Project & Product Management
Agile Project Management
I was formally trained in Agile when I was at Avaya. I’ve had over 15 years experience with integrating design deliverables directly into Agile development processes at every company I’ve worked at.
An Agile-based design delivery timeline looks like this:
Each line item above is an Agile story. The blue bars show estimated time required to create, review, update, and then deliver a design for each story. Gray arrows pointing to the right indicate the sprint when the development team will actually begin work on a given story. The goal is to make sure each story design is delivered prior to the sprint when it would actually be needed.
Because I participate in the entire Sprint Zero story creation and prioritization effort, I can coordinate with Dev and PM leads to make sure Design delivers what’s at the start of any given sprint, if not earlier.
For example, look at story 4.7.1, “Integrated call log and voicemail” (part of “1x MOBILE PHONE”) in the schedule above. The design requirements for 4.7.1, however, weren’t needed until Iteration (i.e. “sprint”) 5. But, from a design perspective, my team needed to work on 4.7.1 in parallel with call log stories needed for Iteration 3.
Product Management
I was a product manager early in my career, a time when PMs typically had a broader remit than PMs have today. Of course, as a PM for both operating system APIs and consumer applications, I wrote actionable product requirements in response to user, business, and competitive needs. But I was also responsible for designing and managing outbound marketing campaigns, working with PR, communicating with press and analysts, and establishing third-party developer relationships.
In my role as Apple Mac OS product manager for printing, type, and graphics I was taught Apple product management principles. This included a week of professional presentation and spokesperson training with an emphasis on communicating with press and analysts. These are skills I have relied on throughout my career.
After Apple, I was the Caere OmniPage Pro (OCR) application product manager solely responsible for product requirements, marketing materials, localization, CES presentations, and the Mac OS product launch.
I provided product management leadership at Parsable, HAN:DLE, and ACME in the absence of formal PM roles.
My PM background has given me invaluable experience working with and understanding the needs of developers, marketers, business development and finance teams, and members of the C-staff.