps and release plans.
  • Conducted a data-driven backward assessment of the product strategy and vision to continuously define and adjust the product roadmap for the next 6–12 months.
  • Created a transparent, ongoing product visibility process by activating Jira and Confluence, performed training for all internal stakeholders, and tracked the process efficiency by performing regular audits on the process.
  • Conducted customer discovery sessions and created customer and user journey map to understand as-is status. Created journey maps for to-be status, led the prioritization efforts over the journey, and communicated this with relevant stakeholders.
  • Led a remote team of product managers and UI/UX designers.
  • Collaborated with support, marketing, and sales teams to ensure they had the required knowledge about the latest improvements on the product and kept them updated about the short-term, mid-term, and long-term roadmaps for sales enablement.

Head of Product

2020 - 2021
Mostly AI
  • Worked with five teams to ensure the outcome-driven roadmaps met the needs of both the customer and company vision.
  • Implemented a clear product prioritization process involving all stakeholders, with transparent criteria and data-driven backward assessment to continuously define and adjust the product roadmap for the next 6–12 months.
  • Established a transparent, ongoing product visibility process by activating Jira and Confluence, ensuring all stakeholders were informed about relevant topics.
  • Defined clear business and product requirements and effectively communicated them to all stakeholders, including executive leadership, development team, and product team.
  • Prioritized user stories for current and future sprints, provided guidance and clarification with any stories as required, and assisted with any impediment resolution.
  • Translated business requirements into user stories, use cases, and designs for the development team to implement.
  • Facilitated agile cross-functional teams (PM, design, development, back-office) with an efficient, self-driven collaboration structure, individual output objectives, and strong product KPI reporting.
  • Trained the team members across departments on major product aspects and new developments. Inspired and motivated teams to deliver innovative solutions to support product development strategy and provide exceptional business value.
  • Built strong relationships with customers, partners, and stakeholders (CEO, CTO, CSO) to align on priority and build a synthetic data generation platform that supports the company vision.
  • Created the start-to-finish platform architecture together with the CTO.

Head of Software Products

2019 - 2020
PaneraTech, Inc.
  • Led the web and mobile product development of the complete asset lifecycle management solution in a fast-paced, Agile environment, working closely with developers and stakeholders to ensure successful product and feature launches.
  • Defined the MVP scope both for the web platform and mobile app in September 2019. Created a go-to-market and pricing strategy and successfully launched the MVP during the first quarter of 2020.
  • Initiated the pilot program by influencing four enterprise customers to use the MVP version of the platform.
  • Created, maintained, and prioritized the product roadmap and release backlogs with ready-to-go feature requirements so that developers are never blocked.
  • Captured customer needs, product scenarios, user stories, and stakeholder feedback to create new features and improvements.
  • Worked with sales and marketing to understand the market potential and competitive landscape.
  • Guided product priorities, product plans, and overall product strategy. Performed internal meetings with the upper management and development team to communicate product objectives, analyze product metrics, and evaluate overall progress.
  • Created wireframes and prototypes to guide engineering efforts. Discussed the architecture and technical decisions made in the squad.
  • Performed customer development and customer engagement activities to understand the customer's perception.
  • Worked with industry experts to create a risk assessment framework specifically designed for the glass manufacturing industry. Began using the framework with pilot program customers.

Head of Product

2018 - 2019
Comodo Security Solutions, Inc.
  • Led a team of 11 product managers in Turkey, four UX/UI designers in Ukraine, and 16 operation engineers in India for the ITarian platform, a product portfolio that consists of large-scale end-to-end digital products and IOS/Android mobile apps.
  • Achieved a total number of 200,000 business customers in 2019 with a total number of 750,000 protected endpoints on the ITarian platform.
  • Led product ideation workshops for a new security product-Comodo 360 platform, and prepared MVP scope. Defined GTM strategy and collaborated with upper management and product marketing leads. 360.comodo.com launched in 2018.
  • Collaborated with each direct report to define a unique product strategy. Created a theme-driven roadmap and mentored staff to create, maintain, and prioritize product roadmap and turn them into release roadmaps, feature backlogs.
  • Mentored each direct report to develop and track product and feature metrics and ensure that every feature we built was tied to business goals.
  • Mentored each direct report on defining user stories by explaining our user stories playbook, ensuring the user stories were properly defined.
  • Managed key enterprise customer accounts and performed regular on-site customer engagement meetings with them, mainly in the US.
  • Performed regular monthly meetings with all internal stakeholders to communicate product objectives, analyze product metrics, and evaluate the overall progress to inspire them around the product vision.
  • Collaborated with marketing and sales teams to ensure they had the required knowledge about the latest improvements on the product and kept them updated about the short-term, mid-term, and long-term roadmaps for sales enablement.
  • Collaborated with upper management to develop the long-term product vision for every product in the portfolio.

