Guy Poirier, Product Manager in Toronto, ON, Canada
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Guy Poirier

Verified Expert  in Product Management

Product Manager

Location
Toronto, ON, Canada
Toptal Member Since
June 21, 2019

Guy is a seasoned leader who has led the design, development, and launch of successful consumer and enterprise products in both product management and project leadership roles. Guy is passionate about understanding customer problems and is adept at translating these needs into successful product solutions that ship on time and within budget. Guy's strengths are in product strategy, product development, go-to-market, UX design, writing, and project and program planning.

Project Highlights

Shopify Home
Doubled user engagement with a recommendations system for entrepreneurs via machine learning and a card UX redesign.
Shopify Android Point-of-Sale App
Led the design, development, and launch of Shopify's Android point-of-sale app—growing to 10,000+ active sellers in 6 months.
Blackberry BES12
Led multiple teams in launching a new mobile device management & security platform, catalyzing Blackberry's turnaround.

Expertise

Work Experience

Consultant | Product Lead

2022 - 2022
Grailed
  • Developed a strategic opportunity from a loose proposal to a concrete roadmap and strategy.
  • Formalized a new product team structure with a mission, vision, roadmap, and prioritized backlog. Aligned OKRs with the organization, the founders, and the exec team.
  • Built a continuous delivery model in partnership with the engineering manager, resulting in the first key milestones of Striper integration for online payments and refunds.

Group Product Lead

2019 - 2019
InVision
  • Led the product strategy and execution across multiple squads to deliver a world-class SaaS product design suite.
  • Defined and led strategic research initiatives, uncovering differentiation opportunities that led to changes in company priorities, and new strategic projects.
  • Set processes, rituals, and cultural norms for multiple squads in collaboration with engineering and UX leaders.

Senior Product Lead

2016 - 2018
Shopify
  • Led three product teams in creating web and mobile personalization features and eCommerce analytics solutions intended to help entrepreneurs grow their businesses.
  • Developed a product development process spanning design, product management, and engineering based on the "double diamond" design thinking approach to improve collaboration and velocity.
  • Interviewed users and stakeholders and led the team in crafting the mission, vision, and strategy for "Home," an AI-based product to help entrepreneurs grow their eCommerce business.
  • Shaped the UX and content principles for recommendations and our system of "cards."
  • Launched a machine learning-based eCommerce product that automated the analysis of online store performance metrics, saving merchants time and money, resulting in a 90% satisfaction rate per randomized automated sampling.
  • Deployed a Facebook news-feed-style recommendation system based on machine learning, increasing the adoption of Shopify's homepage from 20% of all merchants to over 50%, which is over 300,000 online store owners.

Product Management Lead | Retail Point of Sale Solutions

2014 - 2016
Shopify
  • Oversaw and was responsible for a suite of products for brick-and-mortar stores that generated more than $1 million in gross merchant sales.
  • Led teams of over 50, including design, development, product, inside sales, and online store channels.
  • Interviewed store owners and staff in various cities, subsequently leading segmentation and problem discovery to focus our product strategy.
  • Spearheaded growth efforts, analyzing our sales funnel across our products, integrating analytics (Mixpanel), and driving new sales initiatives, contributing to 12% YoY growth in our brick-and-mortar seller base.
  • Launched an Android-based point-of-sale solution to enable craft market and casual sellers to sell in person. Achieved $300,000 in revenue contribution within six months.
  • Launched new payment hardware in the US and UK to take advantage of the shift to PIN-based card payments.
  • Launched an in-app platform for third-party apps to extend brick-and-mortar use cases, e.g., loyalty, attracting 15 partners in the first six months.

Senior Program Manager | Program Management Team Lead

2012 - 2014
Blackberry
  • Worked as the program lead for BES12, an enterprise device security and management platform for iOS, Android, and Blackberry—and Blackberry’s critical turnaround project in its transition from smartphones to the software.
  • Led 10+ teams and 100+ people in delivering BES12 to market on schedule, leading to 2,700+ enterprise account wins in the subsequent year and 43% growth in software licensing revenue.
  • Developed a white-glove program with sales and product marketing to onboard Fortune 500 customers to BES12 with minimal friction and complexity.
  • Developed a process with strategic program checkpoints to drive critical programs' transparency, progress, and accountability from inception to launch.
  • Defined the program objective, scope, schedule, and operational processes.

