The Product Management Award

Product Management Award

Is there someone who’s come up with a really innovative project in your company? Or an idea to change the way you work. Tell us about it, nominate them.

Entry Criteria

Criteria for the Product Management Award category:

– Nominee works for a technology business or in a technology role
– Nominee works as a Product Manager for a hardware or software technology solution, or performs similar roles to Product Management

Successful nominations should detail but not be limited to the following:

– How they are able to lead a group of different people across the organisation in a common direction in creating or improving a product offering,
– How they have understood user need and successfully translated this into features and capability that meet the original requirements,
– How they have delighted users,
– How their skill at prioritisation and juggling different stakeholder needs has made the product better for everyone

2019 Winner

Keisha McLean

Our Agile Angel at Spektrix is Keisha. Since she joined us and introduced principles of Modern Agile into our Engineering teams, they are healthier, collaborating more effectively and delivering better results quicker. Keisha has changed the focus of the teams to continually have client outcomes in mind and working in least required mind set improving value and output from each of the teams and opened up the idea of continuous learning through data driven experimentation. Psychological safety is important to Keisha, and this can be seen by her relationship with our teams. She offered them authority and choice when it comes to the methodology they would work within, providing guidance to help them understand the decision around the right one for them. One of our largest mission teams selected Kanban, this is new to Spektrix and has had a huge impact. The focus is largely around visualising workflow, measure and managing flow, limiting work in progress and always, collaboration. Physical boards and materials to create a clear view and easily show the movement of projects have transformed several parts of the office, any blank wall space is now filled with colourful post-it notes and stickers to clearly show the progress, blockers, and ownership of each ticket. It has also altered how teams communicate, people physically stand around and observe their work, identify any blockers and resource requirements, while viewing the journey of their delivery. This hasnOur Agile Angel at Spektrix is Keisha. Since she joined us and introduced principles of Modern Agile into our Engineering teams, they are healthier, collaborating more effectively and delivering better results quicker. Keisha has changed the focus of the teams to continually have client outcomes in mind and working in least required mind set improving value and output from each of the teams and opened up the idea of continuous learning through data driven experimentation. Psychological safety is important to Keisha, and this can be seen by her relationship with our teams. She offered them authority and choice when it comes to the methodology they would work within, providing guidance to help them understand the decision around the right one for them. One of our largest mission teams selected Kanban, this is new to Spektrix and has had a huge impact. The focus is largely around visualising workflow, measure and managing flow, limiting work in progress and always, collaboration. Physical boards and materials to create a clear view and easily show the movement of projects have transformed several parts of the office, any blank wall space is now filled with colourful post-it notes and stickers to clearly show the progress, blockers, and ownership of each ticket. It has also altered how teams communicate, people physically stand around and observe their work, identify any blockers and resource requirements, while viewing the journey of their delivery. This hasn’t just had a huge impact for Engineers either, engagement with other teams in the business has increased, curiosity has been sparked because of the boards and understanding of the engineers’ work cycles and delivery has improved as a result. Retros are another favourite aspect of Agile for Keisha as they give a safe space for teams to actively improve their own world. Structured around the needs of each respective team, she enjoys the facilitating the reflection of how they work together and focus on continuous improvement, which is so important to the methodology. She has introduced team health checkpoints so teams can visibly see progress, engagement and target improvement areas. This has allowed teams a safe place to have a bias for action for their problems -‘Freedom Friday’, a personal learning initiative, has been introduced from these sessions, freeing our Engineers up every second Friday to focus on developing their understanding of new technologies, frameworks which are important to them.t just had a huge impact for Engineers either, engagement with other teams in the business has increased, curiosity has been sparked because of the boards and understanding of the engineers work cycles and delivery has improved as a result. Retros are another favourite aspect of Agile for Keisha as they give a safe space for teams to actively improve their own world. Structured around the needs of each respective team, she enjoys the facilitating the reflection of how they work together and focus on continuous improvement, which is so important to the methodology. She has introduced team health checkpoints so teams can visibly see progress, engagement and target improvement areas. This has allowed teams a safe place to have a bias for action for their problems -‘Freedom Friday’™, a personal learning initiative, has been introduced from these sessions, freeing our Engineers up every second Friday to focus on developing their understanding of new technologies, frameworks which are important to them.

2019 Finalist

Gemma Ebbs

2019 Finalist

Robyne Birkby