Back to Basics: Program Management

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Context: “You think you know agile. We do ‘extreme agile’ around here.” The engineering lead told me. It was my first week on the job. The other team members weren’t so concerned with names, what they did care about: it had been months since our last software release and they never knew when the next one was coming. My mission was to take over the product life cycle so one of the two founders could focus on new sales.

Problem: As the middleware between agency applicant tracking systems and customer vendor management systems, JobRobotix was highly susceptible to disruption in its product life cycle. Not only that, as any staffing company knows, we had to move at the speed of staffing when process-breaking bugs surfaced through the support queue. What had worked for the founders as a two-man operation would not scale. The internal team needed a common understanding, structure, and communication. 

Action: I put the foundations in place to enable scalability while keeping the foundations that made the company successful.  

  • Categories: Our first gap was data. I worked with the head of engineering to divide up customer requests by urgency and implemented a process to categorize work. While every change is unique: we could put parameters around meaningful buckets of work from possible future enhancement to ‘building on fire’ bug. 

  • ‘Good Enough’ Budgeting: We projected capacity ahead of each sprint, preventing the previous patterns of overcommitment and crunch while keeping on track bigger committments. 

  • Internal Communication Internal team members were given a release calendar that was updated within 24 hours and given daily updates as release dates approached. Release notes, previously an occasional occurrence, were not standard with every release and given to the internal team ahead of time. 

  • Protecting Core Competencies: Every release plan had contingencies allowing us to adjust for these infrequent but disruptive occurrences that required us to adjust plans on the fly. Our agile methodology moved from extreme to efficient and effective.  

Result: 

  • Vital Learning: we found that each sprint 30% of development time was needed for high priority support issues that needed to be fixed within 24-hours and an additional 20% had to be budgeted for customer-requested customizations.

  • Internal Cohesion: The new releases process was a hit with the internal team, who reported they felt much more in tune with what was happening as our powerful solution continued to grow and develop.

  • Customer Satisfaction: Working with the support lead, I ensured 100% turnaround within 24 hours for each support request needing product review.

  • Successful Scaling: With the capacity to focus on sales, the founder was free to focus on net new sales, expanding our footprint beyond healthcare. JobRobotix met our revenue quotas each quarter despite a staffing down market.

Relevant Skills

  • Agile Product Lifecycle Management

  • Cross-functional Communication

  • Roadmap and Release planning

  • Strategic Prioritization

  • Cross Functional Communication

I specialize in building the right process for the pace you're moving. Reach out to see how I can help you scale while keeping what works.