What job titles have you had in the Product space? Across my career, I have had many job roles in the Product space, these include VP of Product Management and then Chief Product Officer (Hownd), Director of Product Marketing (Accruent), Director and then VP of Product & Alliances (InEight), VP of Product Marketing (SunGard),  Product Manager, Services (Vertex), and Product and Alliance Manager (Primavera Systems).  I am comfortable interfacing and working closely with adjacent departments, including Engineering, Marketing, and Sales, as well as with Executive teams.  I understand each audience has different needs and modulate the level of detail based upon their needs.   Which Product Management tools are you most familiar with? A:  Atlassian products are the standard.  Specifically, Jira and Confluence are two key tools that I am constantly working on as a product manager.

• Jira: The Product team is the owner of the stories and the owner of the backlog, so I am frequently in Jira, writing stories, tweaking existing ones, prioritizing, adding more voice-of-customer examples, etc.
• Confluence: I often joke with my team that 1/20th of the Product Manager’s role is “librarian” – that’s where Confluence comes in.  I have built out multiple corporate intranets with Confluence: It is a key platform for documenting decisions, ideas, features, and releases, and providing the rest of the company with a “self-help” location for getting quick answers to their questions is more efficient and saves time for everyone.  Confluence is also where my team and I create and store Opportunity Assessments and Product Requirement Documents / Product Specification Documents.
• Slack / Microsoft Teams – For team collaboration.

Does Product write the stories in Jira? A: Yes, Product Management is the owner of story creation.  Of course, other stakeholders – executives, Sales, Engineering, customers, and more – are all interested in the roadmap and play a role in story creation, but it is the responsibility of Product to write the stories.  The only exception I have seen is when Engineering decides to break a story into tasks so that they more easily point them, put them in their own words, etc.   What goes into a typical story? A: My teams effectively use an open-ended story that doesn’t tell Engineering HOW to do something.  Instead, stories should explain the who, what, and why so that Engineering can know the context of the work they are being asked to do. For example, “As an administrative user, I Should Be Able To (ISBAT) add additional users in my organization with read-only privileges so that we increase security by avoiding password sharing and increase safety by not enabling other users to make unauthorized updates” How would you describe your use of Agile methodology in product development? A: We typically use a two-week sprint cycle, with daily stand-up meetings focused on obstacles and how to overcome them together.  Each cycle, we have grooming meetings to go through recently added and upcoming stories in the backlog, a time when we also discuss the near- and mid-term roadmap so that the Engineering team is aware of the full business context of stories and can keep that in mind as they move forward.  We also perform a bi-weekly sprint demo where the team can highlight their accomplishments and new features.  As part of an iterative, lean methodology, each sprint cycle should result in a release of some usable functionality so that we can learn from real-world feedback and usage and continue to iterate.   How do you prioritize the roadmap? A: Roadmap prioritization is part art and part science.  It involves weighing multiple competing factors with limited resources.  Those competing factors often include progressing towards strategic goals (new features that will unlock new business opportunities), customer requests (features needed by customers for their specific needs), resolving tech debt (making the system more efficient or easier to upgrade), sales requests from prospects, and more.  Asking probing questions is often a way to help understand the true need “What are you trying to solve with this request?”  and then “What if we provided this (something less than the full request) – would that satisfy the immediate need?”  

What project that you led has had the most impact? A: For me, naming a “highest impact” project is a little like naming a favorite child.  There’s simply no correct answer, so I’ll share some of the key ones in the hope of answering the question. My key projects include:

1. Primavera + Oracle integration – I managed alliance partnerships at Primavera, and this one involved connecting our project management / scheduling platform with Oracle Applications to enable the flow of financial data from Oracle to Primavera, and project progress data from Primavera to Oracle.  The initial relationship I built led to the eventual acquisition of Primavera by Oracle for hundreds of millions of dollars.
2. Accruent Acquisition Integration Projects x4  – Accruent was a well-funded private-equity-backed company (Vista + Genstar) that had M&A growth as a key part of its business plan.  During five months on an M&A integration team, I led projects that involved integrating four different acquired companies into ours.  Each M&A launch team involved up to 25 people, across departments, and hundreds of tracked tasks.  This inorganic growth led to the eventual sale of Accruent for multiple billions of dollars, a 3x return in two years.
3. InEight Product Launches – I created and grew the Product Marketing team at InEight, and I led multiple product launches that expanded the capabilities of our growing platform in the Construction Project Management software space.  Through successful growth, our company went from about 85 people when I got there to over 250 people in the three years I was there.
4. Release of Hownd 1.0 – Startup life can be exhilarating, but also exhausting.  In October 2019, I recruited and led a team of developers and product leaders to launch a completely new SaaS + mobile platform within a 9-month timeframe.  This created a completely new product offering for the company which now has over 300,000 active users.

