Hi – I’m Stan
I am a Product enthusiast who is passionate about elevating products from conception to success.
And this is my story.
With over three decades in IT, I’ve accumulated a wealth of experience in product management, software development, requirements gathering, and data analysis. My knack for diving into data and drawing meaningful insights, coupled with a keen eye for UI/UX, has been pivotal in crafting user-friendly and effective solutions.
I consider empathy as my “secret sauce” – understanding users, stakeholders, and teams alike. I thrive on feedback loops, building products that resonate with users and ensuring that every iteration is a step closer to perfection.
My Career Timeline
Here is the path I took to get me where I am today.
February, 2024
Product Strategy Micro-Certification (PSC)™️
Issued by Product School
January, 2024
Product Roadmapping Micro-Certification (PRC)™️
Issued by Product School
January, 2024 – Current
Product Manager
DMI
Based on my recent performance at ADESA, I was promoted to the title of Product Manager where I will continue to work with clients on defining product vision, objectives, and strategy. I will build roadmaps and make them available to delivery teams, leadership, and external partners (as needed).
I continue to strive to better my craft and learn more about being an effective Product Strategist.
December, 2022
Certified SAFe® 5 Product Owner/Product Manager
Issued by Scaled Agile Inc.
July, 2018
Certified SAFe® 4 Practitioner
Issued by Scaled Agile Inc.
July, 2018 – January, 2024
5 yrs 7 mos
Lead Product Owner
DMI
The Agile certifications I earned, the engagements I completed, and the client feedback I received all led me to being promoted to Lead Product Owner at DMI.
I began what would become my longest engagement with a client since joining DMI. I was going to ADESA, a vehicle wholesale remarketer, to join a DMI scrum team as a Business Analyst and assist the Product Owner in building and managing the backlog. In the five years I spent at ADESA, I helped my Product Owner earn a promotion to Product Manager – and in the process elevate my role to Product Owner.
As the Product Owner, I was responsible for maintaining the backlog for:
– Four mobile applications
– Three web applications (two were internal facing and one external facing)
– 20+ backend services
I worked with my Product Manager in building and managing product roadmaps for the products we were responsible for.
We built a feedback loop to elicit customer feedback on [potential] new features and calculate Net Promotor Scores (NPS) and Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) scores.
With each sprint review, I recorded videos demonstrating the new functionality that was being released. These videos were then incorporated into the release notes communications that appeared in our products. We were able to build up a large catalog of videos on a wide range of features.
As part of an application modernization initiative, I used Figma to create the design mockups for an updated mobile application. We socialized the mockups with the user community, eliciting feedback and making adjustments before creating the backlog and having the delivery team begin development. The end users were very excited in being able to take part in designing what the next iteration of their application would look like!
To get a better understanding of how our products were being used, I had the development team capture various business events. I then built dashboards for each of our products to track which features were being used and which were not. The Product Manager and I would then meet with users to learn why some features were not being used as much to determine if features did not meet users needs or if they simply needed to be depricated.
This engagement gave me the opportunity to really build up my product management skills – from product marketing to developing new products/features to launch plans.
February, 2018
Professional Scrum Product Owner (PSPO I)
Issued by Scrum.org
April, 2017
Professional Scrum Master (PSM I)
Issued by Scrum.org
August, 2016 – July, 2018
1 yr 11 mos
Senior Business Analyst
DMI
At DMI I was able to really focus on mastering my Business Analysis skills.
My initial engagements consisted of gathering requirements, curating documents, and building an Information Architecture standard for Cummins Inc. a Fortune 500 manufacturer in the automotive industry. I was exposed to SharePoint and learned how to build custom intranets for teams to store and share their documents.
Next I moved on to the Education sector where I was tasked with assisting Rose-Hulman University select a new CRM solution:
– I interviewed multiple stakeholders that were responsible for Admissions and Alumni.
– Moderated demonstrations of Microsoft Dynamics and Salesforce.
– Created weighted scorecards for stakeholders to use when evaluating each solution.
– Aggregated the results, determined what additional resources would be needed to manage each solution, and performed a cost analysis of each product over the next 3 years.
– Lastly, I presented the findings and offered a recommendation on which solution to select to the Board of Directors.
