Agile Methodologies and a Passion for Customer-Centric Design
What is it?
A product management approach that fuses structure with flexibility where Agile is more than just delivery cadence, and customer-centric design is more than good intentions. It’s where hypotheses meet real-world behavior and evolve fast.
What does it do for me?
You get a product partner who connects people, tools, and business goals translating fuzzy problems into backlog-ready stories, grounded in reality and aligned with quarterly objectives.
Agile gives you rhythm. Design gives you direction
Agile frameworks like Scrum and Kanban keep delivery predictable. But true value comes from combining that rhythm with sharp observation and iterative design.
When we suspected at Madison Square Garden that missing uniforms were the result of staff routing them away from the cleaning flow due to personal time constraints, I worked with the ops team to embed RFID scanners on return racks. It wasn’t until we visualized the workflow that we saw the real issue: outsourced cleaners, not staff, were the source of loss.
That problem wasn’t solved in Jira it was solved in the hallway, on a walkthrough, with a flow diagram and a hypothesis we were ready to disprove.
From user story to kitchen tray designing for the unexpected
Building the Luxury Suites Portal wasn’t just a UI challenge. We had to unlock and extend POS functionality to trace every order from online menu → kitchen queue → delivery → invoice. That meant surfacing undocumented functionality, modeling data flow, and ensuring new business rules didn’t break old assumptions.
- Lucidchart for modeling order journeys
- User stories and acceptance criteria in Jira for integration points
- Backlog grooming to handle evolving feedback and sprint scoping
What made the solution succeed wasn’t perfection it was the willingness to test, adapt, and respect the complexity of the operational environment.
Design isn’t always about beauty. Design includes fit
At Planet, we aimed to build deep integrations with POS vendors via APIs. Sounds clean, right? But business timelines didn’t agree. So we pivoted.
The result:
- A lightweight desktop client that read exported receipts
- A user-friendly kiosk for tourists to complete VAT claims on-site
- A 30% reduction in chargebacks by validating eligibility in real time
We aligned design with strategic OKRs reducing fraud, improving UX, and accelerating international adoption.
Data-driven ≠ dashboard-driven
At Sol Systems, our initial plan was to use third-party utility APIs to access household energy data. But provider inconsistency and cost made the solution brittle.
So we pivoted:
- A property-based calculator using square footage, HVAC data, and local weather
- Monthly usage breakdowns personalized for the user
- Clear, non-intrusive UX patterns that avoided dependency on third-party data
This solution aligned with our quarterly goal: extend reach to households not covered by utility integrations efficiently, accurately, and at scale.
Protecting priorities = delivering value
Stakeholders don’t always agree. And urgency doesn’t always equal importance. I’ve worked through sprints where marketing wanted last-minute copy swaps, ops flagged urgent client issues, and engineering proposed spontaneous innovation spikes.
I listened. I tracked. But I also anchored decisions to:
- Strategic themes for the quarter
- Forecasted value delivery based on effort vs impact
- Impact analysis from user behavior and support data
With tools like Confluence, story mapping, and regular sprint reviews, I kept the work honest and the team aligned.
Looking for a product partner who builds with urgency, earns trust fast and keeps every ‘what’ tied to a strategic ‘why’??
Let’s connect. Whether your challenge is aligning backlog to OKRs, designing for real customer behaviors, or untangling assumptions with data I’ll help turn the fog into forward motion.