Senior Program Manager, Devices

2007 - 2011
Blackberry
  • Led large cross-functional teams spanning hardware, software (mobile, desktop), QA/test, external certification labs, and mobile operators (e.g., Verizon, Rogers, and more) in designing, developing, and launching Blackberry smartphones.
  • Created program communication plans and reporting structures to enable 15+ workstream leads to stay on track and in sync, allowing me to focus on identifying risks and removing roadblocks.
  • Launched the Curve 8330 in Blackberry's heyday in 2008, contributing more than $1 billion in revenue and collaborating with the team to build an incredibly aggressive schedule.
  • Launched the Blackberry 8220 Flip Phone, building a work breakdown plan with unprecedented parallel design and certification to submit to Verizon's labs within about ten months.
  • Led "tiger teams" across programs to identify, analyze, and fix critical defects in customer labs within very short timelines to preserve time-to-market.

Project Leader

2005 - 2007
Logitech
  • Led hardware, software, and offshore manufacturing teams to develop an innovative new home automation product, the Harmony touchscreen remote control.
  • Launched the Harmony 1000 on schedule for the holiday shopping season.
  • Led user feedback analysis workshops and built a feature backlog for the first post-launch web release.
  • Managed feature and issue backlogs with the software team using a web-based tracking tool.
  • Defined product requirements for the pro version of the product for power users and built out the functional specification.

Global Program Manager | Account Manager

2002 - 2005
Sanmina-SCI (A Global Electronics Firm)
  • Spearheaded client projects for critical accounts, like Motorola, Nortel, and Lucent, consisting of telecom design and subsequent manufacturing at plants in Brazil, UK, US, and China.
  • Led multiple concurrent project teams across sites, visiting offshore plants to oversee production ramp-ups.
  • Shipped microcell tower base stations for Motorola on time at simultaneous offshore sites, leading to new business opportunities.
  • Defined the program scope, change management, operational processes and quarterbacks execution across three international project teams.

Shopify Home

https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/intro-to-shopify/shopify-admin/shopify-admin-overview

Doubled user engagement with a recommendations system for entrepreneurs via machine learning and a card UX redesign.

Role: Senior Product Manager

As a product lead, I led our UX, engineering, and data scientists as we rebuilt Shopify Home into a personalized assistant for entrepreneurs. We analyzed behavioral and sentiment data and decided on a three-pronged approach.

01. Generate predictions (using machine learning) of the actions most likely to help grow the business using the outcomes of successful users.
02. Design an approachable UX that builds trust and enables rapid scanning and evaluation for our users to make fast, informed decisions.
03. Develop new recommendations that are actionable, high-impact, and trustworthy.

We rolled out parts of our solutions via A/B testing, carefully monitoring our key metrics. Over around six months, we increased engagement with our product from approximately 25% of active users to over 50%.

Automating Actionable Insights from eCommerce Data

https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/reports-and-analytics/shopify-reports

Built an automation that helps entrepreneurs get actionable insights from eCommerce data, yielding a 90%+ satisfaction rate.

Role: Senior Product Lead

One of the most tedious yet critical parts of running a business, especially a digital-only online business, is understanding what metrics to track and how to convert data into actionable insight.

As a lead product manager with a small team of data scientists, designers, and engineers, we built an automated system for analyzing eCommerce data and surfacing significant trends and anomalies. Insights include "These products are converting the highest" and "Visitors from these channels tend to leave your site without purchasing."

The user feedback was overwhelmingly positive. We helped entrepreneurs save precious time hunting for data and taught them key concepts they needed to know. User satisfaction was based on a binary answer to "Is this useful?" with free-form text feedback. The score exceeded 90%.

Besides driving our team's weekly cadence and communication, my contribution was shaping the UX principles of our insight recommendation cards, ideating on concepts and wireframes with our designer, and defining the taxonomy of insights and how they relate to standard eCommerce terms and measuring and monitoring user feedback.

Shopify First Data

https://news.shopify.com/shopify-announces-new-emv-credit-card-reader-that-accepts-chip-and-pin-and-apple-pay

Launched a new EMV payment stack with companion wireless device for in-person retailers, driving 1,000+ customer signups.

Role: Retail Product Lead

In 2015, the US transitioned from traditional "swipe" card payments to secure, chip-based payments, forcing millions of retailers to upgrade their payment hardware. At Shopify, we took on this challenge head-on by partnering with a vendor to customize a mobile payment terminal and building a new, secure payments software stack. We kicked off, defined and certified our solution with First Data, launching to US retail merchants in 2015, initially selling directly via our online store.

