1. What's been the most defining moment in your tech career so far?
It's hard to define one — my most defining & meaningful moments have been when I have launched a new product. Getting something out that users adopt and is solving a problem with business impact feels good. The mammoth cross collaboration and teamwork that goes in to get something out the door is often heightened as team members work to remove blockers with a clock ticking! It often brings out the best of innovation and problem-solving skills when the adrenalin kicks in. I have never been part of a straightforward, smooth path for a product launch — tell me a Product Manager who has and I will tell you they are lying! It's not for the faint hearted but the sense of achievement and relief is immense — I remember them all and each of them come with a ton of learning.
2. What's the core mission of the product you're working on?
Currently I am working in Agency tech space where I own the delivery & strategy for many products Agents use in their day-to-day work in the Sales & Service flows. The core mission is to migrate these products to a new platform so that the end users have less products to use in their day to day. We are also helping them do their job better with automation and intelligence to gain efficiencies. I have to balance the pace of the migration, keeping the current systems available at all times whilst collaborating with my peers to ensure the new products are fit for purpose. The roll out strategy is complex — in fact everything about it is complex but I love a challenge. It's important for me to have a clear path forward so the multiple Digital Product Teams have clarity and we are all rowing in the same direction towards the same North Star.
3. How does the digital product model empower your team to innovate?
Well firstly we look at problems first before solutioning. Nothing should come to our Digital Product teams as a fully baked solution ready to deliver with a project plan!! We start at the very beginning understanding the problem and customers through data and insights. The teams are autonomous and cross functional which means they are empowered to help solution along with Engineers, UX and Platform Consultants peers. Quite often there are many ways to solve a problem. Thinking of a solution with MVP mindset also allows the team to get something out small to test and learn being able to iterate or pivot where needed. It's a beautiful process that focuses in on the customer. Even with the best brains everything built is an assumption to be validated — and getting it into the hands of the user helps us validate our assumptions.
4. What outcomes are you seeing in terms of speed, quality, or user value?
In this model I am definitely seeing a great consistency & maturity in teams thinking about user and business value. They are asking the right questions up front to ensure they are prioritizing the high value work first. They are more curious and using ceremonies like Discovery & Framing to have a collective & grounded understanding of the problem and users before writing any stories. They are also getting more sophisticated in defining impactful KPIS and measuring them on regular basis. Our internal tools like DataDog help our DPMs understand and measure user behavior — that blended with UX insights, user feedback forums and more and more people living into POCs and pilots we are onto a winner — focusing in on user and business value is really evident across the board.
5. What's a bold prediction you'd make about the future of digital transformation?
I am not sure this is a bold prediction — more of where I see us going and that is instead of having a technology arm as a defined organization in the company — the core operating model will have technology, data and product mindset at its foundation. So the relationship between Digital cross functional teams and business stakeholders might look a bit different in the future. Engineering will change at pace with AI but I think Product will stay similar with the same core mindset focused in on customer and business problems but hopefully with more advanced set of AI tools and real time user behavior metrics to help. I predict those changes will come fast across all industries and will just become the "norm". I am delighted that in Allstate we are positioned to continually get better and change at a superfast rate.
For a bolder prediction (and what I would hope for my daughters!) I think AI will move from helping a user through to doing it for us by embracing AI Agents. That might mean a shorter working week for us humans and instead of spending it in bed or on the sofa we will be mandated to spend X hours a week in our local communities giving back.