Ultimately, the client agreed with my assessment and moved forward with my recommendation.
For my next engagement, I returned to Cummins to coach and mentor an FTE on how to be an effective Product Owner. We worked together on meeting with stakeholders and gathering requirements, writing effective user stories, building and prioritizing a product backlog, facilitating planning sessions with the development team, crafting sprint goals, discussing trade-offs when fly-in work came in, performing sprint reviews, and moderating sprint retrospectives. It was a bit challenging at times due to the fact that the FTE had another role she was responsible for, so being a Product Owner was not her primary focus. In these cases, I filled in for her to ensure the delivery team was not roadblocked and that we continued to deliver value to the business.
Moving on from Cummins, my next stop was at St. Luke’s Hospital where I needed to create a backlog of enhancements for a CRM migration. I needed to interview the stakeholders to learn what their current pain points were in the existing CRM solution and what new features they were hoping for with the new solution. I worked closely with our CRM developers to ensure that they understood the needs of the client, prioritizing the work that needed to be done, and demonstrating our progress to the client and the end of each sprint.
December, 2006 – July, 2016
9 yrs 8 mos
Senior Software Engineer
International Medical Group (IMG)
When I joined IMG, it was as an independent consultant. I was asked to help customize the health claim system that they had purchased from my previous employer (LCS down below). IMG was an international company and needed to be able to manage insurance claims in varying currencies; the LCS application was designed to only process claims in USD.
This was an exciting opportunity, and to be honest, a bit refreshing to only have to support one client. Previously at LCS, I had to manage 70+ customers – all with unique needs and issues. But now I could focus on providing the best possible experience I could to a dedicated set of users!
During my time at IMG, I was able to add a graphical interface to the claim system (it was still written in COBOL and running on PCs but we made it look more “modern”), streamlined the claim processing page so that it was more efficient and allowed for an unlimited number of claim lines to be processed (the OEM version of LCS only allowed 5 lines to be processed at a time).
The biggest accomplishment I had was rewriting the data layer to point to SQL Server instead of the original COBOL flat files. This was a HUGE improvement on performance and opened up the doors for ad-hoc reporting thru SQL queries.
In the end, I was transitioning away from coding and getting more involved in requirements gathering and feature creation.
I learned A LOT with my time at IMG – and this opportunity paved the way for me to really embrace Product Management.
June, 1994 – December, 2006
12 yrs 7 mos
Senior Software Engineer
Logical Claim Solutions (A Plexis Company)
I began my full-time development career at a small software company in Matteson, IL. Initially I was responsible for developing updates to their health insurance claim processing application. It was (and still is) written in COBOL and ran on PCs (you read that correct – not on mainframes but on ordinary PCs).
As my experience grew, I became responsible for:
– Backup schedules (due to my previous experience at UTC)
– Assisted the Help Desk in triaging tickets
– Created user documentation for the application (none existed at the time)
– Trained new users on the application
– Interviewed users on new features and documented the requirements
– Helped the Sales team create marketing collateral
– Hosted learning sessions and panel Q/A at our yearly conference
Looking back, it was a fantastic opportunity to learn all about eliciting feedback, building roadmaps, developing new features, and launching products.
May 1989 – June 1994
5 yrs 1 mo
Computer Operator
Union Tank Car Company
What started off as a summer Intern opportunity led to a permanent position that lasted throughout my time at college. While at UTC, I was responsible for daily incremental backups, monthly full backups, generating reports, and inspecting/repairing the data collection terminals that were strategically placed throughout the manufacturing plant.
Eventually I was given an opportunity as a Junior Developer maintaining applications written in DIBOL (that is not a type-o) on the Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) VAX/VMS computers.
August, 1988 – December, 1992
Bachelors Degree in Information Systems and Computer Programming
Purdue University – Calumet
My ISCP studies included:
– Systems Analysis and Design
– Business Data Communications
– PL/I
– Visual Basic
– Assembler
– COBOL
– dBase
– Computer Graphics
My journey is about understanding people, anticipating their needs, and guiding projects towards success using a combination of technical expertise and empathy.
Contact Me
Got a question? Get in touch!
I’m here to answer your questions – so let’s set up a time to meet.
Phone
(815) 919-5078