Can you tell me about your experience managing international projects?
OCI Migration
- I was selected to help migrate our data centers from private cloud to public cloud (OCI). We have data centers all over the world which involves numerous teams, including Oracle to ensure our migrations are successful
- Keys
- Release 2 pods a quarter
- Within our goal of 50-55 days
- Allow contributors to drive their dates, as I act as a participant to help get them there by keeping the accountable to commitments, communicating internally and externally, and removing roadblocks where necessary
- Ensure we have spec details and communicate to Oracle that this is not up to par
Schneider Electric
- Working with several business units across the Americas as part of a global implementation project
- Keys
- Making sure that each team understood the end goal from a global perspective
- Coordinating with each business unit to ensure requirements were captured, data was provided, and environment usage and migration steps were clear to ensure a smooth delivery
- Roadblock: Canada having a better system. Needed to communicate Revenue operations vision beyond compensation management
How do you manage dependencies within the department and across the company?
When managing dependencies I love using the RACI matrix. It’s a wonderful tool to not only outline objectives but to also ensure that those involved understand the role they play in completing them.
Can you tell me about a cross functional experience?
Data retention project
- Worked w/ VP of Engineering to understand the requirements
- Once I had a grasp of what was required, I used a RACI matrix to include members from legal, security, support, customer success, product, and sales ops to flesh out the details
- This has allowed to ensure that everyone’s input has been included to ensure that our rollout of the the program is not only successful from an Xactly perspective but that is well communicated and implemented in a tasteful manner for our customers
How do you organize yourself?
When managing a program or project, I leverage a several assets to make sure everything is clear. RACI matrix, project plan, RAID log, exec dashboard.
Personally, for items that fall outside of those, I’m a heavy user of Google Tasks as it integrates nicely with all of google suite.
What is a project you are most proud of and how did you contribute? / How have you scaled PMO best practices?
Time to value project for our professional services department. Reducing TTV was our rally cry last year and it was a challenge not only because there weren’t immediate answers but also because our projects were becoming more and more complex
- Goals were to reduce the time it took to experience the value of the products they purchased and provide our team more robust tools to ensure that was possible
- Took note of the tools we were licensed to use
- Shadowed our Director of Engineering to understand how Eng./Prod leveraged Jira
- Took 15-20 hours of Jira training to equip myself on the tool
- Completed a scrum master training
- Developed a RACI matrix system to involve members of our team to ensure the best solution and investment
- Completed the implementation in two phases
- Over the course of two quarters, our time to value was reduced by 15-25%
Why Fivetran?
Company - The world is relying more and more on data and Fivetran’s ability to make it more accessible is a value proposition that is key today and even more in the future
Position - Held a variety of positions, sales, managing sales, managing projects and programs, developing products and I really enjoy the combination of driving initiatives, working with internal team members across the company to get value into the customers’ hands
Why are you a good fit for this role
From a program management standpoint, I have a great understanding of what it is required to take a program from idea to completion to achieve the desired outcomes. Furthermore, I’ve been very fortunate to work in many facets within a business that have given me perspective, empathy, and an ability to drive change with my cross functional teammates.
Tell me about your management style
Direct
Open
Collaborative
Providing those that I work with a space to do their best work and voice their opinions, while also serving as the person who can provide the structure to make sense of the ambiguity and holding those that I work w/ accountable to their commits.
How do you determine what is a priority
Whether it’s tasks or backlog items, I base priority on the following criteria:
- How critical the item is - is it stopping work from getting done or a customer from experiencing promised value
- How strategic the item is - have those above me communicated the importance of this item relative to others
- How time sensitive it is - when is the item due
How do you envision yourself helping our team achieve our GTM goals?
I see the role as a linkage between product, marketing, and sales to ensure that products are positioned properly and launched successfully to get into customer hands
Tell me about yourself
After college, moved to Colorado, love outdoors
Started working for start fivestarts, intro to sales
3 months later, moved to Atlanta, launched a new market, managed Miami
Wanted to expand my business acumen, transitioned into PS, working with customers to scope out how they could implement product suite
Wanted to understand the project mechanics, moved to a project management role
Quickly was promoted to manage our largest enterprise client implementations
In this role, I asserted myself to improve our processes and in doing so worked closely w/ our Engineering team to understand how they were managing complex deliverables which eventually landed me within the Engineering organization where I now hold a hybrid role of managing several of our products as well as programs within the engineering org.
