Highlights:At Troop, I was the first and only PM hired. I was employee number 6. When I joined we had just passed a $5m Series A round. I was instrumental and crucial in helping to plan, build, execute, test and launch the new vision for Troop 2.0. We took the features of a B2B Enterprise SAAS. We created a B2C implementation with a licensing structure, opening up the features from purely corporate clients to the general public in a new, predictive manner. I used PLG principles to do rapid iterations of new features and gauge their effectiveness on potential users, which then informed our design and allowed us to lock in features rapidly. This product is on the cusp of revolutionizing the travel planning industry as we know it, and I was instrumental in its development. The rapid development and value creation from $5m to $70m is evidence of this. After a year of developing this new platform that is more, we have gained multiple Fortune 500 companies as clients and excited our investors enough with the new platform that we are currently raising a $70m series B round.

Skills:Agile, Product Management, SDLC, Requirements Elicitation, Risk Mitigation

Goal:I am currently an Agile-certified Product Manager with 10 years of experience. I aim to get PMP Certified and get my MBA within the next 2 years. My 2-year goal is to grow from a Senior Product Manager to become a Lead Product Manager, and my 5-year goal is to become a Director/SVP of Product. After attaining my MBA I would like to work myself up to a CTO/CPO/CIO position within the next 5 to 10 years.

Membership:Computer Society of South Africa Honorary Lifetime Member

Certification:Professional Scrum Product Owner (PSPO I) from Scrum.org

Honor:The software I have worked on has won multiple high-profile awards. These awards have not been directly conferred upon me though, as is the nature of them.

