Manuel Brossard

CONTEXT

ROL is a SaaS tool that helps large companies comply with HSE standards by preventing health, social, and environmental risks, identifying relevant legal texts, and providing tools adapted to their context.

The Product team consists of 4 squads, Product Marketing Management, and cross-functional technical roles (QA, Architecture, Admins, CTO).

MISSION

Bridge the gap between technical and product, and streamline the team's work environment to increase efficiency.

My mission has diversified over time.

=> PRODUCT OPS

SWOT analysis of the team & continuous improvement plan → streamlining internal processes

Complete reorganization of Jira (reduced complexity, increased adoption by squads)

Revision of the release management process: predictable, regular, and more frequent deployments

Implementation of internal tools: project planning, budget tracking, sprint/release planning

Methodological and tool support for POs

=> PROJECT MANAGEMENT

Management of strategic projects:

1) Evolution of technical infrastructure

2) Decommissioning of product modules

3) Preparation for ISO 9001 certification and support for ISO 27001 (quality)

4) Merging of 2 multi-team Jira instances

Global project budget tracking

=> PRODUCT OWNERSHIP

Oversight of the cross-functional technical squad, prioritization, and coordination of work

=> SCRUM MASTERING

Facilitation of retrospectives, team weather, inter-squad rituals

Reintroduction of continuous improvement into daily practices

Cross-functional backlog management and coordination between squads

ENVIRONMENT

Jira

Office 365

Draft.io

Beebole

CONTEXT

Recruited to fill the position until a permanent hire could be found.

2 teams: one in a critical state, the other transitioning towards a Product and Scrum culture.

IT department based in Les Sables d'Olonne. Business departments based in Paris.

Business teams with a Project mindset.

Very verbose business stakeholders.

MISSION

Management of 2 teams:

- Team A: 1 project manager, 1 lead developer, 2 internal developers, 3 external developers

- Team B: 1 business analyst, 3 internal developers, 1 external developer

- Direct management of the project manager and lead developer of Team A, and the entire Team B

- Regular coaching sessions

- Recruitment

- Listening, transparency, neutrality, continuous improvement, collective buy-in, innovation sponsorship

Continuous Improvement

- In-depth team audit

-- Numerous discovery, ideation, and prioritization workshops

-- Approximately 100 improvement areas identified and prioritized

- Objective Setting

-- SMART objectives defined based on the audit

-- Planning and assignment of objectives

- KPI Definition

-- Ideation/prioritization workshops

-- Scrum, quality, DevOps, and operational KPIs (MTTR, MTBF, MTTA)

- Project Ops & SOP (Standard Operating Procedures)

-- Identification of features and tools to implement for daily facilitation (roadmap, reporting, dependencies, etc.)

-- Creation of an automated Gantt chart

-- Creation and use of Confluence templates: project structure, API qualification, reporting, etc.

-- Restructuring of Confluence spaces

-- Documentation writing: onboarding, procedures, tutorials, etc.

-- Proposal for a workflow for release notes

-- Proposal for automated testing tools

Collaboration

- De-escalation of inter-team tensions

- Improved collaboration between my teams and the business team

- Solicitation of DevOps and QA Manager to identify quick wins

- Collaboration with an Italian team in English

TOOLS: Miro, Jira, MS Planner, Confluence, Sonar

CONTEXT

100% remote work. 100% English.

EBO is an AI-powered chatbot (NLP).

Founded in Malta with a team spread across Europe.

EBO is in the scale-up phase, making it a very challenging and fast-paced environment.

The team: 3 backend developers, 2 frontends, 2 testers, 1 DevOps

Accomplishments (before the new CI/CD):

Delivery frequency: from 0.8 deployments per month to 4.8 (x6) (aiming for several per day)

Team velocity: from unknown to well-defined and increasing (+128% over the last 4 sprints)

Number of tickets per sprint: from an average of 9 to 25 (= x2.8) and increasing (+105% over the last 4 sprints)

MISSION

Discovery:

◦ Competitor benchmarking: features, positioning, UX

◦ Feedback workshops with business teams

◦ Roadmap

Cleanup:

◦ Cleanup of the entire backlog

◦ Alignment of all clients on the same version (from 11 to 1)

◦ Creation & maintenance & optimization of documentation

◦ Integration of new tools: Google Analytics, HotJar, UserBack

Continuous Improvement:

◦ Design of a new CI/CD pipeline

◦ Design of a new deployment process

◦ Design of a new lifecycle for User Stories

◦ New bug management process

Team Management:

◦ Recruitment

◦ Scrum evangelization

◦ Technical support/lead for frontends

◦ Point of contact between the Dev team & others

◦ Definition of a specific management framework for remote work

Problem Solving:

◦ Identification & removal of blockers

◦ UX optimization

Routine:

◦ Scrum: daily standups, sprint retrospectives, sprint planning

◦ Backlog refinement, business value estimation, effort estimation

◦ Created/refined US, technical stories, bugs, defects, service requests

◦ Version management: artifact pipelines, versions, deployments, release notes

TECHNICAL ENVIRONMENT

Azure Cloud / Azure DevOps / MetroRetro / Swagger / PostMan / UserBack / Google Analytics / HotJar / Confluence