A:

1. Primavera + Oracle – I was the relationship leader between the companies for approximately 7 years – this involved guiding our internal developers to build integration and then marketing the combination of our products to enterprise companies around the world.   I built the goodwill and positive momentum between our companies that led to its eventual acquisition in 2008.
2. Accruent Acquisitions – I led the cross-functional M&A Launch Teams for four different acquisitions, which meant tracking (literally) hundreds of tasks for each acquisition across the entire company.  For example, it meant creating internal and external FAQ documents about the acquisition for both existing customers and customers of the acquired company, presentation decks, etc.  It also involved understanding the systems and people in the acquired company to recommend the path forward to getting them fully integrated into our company.
3. InEight Product Launches – My time at InEight was active – we had just been acquired by Kiewit (one of the largest construction engineering firms in the country), and we were releasing new products at a rapid pace.  I was the launch-team leader, which involved bringing together cross-departmental teams over multiple weeks and months to ensure internal alignment with each new product release, along with coordinated external communications.
4. Hownd 1.0 Launch – As the Chief Product Officer, my role involved coordinating all the different teams in the company to ensure alignment with the features, benefits, and differentiated value of our new platform.  I managed the roadmap and led the launch team as we launched this brand-new platform.

A: Results of these projects include:

1. Oracle + Primavera – As a result of my efforts, the positive relationship and connections between our companies led to the eventual acquisition of Primavera by Oracle for hundreds of millions of dollars, resulting in positive outcomes for the two company co-founders and all of the employees with stock options.
2. Accruent Acquisitions – The rapid growth of Accruent due to our inorganic M&A growth was quite attractive to a suitor, and the company was acquired in 2018 for $2 billion, a 3x valuation from 2016 levels when I first arrived.
3. InEight – As mentioned, my time at InEight was one of rapid growth, with headcount and revenues doubling during my time there.  This created a foundation that has since led to the company more than doubling its revenue and headcount since I left in 2016.
4. Hownd – The new Hownd platform now has over 1,000 merchants and over 300,000 active consumer users (from zero), helping the company achieve its strategic goals of getting more and more involved with direct-to-consumer engagement. 

How do you resolve conflicts on your team? A: One of the key concepts I’ve learned to appreciate is “disagree and commit”.  That is, it’s fine and normal for a group of people looking at a problem that can be solved in multiple ways to have different ideas about how to address it.  However, once the team comes together and decides on a consensus path forward, it’s time to commit.  In this way, everyone’s voice is heard and included in the decision-making process, though the team can move forward. What experience do you have leading product teams? A: I have worked in product management roles for 10+ years and have led teams of varying sizes, up to about 15 people. My experience includes leading cross-functional teams of up to 25 people, setting product strategy, and driving product development from ideation to launch.   Can you describe your product development process? A: My product development process involves first understanding the strategic business goals.  I then conduct user research, define product requirements, create a roadmap, and collaborate with cross-functional teams to develop and launch products using the 2-week Agile sprint cycle. Throughout the process, I also gather feedback from stakeholders to ensure we are meeting the needs of our customers. How do you measure the success of a product? A: Beyond the overall impact on the business, I measure the success of a product by tracking metrics such as user engagement, customer satisfaction, and revenue growth. I also use qualitative feedback from customers and stakeholders to understand the impact of the product on the business.   How do you ensure alignment between product, engineering, and design teams? A: I ensure alignment by setting clear product goals and priorities, creating a shared understanding of the product vision, and fostering a culture of collaboration and communication between teams.  This involves keeping everyone aligned during the sprint cycles, presenting to the teams throughout the development cycle, and then leading the cross-functional launch of new products and new versions. Can you describe a time when you had to make a difficult product decision? A: I had to make a difficult product decision when we were faced with a trade-off between launching a new feature quickly and ensuring it was of high quality. After considering the potential impact on our customers and the business, we decided to delay the launch to ensure we could deliver a high-quality feature.  The launch of Hownd is a good example of this – we stayed focused on the MVP – Minimum Viable Product – idea, that a key feature of the product is that it is available to customers.  We ended up pushing out the launch date by a few months in order to ensure that it truly was an MVP version… and not just something that was half-baked.  There were some features that got pushed out from that MVP, but we achieved the goal of getting the software in the market and getting user feedback.   How do you stay up-to-date with industry trends and emerging technologies? A: I stay up-to-date with industry trends and emerging technologies by attending conferences, reading industry publications, and networking with other professionals in the field.  I am also an avid reader of general business publications such as The Wall Street Journal and follow emerging trends, such as generative ai, via social media and blog posts by thought leaders.   How do you manage stakeholder expectations? A: I manage stakeholder expectations by setting clear goals and priorities, communicating regularly, and providing transparency into the product development process.  I encourage all key stakeholders to attend the bi-weekly sprint demos, and I also create release notes that highlight the new features and their value.  I also share details about key product updates at wider all-hands meetings that often include a discussion about the roadmap.    How do you encourage innovation within a product team? A: I encourage innovation within a product team by fostering a culture of experimentation, allowing team members to take risks, and providing them with the resources and support they need to explore new ideas.  I’m a big proponent of continuous learning and I encourage my teams to be curious and come together to share ideas about how to do things better.  Most recently, I sparked a discussion on my team about using Midjourney to create stock images that could be used in the merchant emails we create and send on behalf of our local merchants.  After my initial explanation, I was pleased that the Product Manager took that idea and ran with it on her own.