Program/Project Execution
Marketing Portal Product With Solution Street, provided Program Management and Agile/Scrum Leadership on an engagement with a major video streaming product company. The first initiative was building a new product focused on marketing customers that included both UI and back-end development across 8 Engineering teams, involving multiple Designers, QA Testers, Architects, and Product Managers. Configured Jira and setup a central Confluence space at the start of the effort to quickly establish a cadence for monthly releases through the Early Adopter stage. Managed pivoting all teams to a continuous release process for the General Availability release and beyond. Led Scrum of Scrums meetings, weekly initiative status meeting with senior executives, and cross-team Retrospectives. Participated in feature refinement meetings and proactively removed blockers for teams. The second initiative was building a new web-based template that corporate customers could use to create their own sites incorporating hosted video, images, etc... Involved all phases of Agile planning and execution on a 4-month timeline from design though launch in Feb 2023.
Cross-channel Publishing System With Technology for Publishing, provided Project Management on an engagement with a major non-profit organization to develop their cross-channel publishing workflow between print and online using the censhare system. Included project planning and scheduling with client and software vendor, facilitating all project status meetings, writing business requirements, developing testing strategy, conducting testing, and facilitating technical infrastructure meetings. Analyzed data for XML-based integration with Adobe Experience Manager and for API integration with Hipzone’s IMP contracts management system. Created the team’s Confluence project site and helping maintain project documentation there. Helped configure Jira for tracking project tasks. Used a combination of Waterfall and Agile processes.
Agile/Project Management Coaching
Major video streaming product company Rotated through 4 front-end Engineering teams as the embedded Scrum Lead, which included optimizing scrum ceremonies, planning current and future Sprints, and Backlog grooming with Engineering Leads and Product Managers. Worked closely with the Engineering PMO Director to help standardize new Agile processes across the company using Jira Cloud for Initiative, Program, and Epic workflows. Configured Jira Advanced Roadmaps/Plans as needed and trained Product Managers and Tech Leads how to use them.
Technology for Publishing Developed standard methodologies for writing SOWs, teaching client relationship skills to consultants, and writing guidelines for using project scheduling software.
U.S. Naval Institute Coached a junior project manager while working on a multi-vendor systems implementation and integration project. Started by teaching weekly meeting prep and facilitation skills, how to recognize when vendors need more active coordination, preparing for and leading large group onsite meetings. By working together, KPS helped staff understand planning for all phases of the implementation - project schedule development, user acceptance test planning and issue tracking, data conversion test runs. go-live activities, and post-go live support.
Confluence Consulting
Customer Service Training Documentation & Tracking Assisted SoundExchange Customer Service department with organizing their new employee training documentation into Confluence and training their staff to use Confluence to manage the process. Started with a current state review of their departmental Confluence area and existing training documents, and interviewed the Director and his Team Leads about future objectives. Designed new Confluence space options for review, including proposed new training sections to be added. Once approved, created and organized the structure of the new space and made how-to documentation templates and set appropriate Confluence permissions for ongoing maintenance. Conducted 1-hr online training sessions with each Customer Service team to teach Confluence basics and how to maintain the new training sections. Wrote documentation about basic Confluence usage and ongoing training documentation procedures to make the client self-sufficient.
Music Publishing Rights management
Label-Publisher Data Exchange System Assisted with music publishing business discovery with SoundExchange executives through interviews with major label and publishing companies to determine challenges and potential solutions. Then managed the requirements gathering, planning, design, custom development, and testing of a new system that allows major record labels and music publishers to exchange information about mechanical (song lyric) writer royalty shares. Led a team of 4 developers using Agile methodology, conducted business analysis of new features with the product owner, conducted software QA testing, and interfaced with business and executive stakeholders throughout the project. The system went live successfully as planned. Managed ongoing enhancements through a 2.0 release and provided DDEX XML testing services.
Customer Self-Service Websites
Online Customer Self-Service Portal Responsible for project management, requirements gathering, testing, and ongoing enhancements and operations for SoundExchange’s custom-developed financial statement portal for recording artists and rights owners. Included integration with a highly-customized Salesforce CRM system and multiple other internally-built systems for rights and recordings management. Managed development with Agile methodology.
Online Registration System Within 5 months, managed the planning, design, development, testing, and implementation of a new online registration web site with Agile methodology for SoundExchange. Involved gathering all business requirements for the new site, designing the UI with an external firm, and managing the development team for both the web site build and custom integration with a Salesforce CRM system through go live. Also managed ongoing product enhancements.
Digital Asset Management
Video DAM System Selection & Implementation In Phase 1 for The Teaching Company (now The Great Courses), conducted discovery interviews at all levels of the organization to understand both short and long-term business goals, document current content development processes, inventory digital assets, and identify issues. Then led a cross-divisional internal DAM selection team through RFI development and a vendor selection process. Assisted the team in writing the business case for presentation to senior executives for approval. Phase 2 involved managing all aspects of the selected DAM system (Evolphin) implementation through go live, which included the planning and testing of a customization.
Publishing Digital Asset Management System Guided the U.S. Naval Institute’s DAM pilot evaluation of their selected system (MediaValet) to completion, allowing them to identify functionality gaps that fed into the vendor’s product roadmap. Next, assisted with full implementation planning for rollout to the photo archive and books departments.
Business Case & ROI Marketing Tools
For JAMF Software, created a questionnaire for their salespeople to use when working with potential customers to help demonstrate the ROI of implementing JAMF’s Macintosh management software in the enterprise. Involved first interviewing JAMF employees about the product features and benefits and then creating an Excel template model for calculating ROI based on the customer’s answers to the questions. Allowed JAMF’s sales team to quickly provide real ROI information to convince customers to buy. Completed a similar project for Code 42 Software.
Publishing Content Scheduling
Built a custom FileMaker Pro application for Consumer Reports. Responsible for all aspects of the project from discovering goals and assessing current processes, gathering new detailed requirements, and writing the business case for an application to track interdependent content development schedules across all media produced (print and digital). Led detailed design, prototyping, development, testing, training, and implementation phases through go live. Provided ongoing support.
Retail e-Commerce
Within a tight 3 month timeline, helped National Geographic Ventures’ catalog/retail division to launch a UK-based e-Commerce site and related operations in time for the holiday season. Involved from the start with vendor selection, configuration, operational prep with the UK warehouse vendor through launch of the web site. Provided project management, software vendor selection, business requirements analysis, and acceptance testing services through go live.
Film Rights & Royalties Management
Implemented the Media Maestro system for film licensing, royalties and participation for National Geographic Television International. Responsible for overall project management, business requirements gathering, test planning, and data conversion vendor selection to help accomplish the project.