I was initially brought in by EPAM senior management to solve communication and collaboration challenges between an EPAM development team and another vendor's design & BA team. I spent time with each team to understand their approach, challenges and concerns and created an aligned process and division of labor that enabled us to plan a realistic launch scope and pathway that we could align with the SVP of Digital. 

But really, the critical component was communication - once the teams had agreed ways of collaborating, reviewing and course-correcting, we were able to move much more quickly and adapt to pivots (and, mostly, keep to our launch timeline). We conducted extensive pre-release testing (including product stakeholders and data teams), which ensured a smooth release - and 200% year-over-year revenue growth within the first few months.

A few months into the engagement, Pearson's SVP of Digital & Experience asked me to serve as Product Owner for Direct-to-Consumer ecommerce/Pearson.com (which ended up being a nearly two-year gig). In addition to leading a 40+ member cross-functional team (design, BA, development) and planning and managing monthly iterative and major feature releases, I focused on formalizing the dual-scrum process I'd sketched as part of the initial launch. 

We operated on an n-1 model, where the design team prioritized refinement needed to support development in the following sprint, along with upcoming feature definition based on roadmap priorities. 

I don't think we ever quite resolved the tension between future-looking ideation and immediate demands; we did prioritize new experience initiatives in quarterly planning, but... things sometimes got derailed.

Some of my accomplishments:

• Launched Pearson's direct-to-consumer eCommerce experience on Pearson.com, driving 200% revenue growth in the first year

• Awarded EPAM's Leadership Impact Award in 2020 for ensuring a successful launch and growing EPAM's relationship with Pearson by 400% in my first year.

• Created sprint-bounded process centered in shared platforms (JIRA/Confluence) which enabled consistent, predictable monthly product releases over nearly two years

• Collaborated with Pearson's eText product team to launch Pearson+, a first-of-its-kind subscription-based learning platform.

• Selected, implemented and evangelized Pearson's first enterprise-level product management platform (Aha!), enabling organization-wide planning and roadmaps for the first time