ANALYTICS & OPTIMISATION

Data is crucial in product management and I have used my analytical background, with a range of tools and techniques, to optimise product performance and form data-based decisions, such as:  

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• Market research and customer feedback to prioritise features for a 2-year customer engagement programme.

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• A/B testing to assess performance of new search technology.

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• Email & website analytics data to optimise criteria used in job alerts.

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• Split testing to determine the best layout for faceted search on a mobile device.

Whether it's a new, green-field venture or legacy feature in need of a refresh, stakeholders will always have an opinion on what it should look like or how it should work! 

I believe that good stakeholder management is about taking the time to understand where each person's concerns originate and ensuring they feel involved as the product evolves.  By understanding the root of a stakeholder's seemingly non-negotiable requirements, it may be possible to achieve the desired outcome in another way, while still meeting the needs of other stakeholders and the customer.  

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For example, one business unit wanted to capture all customers' data up-front, but this risked putting people off completing the form at all, so I suggested capturing the most useful pieces of information but making the fields non-mandatory, so those that wanted to complete the data online could do so, without jeopardising user engagement.  I explained that this approach had been successful on a previous project I had worked on and had in fact increased completion rates, so they were happy to try it.

Having been a Business Analyst and Scrum Master, as well as the Product Owner on a Scrum Team, I have first-hand knowledge and experience of Agile practices, including writing user stories, using 'gherkin' or behaviour-driven development (BDD) acceptance criteria, facilitating backlog refinement and sprint planning sessions and running retrospectives. 

As a Product Owner / Manager I have created and developed product roadmaps; breaking large programmes of work, key business objectives or an overarching product vision into an MVP (minimum viable product) and subsequent iterations that can be refined and adapted as business needs change.   I use data and business value to prioritise the product backlog, using techniques such as value score matrices, MoSCoW (Must, Should, Could, Won't) and Kano analysis.  

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Whether the product development teams are co-located, off-shore, remote or distributed, I enjoy being part of the team and collaborating with developers, user experience specialists, designers and quality assurance analysts to create products and experiences that the whole team are proud to have played a part in delivering.

While I strongly believe in collaborating with UX specialists and designers on the user interface (UI), I have been in situations where this isn't  possible, especially at the very early stages of conceptualisation, when you just have an "idea" that you need to articulate to set the wheels in motion.

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I have found creating low-fidelity wireframes and prototypes, using tools such as Balsamiq, Axure and even Chrome's developer tools and MS Paint, extremely useful in conveying my vision for a product without straying too far into the realm of design. The key for me is to keep wireframes generic and monochrome and prototypes purely functional, to define the information architecture, rather than prescribe the look and feel.

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For example, when designing an admin interface for a client's employees to upload products for sale, I used Balsamiq to demonstrate the placement of buttons and functionality that I envisioned on each page and linked interactions to show when features like confirmation messages should appear.  This gave the team a visual aid against which to develop, without the cognitive load of reading long BDD acceptance criteria needed by the QA for writing the test cases.  It also allowed the Head of Design to focus on creating the high-fidelity mocks and components, rather than designing the whole user journey from scratch.