My primary responsibilities were managing the partnership with our hardware partners, maintaining the commercial relationship with our payment processing partners, driving the development project forward, and collaborating with product marketing to develop and execute a go-to-market plan.

Shopify Android Point-of-Sale App

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.shopify.pos&hl=en_CA

Led the design, development, and launch of Shopify's Android point-of-sale app—growing to 10,000+ active sellers in 6 months.

Role: Retail Product Lead

As a product manager, I led the UX and engineering teams in creating an Android mobile app targeted primarily at casual sellers—people most often selling their wares at craft markets and fairs.

I led our efforts to understand the core needs for selling while on the go, prioritized the feature backlog, managed dependencies across teams for implementing features outside our scope, and drove our weekly progress.

Blackberry BES12

https://www.blackberry.com/us/en/company/newsroom/press-releases/2014/global-customers-choose-bes12-cross-platform-emm-by-blackberry

Led multiple teams in launching a new mobile device management & security platform, catalyzing Blackberry's turnaround.

Role: Senior Program Manager

As a senior program manager, I led many separate workstreams in defining, building, testing, and going to market with BES12, Blackberry's first security platform for iOS and Android and it's critical transition product—driving 2,700+ enterprise account wins in the subsequent year and 43% growth in software licensing revenue.

My Specific Responsibilities:
• Led the definition and integration of multiple contributing teams into one coherent program structure spanning development, QA, customer testing, marketing, sales enablement and support around one large program.
• Defined a single overall launch plan around many independent plans, working through dependencies, blockers and resources constraints.
• Quarterbacked the progress on a weekly basis via teamwide operational meetings, obstacle removal, and one-on-one relationships.
• Composed a communication plan to bring accountability and transparency to each component project and delivering ongoing reports to C-level executives.
• Established a white glove program, with sales enablement, to deliver the right sales materials with early software programs to ease the transition into Fortune 500 accounts.

Blackberry Z10

https://www.engadget.com/2013/01/30/blackberry-z10-review/

Led the design, development and manufacture of the Blackberry Z10—Android-like secure smartphone—initiating our turnaround

Role: Senior Program Manager

As a Blackberry device program manager, I led intense time-to-market programs spanning the early definition, development, manufacturing, and launch of smartphones. I brought together a range of teams from software development, hardware, testing, certification, support, production, carrier relations, and product marketing to define a single schedule with many internal and external dependencies.

As a critical part of Blackberry's transition to a software company with a limited portfolio of secure smartphones for institutions and government, I frequently presented updates and proposals to senior executives, up to the C-level.

A typical problem which required resourcefulness, communication skills, and strong leadership in all directions was the early struggle to meet wireless performance requirements within an aggressive device thinness goal. This challenge required an agile approach to hardware development, paired with frequent touchpoints with the CEO and several pivots in design concepts.

These consumer device projects marched to immovable launch deadlines negotiated well in advance with customers like Verizon, Sprint, and Telus.

Logitech Harmony

https://www.techradar.com/reviews/pc-mac/peripherals/input-devices/remote-controls/logitech-harmony-1000-53879/review

Launched a revolutionary touchscreen home entertainment device in the pre-iPhone era, introducing a new product category

Role: Project Leader

Logitech Harmony is the market leader in smart remotes for home A/V control—"one remote to rule them all." Harmony's genius was to amass a vast database of TV, receiver, and equipment remote control codes, allowing customers to do away with every remote save one: the Harmony-series product. The device communicated with the web to create a unique configuration for every user's living room.

In 2004 we decided to create a new category of high-end device to cater to the home entertainment enthusiast—a 3.5" touchscreen, premium device. As project leader, I drove both the software definition and development process and the hardware design project. We partnered with a design agency, and I led our prototype evaluation and decisions with our China-based manufacturer.

Other key responsibilities included weekly progress meetings, schedule management, stakeholder communications, and launch planning (in collaboration with the product team). Post-launch, I led user feedback analysis and defined the strategy and scope of our first major web release. I then outlined the requirements for the pro version of the product.
2011 - 2012

Master's Degree in Business Administration

Schulich School of Business, York University - Toronto, Canada

2011 - 2012

Master's Degree in Business Administration

Kellogg School of Business, Northwestern University - Chicago, IL, USA

1995 - 2000

Bachelor's Degree in Mechanical Engineering

Carleton University - Ottawa, ON, Canada

JANUARY 2008 - JANUARY 2010

Project Management Professional (PMP)

Project Management Institute (PMI)

Collaboration That Works

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