Enterprise Product Manager 09/2021 - current
Troop, Remote, Texas United States
Industry: Corporate Travel
I am currently the Enterprise Product Manager for Troop. I joined as employee number 6 and the first member of the Product team. We have expanded tenfold and we are growing daily with multiple Fortune 100 clients, on the verge of launching our new platform and heading into our $70m Series B. It has been a wild ride so far!
Built a process framework from scratch and implemented an agile structure as well as a GIT flow release strategy. My focus has varied during the growth phase and has included : - Requirements Gathering and Analysis - Industry and Product Research - Client Feedback sessions - New Features design and input - Existing feature enhancements - Bug and QA verification and queue management - Client liaison - Strategic road mapping - Stakeholder alignment - Narrative building/Requirements documentation ownership - Impact & Risk Analysis - Facilitating workshops and client meetings - Executive reporting - Release and Delivery Coordination - Manage the scrum process and the dev team - Facilitating standups and alignment meetings - Process mapping - Capacity planning - Priority alignment and enforcement Skills: Product Development · Agile Leadership · Customer Journeys · Software Product Management · Software as a Service (SaaS) · Process Improvement · Agile & Waterfall Methodologies · Product Road Mapping · Product Management · Requirements Analysis--
Technical Product Owner 10/2020 - 10/2021
Dotmodus (Contracting to Dentsu), Cape Town, Western Cape South Africa
Industry: Marketing and Advertising
Embedded in Dentsu Aegis Network. I am the Product Owner for the Data Refinery team within their Media Ecosystem. We do massive-scale data analytics targeting impressions by top brands and extrapolating the information and trends to make informed decisions.
I am responsible for defining epics and stories and prioritizing the team backlog to streamline the execution of program and sprint priorities while maintaining the conceptual and technical integrity of the features or components for the team. I have a significant role in quality control and I am the only team member empowered to accept stories/features as done. In summary, my responsibilities include: - Preparation for and participation in PI/sprint planning - Heavy involvement in program backlog refinement - Update the team backlog and typically review and contribute to the program vision, Roadmap, and content presentation. - During planning I am involved with epic and story definition, providing the clarifications necessary to assist the team with their story estimates and sequencing. - Drafting the team’s specific objectives for the upcoming PI/sprint - Maintain the team backlog with input from the solution architect and other stakeholders. I have the primary responsibility for building, editing, and maintaining the team backlog. - Prioritizing the backlog based on user value, time, and other team dependencies - Apply Behavior-Driven Development (BDD) – I collaborate with my team to detail stories with acceptance criteria and acceptance. - I am the only team member who can accept stories as done. This includes validation that the story meets acceptance criteria and has the appropriate, persistent acceptance tests, and that it otherwise complies with its Definition of Done (DoD). In so doing, I also assure a level of quality, focusing primarily on fitness for use - I participate in team demos and retrospectives – as the person responsible for requirements, I have an essential role in the team demo, reviewing and accepting stories. I also participate in the Retrospective. Skills: Product Development · Agile Leadership · Customer Journeys · Software Product Management · Product Road Mapping · Product Management--
Product Manager 03/2020 - 10/2020
HansaWorld, Remote, Gauteng South Africa
Industry: ERP/CRM and Accounting Software
HansaWorld is a multinational software developer specializing in Enterprise Resource Planning and Customer Relationship Management. With three decades of experience and innovation, our software automates business processes for companies all over the world, and provides the best business management solutions for a wide range of industries.
Key responsibilities: - Active market and industry research to keep up with industry developments. - App store optimization for multiple products on the App stores of different platforms. - Work together with the developers to create a software product that is successful in various markets. Translate the software into local languages. - Ensure the software complies with local legislation and business practices. - Provide support, training and consulting services to local customers and partners. - Conduct quality assurance testing. - Write requirements and specifications for necessary modifications, based on research and stakeholder input. - Report, verify and track the progress of bugs/wishes. - Be the main point of contact for all product-related issues - Maintain downloadable program versions online. Skills: Product Development · Software Product Management · Product Management--
IT Product Manager (Agile Product Owner) 01/2018 - 12/2018
Payspace.com, Cape Town, Western Cape South Africa
Industry: Human Capital Management
I was brought on board to lead the redesign and modernization of the legacy system. We transitioned from an on-premise legacy system to a fully distributed cloud-based system that was fully redesigned from the ground up to be a next-generation system. I led this redesign and implementation.