Productization Coordinator

2017 - 2018
Havelsan
  • Led the productization initiative that aimed to turn the project-oriented mindset into a product-oriented mindset covering identification, development, budgeting, marketing, and sales of potential commercial products.
  • Productized seven different project outputs and managed them all in the product lifecycle stages.
  • Mentored a team of 11 product managers. Tracked their professional development and helped them become successful product managers.
  • Designed and applied a product management and marketing framework that was tailored to the company.
  • Defined the stages of new product introduction and determined the activities to be performed in each phase.
  • Wrote a chapter of "Investigating the Role of Product Manager in Software Product Organizations" in the book "Enterprise & Business Management: A Handbook for Educators, Consultants, and Practitioners" published in September 2017.

Product Manager, Comodo One

2016 - 2017
Comodo Security Solutions, Inc.
  • Led product lifecycle management activities for the Comodo One platform with a focus on IT and security management capabilities including mobile device management, advanced endpoint security, and remote monitoring and patch management modules.
  • Achieved a total number of 9,000 business customers with a total number of 90,000 protected endpoints in the Comodo One platform in 2017. This represented a 467% increase in the number of protected endpoints in 2017 alone.
  • Researched competitor products, market trends, and end-user feedback to define business and user requirements.
  • Managed backlogs and prioritized technical work and collaborated with design and engineering teams.
  • Defined all user stories along with the prototypes and wireframes and performed grooming sessions and sprint planning activities with the development team.
  • Managed release activities; prepared and presented product demonstrations and training sessions to customers.
  • Enhanced customer success and experience by adhering to quality assurance and control procedures.
  • Collaborated with program management to implement the SAFe framework within the company. Optimized the product lifecycle by developing and implementing new support and improvement processes.

Product Manager

2016 - 2016
OpsGenie
  • Performed product lifecycle management activities for the OpsGenie incident management platform that offers a powerful alerting mechanism and notifies the right people at the right time through email, phone call, or mobile push notifications.
  • Researched competitor products and market trends to define requirements and specifications and direct software development activities.
  • Initiated and led a software process improvement project, created As-Is and To-Be workflows, decided on which Agile methodology is going to be used, and performed tool selection for issue and project planning.
  • Cleaned up the current backlog which is maintained in Trello, created new product backlog items in Jira and Confluence, and configured the platform workflows.
  • Trained all developers and customer success team members on Scrum methodology and played a pioneering role in performing all scrum practices.
  • Coordinated and led team meetings to ensure the successful execution of the Scrum methodology.
  • Worked with customer success engineers to discuss customer requests, defined and prioritized user stories, created prototypes and wireframes, and performed grooming sessions and sprint planning activities with the development team.

Project Manager

2015 - 2016
Onur Engineering, Inc.
  • Planned, led, and successfully completed the DEDAS navy submarine simulator project which was considered impossible to accomplish.
  • Planned and led the project with the General Directorate of State Airports Authority to develop the new generation voice communication and recording systems delivered to 11 civil airports.
  • Compiled, prepared, and submitted regular project reports and updates to upper management and stakeholders.
  • Started the initiative to participate in standardization groups EUROCAE WG-67 VoIP for ATM and EUROCONTROL VoIP Implementation and Transition Expert Group (VOTE). The company was the first Turkish company accepted to the group.
  • Achieved high customer satisfaction levels through effective project and team management and regular quality assurance checks.
  • Served as liaison and primary point of contact in addressing and resolving project and customer issues.

Project Manager

2014 - 2015
Innova
  • Led the software development and project management process of the iHOPE project, an innovative solution designed for debt collection processes of enterprise businesses.
  • Performed regular on-site meetings with customers and understood problems, needs, and requests.
  • Elicited requirements by performing interviews, documentation analysis, requirements workshops, on-site visits, creating workflows by using Business Process Modeling Notation, and preparing use cases.
  • Prepared the requirement specification documents and other project deliverables in order to create accurate estimates for development efforts.
  • Prepared draft financials and the budget for customer needs/requests, communicated with customers about the budget requirements, and obtained approval.
  • Performed release planning meetings to ensure customers' needs and requirements were included in the release plan.
  • Provided full customer support to resolve any escalated issues to diagnose and identify issues.
  • Provided analysis and support for the application development team throughout the design and development lifecycle.
  • Served as a client representative to other departments, collaborating with technical support, product development, sales, marketing, and accounting.

