Pamela Baker
Verified Expert in Product Management
Product Manager
West Des Moines, IA, United States
Toptal member since February 22, 2021
Pamela is a successful product manager with 15+ years of Agile experience including product ownership/management and scrum master roles. Pam also gained significant process improvement experience throughout her career. She has worked in various industries, including grocery, insurance, government, mortgage, marketing, telecom, and agriculture. Pam's passion is forming a business and IT partnership that will identify, build and deliver solid and dependable IT solutions.
Project Highlights
Expertise
- Agile Sprints
- Business Requirements
- IT Business Analysis
- Product Owner
- Product Roadmaps
- Requirements Analysis
- Scrum Master
Work Experience
Agile Product Owner
Hy-Vee
- Reduced manual support hours by 80% with an automated ticketing process for corporate ad maintenance.
- Decreased product tech debt by 25% while managing the development of a large variety of business products into scalable web-based solutions with a team of 6+ people.
- Prototyped a vision of a new CRM system to manage customer feedback complaints and compliments, including real-time dashboard reporting.
Agile Delivery Lead | Product Owner
State of Iowa
- Led design, development, and delivery of a new web-based solution for the local government process of property assessment and budgeting. The project was delivered on time and 10% under budget.
- Delivered business process improvements across Iowa agencies through the ServiceNow platform product while organizing and operating the team into structured Agile stories and sprints.
- Created and communicated new project status reports with reliable data on accomplishments and KPIs that reported new development versus maintenance, development per agency, and cost by sprint.
- Introduced dashboard reporting to agencies and business partners showcasing Agile methodology KPIs, such as percentage of completion versus percentage of budget used.
Business Systems Consultant
Wells Fargo
- Managed and reported data mapping integrity of over 2,000 data elements each quarterly release.
- Introduced self-audit into master data mapping documents using Excel formulas and macros balancing to reported quarterly corporate releases.
- Managed multiple corporate change requests through the lifecycle of writing requirements, managing target dates, user testing solutions, and post-production testing for assurance.
Senior Business Analyst | Agile Product Owner
ITAGroup
- Introduced cost-benefit analysis to the client to help manage priority and operational decisions for website and platform features and maintenance.
- Managed and communicated the current project budget versus the remaining scope related to signed RFP and SOW and change management processes.
- Collaborated with larger IT organizations to introduce the concept of cost per point in assuring our quoting and cost accuracies and providing quicker response to client and stakeholder cost expectations.
- Managed and communicated competing priorities across the client's US branch offices, often resulting in refactoring budget and timeline impacts.
Agile Business Analyst
Pioneer Hi-Bred International
- Coordinated with a reporting analyst to introduce and prototype crop and field reporting using Excel data cube concepts.
- Developed strong stakeholder relationships with agronomists worldwide while establishing a documented process to track and communicate disparate requirements across global regions.
- Established the product vision by identifying and segregating project phases to support four seasons of agriculture of planning, planting, observation, and harvest across multiple countries.
Agile Business Analyst III
ITAGroup
- Managed website and background systems for 30,000+ users, including over 100 ASPX pages and a transactional database of more than 120 tables with approximately 1,800 transactions per day.
- Led the automation of enhanced integration of Salesforce data consumed to operate sales incentive program of rewards and recognition.
- Established and automated a new internal audit of 45 monthly operational procedures and standards to meet client requirements.
- Managed the file transfer process to import, data scrub, and assign $1.2 billion in sales revenue records into incentive sales reward platform.
Project History
Local Government Property Valuation and Assessment
Led the development team in creating a new platform to merge antiquated apps into a single website for local government use.
The Iowa local government valuation site is a platform for the Department of Management (DoM) to work with all Iowa counties to submit and calculate property valuation for the purposes of annual tax assessments across the states. The site has public reporting available and many assessment tools available for the DoM users. Our team designed, built, tested, and delivered the first phase of the project on time and 10% under budget.
Retail Supplier Ad Offers
Acted as a product owner and development team lead in designing and building process improvement and automation, allowing individual suppliers to join a grocery ad through the proprietary ad offer process.
Implemented automation process of a supplier ad and product offer. Time to submit, review, negotiate, approve, and schedule an offer for a store ad was reduced by 50%, creating more accurate and timely pricing and agreements between supplier and grocery store while reducing the number of manual touchpoints needed.
Education
Bachelor of Arts Degree in Mathematics and Computer Science
Wartburg College - Waverly, IA
Skills
Tools
Google Docs, Microsoft Team Foundation Server, Jira, Skype for Business, Excel 2007, Microsoft Outlook
Paradigms
Requirements Analysis, Agile
Platforms
Azure, Drupal 7
Other
Mathematical Analysis, Product Ownership, Agile Sprints, Delivery Management, IT Business Analysis, Business Requirements, Product Roadmaps, Product Owner, Business Analysis, Data Analysis, Scrum Master, Communication, Product Vision, React, Keycloak, Web UX, Miro, SQL, Excel 2013, SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS), Microsoft PowerPoint, Microsoft Office, Microsoft, Smartsheet, HTML, ServiceNow, XML, Enterprise SaaS, Web, Cisco Webex Meetings Server, Salesforce
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