Tell me about your role within Product Management.
Currently, I serve as the product owner for several of our products and am transitioning the responsibilities of scrum master to another member of our team. Beyond making sure that our backlog items are refined and prioritized, since we are relatively new team, I am responsible for creating and maintaining a training program for our new hires and communicating externally our capacity to handle different types of requests that come our way.
Tell me about an engineering initiatives that you work on.
Data retention project
- Worked w/ VP of Engineering to understand the requirements
- Once I had a grasp of what was required, I used a RACI matrix to include members from legal, security, support, customer success, product, and sales ops to flesh out the details
- This has allowed to ensure that everyone’s input has been included to ensure that our rollout of the the program is not only successful from an Xactly perspective but that is well communicated and implemented in a tasteful manner for our customers
How do you setup a program to be successful
define goals/success factors
planning communication
understanding timeline and stakeholders.
Once understood, leverage the following: RACI plan RAID dashboard
Value - Initiative
When I noticed items that fall outside of my “job title” I see that as a massive opportunity to not only help solve an issue or deliver value but to learn and broaden you skillset.
Ex. Time to value initiative
- Time to value project for our professional services department. Reducing TTV was our rally cry last year and it was a challenge not only because there weren’t immediate answers but also because our projects were becoming more and more complex
- Took note of the tools we were licensed to use
- Shadowed our Director of Engineering to understand how Eng./Prod leveraged Jira
- Took 15-20 hours of Jira training to equip myself on the tool
- Completed a scrum master training
- Developed a RACI matrix system to involve members of our team to ensure the best solution and investment
- Completed the implementation in two phases
- Over the course of two quarters, our time to value was reduced by 18-25%
Ex. 2 - Pod framework
What is your communication style
I like to be open and direct. I think if there is once thing I learned from managing sales team, it is to communicate a perspective through feelings as that dissolves the potential he said/she said battle. Lastly, communication is a two way street, giving people space to voice their opinions and finish their thoughts is critical and assuring them that you understand what they said.
Ex. Voicing the importance of the scrum framework
How do function cross functionally
Leverage RACI matrix
Schedule check ins to communicate progression
Use matrix to across levels to ensure that things are getting done
How do you get your info
Initially hired or start new role, put time on as many people’s calendars as possible. “I’m new” almost always works, allows me to build relationships and understand who does what and where different info flows.
Start w/ slack (efficient, casual)
Email
Follow up email including managers on both sides
How do you manage conflict?
It depends on the conflict, but generally I leverage one of the following
- Confrontation
- Compromise
- Accommodation
- Authority
Ex. Production Issues
- Increase time spent to 20%
- Develop a process for submitting production bugs
- Recurring meeting to discuss production bugs
Time I’ve failed at communicating
Managing sales team
4 or 5 months in we missed the mark badly
Everyone was relatively new, our sales practices were matured and on top of that we experienced churn from prior months that hit us in the current month
I was scared to communicate the reality as I didn’t want to kill our momentum or positivity
Didn’t trust that they could handle the truth and respond appropriately
When was I able to persuade people to see my perspective to make change
Pod framework
- Everyone I spoke to said it was a great idea
- Surveys in which consultants and PM’s outlined that they were unclear of what the priorities were and felt they have too many administrative meetings
- Head of resourcing (gatekeeper) said it won’t work
- Listened to her doubts and asked if we can overcome these would you be open to trying something similar to this.
- Included her the team leads for our consultants and brain stormed through the hurdles and made adjustments to
Value - 1 Team, 1 Dream
Describe a highly technical project
Migration to OCI
Understanding from a high level or how different functions add value to the business or project so that I can drive progress.
Sys-Eng: analyze organizational systems to find more efficient ways of doing things.
DBA team: create or organize systems to store and secure a variety of data
SRE team: improves the reliability of systems in production, fixing issues, responding to incidents
QA: Responsible for identifying and eliminating defects in a product
Can you tell me about your experience procuring contracts/negotiating?
As a sales consultant, I was responsible for the statement of work. Working with clients to determine how we were going to implement our product suite. I work with their decision makers to scope out the work, determine the best approach, and negotiate our contracts to ensure we weren’t overstepping on our financial needs.