Process Analysis Team Leader and IT Project Manager

2011 - 2014
Fujitsu
  • Led the analysis activities for the electronic public procurement platform developed for the Public Procurement Authority and aims to transfer all tendering procedures from identification of needs to signing contracts into a digital medium.
  • Appointed as a project manager in the "e-Tender" project that aims to perform all tendering procedures in the digital platform. Three electronic tenders were completed on the platform.
  • Appointed to the Software Development Process Improvement Project. Actively contributed to the CMMI working group. Confirmed the requirements for the CMMI document for the Requirements Development Process Area.
  • Established and implemented effective requirements practices, including the use and continuous improvement of the requirements process.
  • Led requirements analysis and verification process, ensuring that requirement statements were complete, consistent, and aligned with standards.
  • Elicited requirements by performing interviews, documentation analysis, requirements workshops, on-site visits, creating workflows by using Business Process Modeling Notation, and preparing use cases.
  • Coordinated with project team and software developers to ensure the project development was on schedule and budget.
  • Managed requirements traceability status throughout the project, identified requirements errors and defects, and wrote requirements defect identification and notification reports.

Software Development Team Leader and IT Project Manager

2007 - 2011
TOBB ETU Hospital
  • Led the software development team to build a comprehensive hospital information system to manage all the aspects of a hospital's operations, including medical, administrative, financial, and inventory management.
  • Managed internal stakeholder and user communications, performed requirement gathering and requirement design activities, and produced high-quality documentation including UML diagrams, use case documents, and software specifications documents.
  • Utilized the following programming languages; C#, Visual Basic .Net, ASP. NET, Visual Basic 6.0, SQL, T-SQL, Microsoft SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS), Microsoft SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS), UML, HTML, and XML.
  • Used the following tools: Oracle 9i, Oracle 10g, SQL Server Management Studio 2008, Oracle SQL* Plus, Visual Studio, .NET, Visual Studio 6.0, Enterprise Architect.
  • Applied agile scrum methodology throughout the project and monitored and controlled all outputs to ensure software met quality standards.
  • Performed regular project coordination meetings with the team and upper management to check progress, prioritizing work to meet deadlines and reviewing the scope. Performed back-end development and administration of database systems and networks.
  • Analyzed legacy code from current systems and engineered well-researched, cost-effective, and responsive solutions.
  • Mastered in rapid application development and earned the highest customer satisfaction rating for all software solutions delivered.

Software Development Engineer

2003 - 2007
Tepe Technology
  • Experienced in the full software development lifecycle–from concept through delivery of applications and customizable solutions.
  • Utilized the following programming languages; C#, Visual Basic .NET, C++, C, Visual Basic 6.0, SQL, UML, HTML, and XML.
  • Used the following tools: Oracle 9i, Oracle 10g, Oracle SQL* Plus, Visual Studio, .NET, Visual Studio 6.0, and Enterprise Architect.
  • Provided user requirements analysis, design, and programming support for enhancement of the hospital information system accessed by thousands of users in Turkey and abroad.
  • Experienced in object-oriented programming; developing, testing, and debugging code; designing interfaces; and administering systems and networks.
  • Earned the highest customer satisfaction rating for all software solutions delivered—expert in rapid application development and the management of technical issues for assigned projects.
  • Recognized for excellent troubleshooting skills–able to analyze code and engineer well-researched, cost-effective, and responsive solutions.

Comodo ONE: A Top Security Service Platform with Over 500,000 Endpoints

https://one.comodo.com/

Led the product lifecycle management activities for Comodo ONE, which was recognized as a Trust Award finalist in the Best Managed Security Service category for the 2018 SC Awards.

The SC Awards are recognized as the industry's gold standard for cybersecurity professionals, products, and services. Vendors and service providers who offer a product and/or service for the commercial, government, educational, nonprofit, or other industries are eligible for the SC Awards’ Trust Award category.
Comodo ONE is a free integrated IT and security management platform for managed service providers (MSPs). It combines remote monitoring and management (RMM), ticketing, and patch management into a single, easy-to-use console. It helps MSPs automate existing processes, view real-time data and alerts from customer networks, reduce operating costs, and improve the quality of service.
Comodo ONE is the only complete IT and security management platform that provides IT management tools for free. The money users save on licensing fees and other service costs through Comodo ONE allows them to hire more people and better compete for business.

www.scmagazine.com/home/security-news/sc-awards-finalists-2018/

Comodo Added to Gartner Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) Magic Quadrant

https://www.gartner.com/en/documents/3848470/magic-quadrant-for-endpoint-protection-platforms0

Gartner, Inc. has added Comodo’s Advanced Endpoint Protection (AEP) solution to its Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) Magic Quadrant in recognition of the company’s completeness of vision and ability to execute.

