Data | Product | Agile
I’m an experienced product professional with a focus on solving data problems in agile environments.
When I’m not writing user stories and SQL queries, I’m out with a camera to look for the things around me I’d usually miss, or in the woods with a backpack and tent to disconnect and be present.
I’ve spent nearly all of my 20 year career in data-focused roles. The bulk of my experience has been with the Microsoft SQL Server business intelligence stack over the last ten years. Writing SQL queries has been a staple throughout that time. I’ve worked with analysis and visualization tools including Tableau, SSRS, R, and, of course, Excel. Over the years I’ve known enough to be dangerous with ETL development and stored procedures. While my strengths are in relational databases, I’ve had some fun with the Hortonworks Hadoop implementation and some other NoSQL databases.
Transitioning into a newly-formed product development team over the last few years has provided an expanded framework for the types of roles I had well before that. Not quite a developer, not quite a designer, but making contributions toward building the right thing. Having moved from report developer to product owner over the last five years, I was able to wear many hats so others didn’t have to. The roles and responsibilities I took on–planning, prioritization, long-term direction–allowed my teams to focus and deliver.
With 9 years of experience working in an agile environment, I’ve implemented Scrum and Kanban with a variety of teams. My experience has primarily been as a product owner on a scrum team, though I’ve filled in with scrum master duties as well. I’ve coached others on user story writing and backlog prioritization.
Most importantly, in my opinion, I’ve changed all of the things that I’ve done. My teams have experimented with multiple structures and variations on frameworks to find what works best. Many two-week experiments yielded great results. Some of them, not so much. When they don’t work out, we always learn something and move on to the next experiment.