I am a member of our agile development team, working on enterprise-grade software that serves businesses from over 30 countries. I am responsible for defining stories and prioritizing the team backlog to streamline the execution of program priorities while maintaining the conceptual and technical integrity of the features or components for the team. I have a significant role in quality control and stakeholder management. My responsibilities include: • I drive product development in line with company goals, vision, and business architecture. • I inform product development decisions by analyzing business needs, evaluating consumer feedback, and assessing competitor offerings. • I research, compile and communicate possible system enhancements to the development team to ascertain feasibility. • I identify, define, and relook at processes and procedures with regard to daily operational requirements and ongoing projects to ensure optimal management of both system requirements and stakeholder management. • I maintain a prioritized Product Backlog to maximize the ROI of the product and development teams. • I manage the entire project life cycle using agile methodologies • I manage the prioritization of development work to achieve strategic intent, whilst meeting operational requirements. • I manage stakeholder expectations continuously • I organize and facilitate sprint planning, backlog grooming, sprint review, and retrospective meetings. • I continually track the status of items on the backlog and intervene when issues arise to ensure timeous relation of problems thus ensuring optimal performance of the system and the team • I take ownership of release planning ensuring all relevant approvals are obtained on items entering production and go-live dates are met in line with expectations. • Closely monitor team capacity, understanding the team velocity and how this may impact commitment. Skills: Product Development · Software Development · Customer Journeys · Software Product Management · Product Road Mapping · Product Management--
Co-Founder 09/2018 - 10/2021
Apptic Technologies, Johannesburg, Gauteng South Africa
Industry: Software Development
A custom software company that I founded with external investors. Rapid Application Development is leveraged to create custom solutions to client specifications.
Building custom software solutions for companies. We leverage rapid application development technology on a combination of low-code and full-stack platforms with an agile approach to deliver enterprise-grade software solutions to companies that wish to streamline their internal processes or build customer-facing systems. We are looking to disrupt industries with functional and useable software. Technologies such as Mendix are used, with a combination of proprietary code. Clients are in the medical, security, and finance industries. Skills: Product Development · Agile Leadership · Customer Journeys · Software Product Management · Product Road Mapping · Product Management--
Product Owner / Technical Business Analyst 04/2016 - 12/2017
Comotion Business Solutions, Cape Town, Western Cape South Africa
Industry: Fintech
I initially started here as a Java Developer but moved over to a Business Analysis role after filling the role on a project. I enjoyed this so much that I made the career shift to a full-time Product Owner.
I am responsible for requirements elicitation with the aim of developing technical solutions for business problems. I achieve this by requirements by capturing, analyzing and documenting requirements My duties currently include : - Working with Stakeholders to help develop the product strategy and business cases. - Building and maintaining excellent Stakeholder relationships. - Actively complete research to keep abreast of industry and best practices. - Assist with product/system/process documentation to support Users and Business continuity. - Assist with product/system/process testing to support Development Team and Business continuity. - Overall owner of the product backlog, keeping the Business and Tech Teams informed of work delivered and work to come. - Facilitate, implement, and lead the implementation of Sprint Planning, Grooming, Sprint Review, Retrospective, and Daily Standup. - Deep understanding of scrum framework and agile methodologies. - Working with Agile Scrum delivery methods. - Requirements capture and specification techniques - Conducting user research and working with teams to develop wireframes and specifications for new product features. - Working with remotely located Stakeholders and/or Development Teams. - An understanding of software development, including development experience and the ability to work closely with technology teams in scheduling functional and non-functional requirements. - Proficiency with various diagramming methods and UML, BPM, Gherkin, Cucumber, BDD, and CI. Tools : Confluence, Trello, Jira, Toggl, Git, Amazon Web Services (extensive understanding), Draw.io, Atom, Linux, CakePHP, Wildfly, Mendix, Slack, and an extensive list of other technologies.--
Web Developer 01/2012 - 06/2015
GP Consultants, Johannesburg, Gauteng South Africa
Industry: Information Technology
Web Development using HTML, PHP, JavaScript as well as CMS systems including Joomla with a specific high and low-level focus on the Magento E-Commerce platform Systems Architecture and Development on in-house as well as cloud based servers.(Linux Based).
Hired to improve and maintain the existing website as well as increase traffic to the site and build out new client sites. - Maintained the current website and added more appealing features - Redesigned sections of the website to ensure a more attractive and user-friendly experience - Created custom HTML emails for clients/in-house newsletters and invitations for distribution to our databases - Designed custom graphics - Updated website content on a daily basis - Demonstrated the ability to work diligently under pressure to meet deadlines - Managed all stages of Web site creation for clientele, from initial design and architecture to development, deployment, and management of Web sites. Completed a total of 8 projects for 6 clients, representing over 400 employees. - Created databases utilizing PHP5, PDO and MySQL that streamlined trucking operations from creating, assigning, and tracking truck loads, offering a paperless solution, increasing customer satisfaction by 60% - Designed and developed web applications and user interfaces for various clients. Projects ranged from setting the backend of e-commerce websites using Magento that created a global presence - Prioritized and fixed site-related design problems and took the initiative to implement new features based on feedback from users. - Developed original e-commerce website and Web applications, encompassing design, coding, testing, and maintenance.--

Pearson Institute of Higher Education 01/2012 - 01/2016
Cape Town, Western Cape, South Africa
Degree: Bachelor's Degree
Major:Information Technology
Minor:Computer Science
The qualification is validated through the University of Cambridge International Examination and externally moderated and quality assured by the Cardiff Metropolitan University in the United Kingdom. See information: https://allqs.saqa.org.za/showQualification.php?id=80887 https://sastudy.co.za/ctis-affiliations-and-credentials/

Richard Saunders Resume Resume, Product, Product Manager, Agile, Scrum