Gartner, Inc. is the world's leading research and advisory firm and the most influential analyst organization, given its broad reach and deep insight, based on more data points than any other analyst firm in the game.
Comodo has expanded its product portfolio to include a baseline of Endpoint Protection Platform capabilities for enterprises (free, premium, and platinum) with Comodo Advanced Endpoint Protection. Comodo Advanced Endpoint Protection (AEP) includes malware protection, a host-based intrusion prevention system (IPS), web filtering, a personal firewall, sandbox analysis, vulnerability analysis, and patching, and a 100% classification capability that helps guarantee a good or bad verdict on all executables. When an executable is untrusted or unknown, it is run in a tightly controlled container to isolate any potentially malicious activity.
Comodo One, the company's centralized IT operating platform, provides a simplified deployment experience and a baseline of typical EPP features.
Comodo One with Comodo AEP combines security and endpoint management with the benefits of preventing endpoint infections due to malware simplifying the administration of security patches, OS updates, and application control.

Productization: Transforming from Customer-specific Projects to Developing Products for Market

Led the productization initiative to shift the mindset from customer-specific projects to developing products, which requires an organization to change internal processes such as development, marketing, and the sales of potential commercial products.

Projects are generally considered tailor-made systems since all project outputs are built especially for a specific customer with formal specifications.
The company initiated the productization studies in 2018 to reach the vision of "HAVELSAN 2023", which enabled a total sales of $ 1.5 billion in the defense, civil and international markets and become the national and international leading system integrator.
Seven different project outputs were successfully productized and managed in the product lifecycle stages.

Lead Author of “Investigating the Role of Product Manager in Software Product Organizations”

Wrote: Investigating the role of a Product Manager in Software Product Organizations.

Product management requires a broad perspective and management approach that considers multiple disciplines, such as technology, marketing, strategic planning and engineering, and interactions between these disciplines. These define product management in a variety of ways and with their own perspective.
The objective of this book chapter is to explore, understand, and investigate the role of a product manager in software product organizations to:
• Understand the general concept of software product management.
• Understand the role and responsibilities of a product manager in the software product and management context.
• Explore how a product manager role fits in with other roles in organizations.
• Walk through the roles of a product manager according to the different development phases in the software development lifecycle.

Global Online Marketplace with >100M + MAUs and Top 3 Social Media Network with >500 M MAUs

http://www.trustlab.com

Led the product development process for the detection of bad actors and transactions with off-platform signals and mitigating damages based on off-platform signals. Over one million requests are processed per month.

I led the product development process for the detection of TOS (terms of service) violations with on-platform signals. Projects also covered high-harm content detection, including violence, sexual content, harassment, and other forms of badness. The long-term contract is accomplished (18+ months). I repeated projects with four of the top five social media networks, signing long-term contracts with three.
1999 - 2003

Bachelor's Degree in Industrial Engineering

Baskent University - Ankara, Turkey

SEPTEMBER 2021 - PRESENT

Pragmatic Marketing - Level II

Pragmatic Marketing

MARCH 2021 - PRESENT

Data Science and Big Data Analytics: Making Data-driven Decisions

MIT

DECEMBER 2020 - PRESENT

AI Product Manager Nanodegree Program

Udacity

DECEMBER 2019 - PRESENT

Data Science Foundations - Level 2

IBM

DECEMBER 2019 - PRESENT

Data Science Foundations - Level 1

IBM

DECEMBER 2019 - PRESENT

Python for Data Science

IBM

APRIL 2019 - PRESENT

UML Requirements Modeling For Business Analysts

i-con technologies

JANUARY 2018 - PRESENT

Blackblot Product Management Professional in Product Planning

Blackblot - Product Management Expertise

SEPTEMBER 2017 - PRESENT

Blackblot Product Management Professional in Product Management

Blackblot - Product Management Expertise

JULY 2017 - PRESENT

Introduction to CMMI for Development v1.3

CMMI Institute

JANUARY 2016 - JANUARY 2022

Project Management Professional (PMP)

Project Management Institute (PMI)

SEPTEMBER 2015 - PRESENT

Next Generation ICAO 9896 Voice over IP Interfaces for the Air Traffic Service Ground Voice Network

JSP Consultancy

OCTOBER 2013 - OCTOBER 2018

OMG-Certified Expert in BPMN 2 (OCEB2)

OMG

MAY 2011 - PRESENT

SQL Server 2008, Business Intelligence Development and Maintenance

Microsoft

JANUARY 2011 - PRESENT

Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist: SQL Server 2008, Database Development

Microsoft

FEBRUARY 2009 - PRESENT

Certified Business Analysis Professional (CBAP)

IIBA

AUGUST 2008 - PRESENT

Software and Database Expertise (400 Hours)

Microsoft

JANUARY 2008 - PRESENT

Customizing Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007

Microsoft

DECEMBER 2006 - PRESENT

Oracle Database 10g: Performance Tuning

Oracle University

JUNE 2006 - PRESENT

2609:Introduction to C# Programming with Microsoft.NET

Microsoft

JUNE 2006 - PRESENT

2555: Developing MS.NET Application for Windows (C#.NET)

Microsoft

MARCH 2005 - PRESENT

Oracle 9i: SQL Tuning Workshop

Oracle

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