Senior Platform Product Manager
2020 - PRESENTZendesk- Designed and developed beautifully simple front-end experiences for Zendesk Sunshine user profiles, events, and custom objects. Sunshine is an open and flexible CRM platform native to AWS.
- Led a cross-functional team comprising platform, product, program, engineering, UX design, accessibility (a11y), internalization (i18n), marketing, and documentation.
- Delivered the Sunshine Admin Center for onboarding, settings, and configuration; the Agent Workspace for end-user data display and manipulation; and instrumentation/observability across all interfaces.
- Developed an early-access beta application for provisioning and customer support.
Senior Product Manager
2016 - 2020VMware Pivotal Labs- Coached client product managers and cross-disciplinary teams in greenfield product discovery, Lean solution ideation, and Agile development implementation.
- Guided teams in their use of extreme programming techniques (pairing and test-driven development) to ensure they delivered the right features (Lean) using the right processes (Agile).
- Led Agile prioritization and backlog management: What should we build first? Why? How can we isolate those elements as lean, vertical slices that still deliver value? How can we best communicate deliverable expectations with software engineers?
- Conducted initial discovery interviews and personal development: What’s happening in the current problem space today? Who are the people involved? What problems with existing tech are out there?
- Evaluated hypotheses and risk elimination via prototypes and usability testing: Can we validate our assumptions about this solution—directly with users—before we build anything? How will we measure failure versus success?
- Led solution framing via designing user flows and interaction screens: How quickly can we solve the top-prioritized problem? Which solution do we think we can deliver value with the fastest?
- Performed stakeholder management: What value are the business stakeholders aiming for? How can we tackle a user problem in a way that also delivers that business value?
- Managed product consultants on top of day-to-day product management consulting work. Discussed current and upcoming work lives on client teams and found ways to level them up professionally through internal and external career growth opportunities.
- Collected and synthesized feedback from each direct report's peers to help them become better teammates, consultants, and practitioners.
- Established a weekly "Product Management Campfire" meeting to bring all product managers together to share resources and new learnings and to workshop product strategies for live software and real team problems.
Instructor: Product Management and Agile Software Development
2017 - 2018General Assembly- Taught a 10-week product management class with eight students learning product management by doing. Students were graded on weekly homework assignments where they practiced concepts on product ideas of their own.
- Delivered a two-hour Agile software development lecture and interactive product management classes each month to small and large groups of General Assembly students.
- Spoke on panels about breaking into product management and personally mentored product and design students through career transitions.
Agile Product Owner
2016 - 2016InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG)- Owned two products within the CRM team, used globally by 5,000 hotels to enhance guest experiences on-property. The products set internal stakeholder expectations in North America, Europe, and China.
- Consulted with product teams to transition from Waterfall methodologies to a more rigorous Agile cadence, beginning with status update adjustments and backlog management enhancements.
- Led the discovery and development process for a new hotel offers tool: finalized user flows, UI designs, and feature prioritization for a reinvented hotel scheduling and redemption experiences.
- Oversaw design and development of an arrivals information tool: graphic design, product backlog management, feature development, and metrics reporting processes.
- Prioritized the product backlog and budget-based release schedule through an increasingly agility-focused process.
Certified Scrum Master
2013 - 2016Three Five Two- Facilitated and coached teams on Agile (Scrum) software and web development methods for numerous projects.
- Led product roadmaps, backlog refinement, release management, sprint planning, daily stand-ups, closeouts, and team retrospectives.
- Oversaw and conducted user experience research and testing. Developed and delivered stakeholder presentations.
- Led the development of PlanningPoker.com from ideation, to Agile product development in partnership with Mountain Goat Software, to monetization and beyond. Assisted with QA testing and user research sessions and handled customer support tickets.
- Served as the lead scrum master on the company's largest client project to date. Managed two teams comprising development, design, and UX (25 team members) on a multimillion-dollar automotive project.