Tag: Product

According to Wikipedia, Product Management is an organizational lifecycle function within a company dealing with the planning, forecasting and production, or marketing of a product or products at all stages of the product lifecycle. Similarly, product lifecycle management (PLM) integrates people, data, processes and business systems. It provides product information for companies and their extended supply chain enterprise.

As a product manager, I manage the strategic and tactical support of product, process and services. Also, I manage product budgets and costs, work with resources and vendors, provide status on products, produce gap analysis, and perform win/loss analyses. I provide strategic planning through the use of competitor analysis, business cases, and key performance indicators. I build internal product awareness and support from key stakeholders, and work through the product funding process with leadership. I also provide coordination with risk management to ensure proper risk mitigation, avoidance, or acceptance, and work with organizational leadership to plan, define, market, and launch product and services.

From building business cases to developing products, below is a list of some of the FI Products that I’ve managed:

• New Debit Chip Card
• IFTTT Savings
• Mobile peer-to-peer transfers
• Online Account to Account transfers

Managing these products involved creating business cases, identifying and confirming metrics, developing business plans, completing business analyses, marketing analyses, and product/service benefits. I work directly with and manage resources & vendor manager, support and operations. I perform product planning, testing, and implementation.

Mark Langley of the PMI states, “Portfolio management is the centralized management of one or more portfolios that enable executive management to meet organizational goals and objectives through efficient decision making on portfolios, projects, programs and operations.”

Portfolio Management, what I do…
I work with organizational leadership to understand organizational strategy, priority, and allocation. I am in charge of portfolio governance, making policy, identifying strategic goals that align with organizational needs.

I compare ongoing products, programs, and projects to aid in reporting, prioritizing, balancing, and managing portfolio strategic change. I work with Program and Project Managers to schedule, allocate resources, and track performance for projects and programs that are housed within the portfolio. I work with PM’s to understand, monitor, and control risk and track performance within the portfolio.

My Portfolio work has been focused in Retail and Treasury Management. I worked with the executive leadership and direct reports to map out each fiscal year plan for building new products and services across the US enterprise. I sat with direct reports to create business cases, planned and scheduled project implementation, and worked directly with procurement and vendors in assigning resources. I established communication policies, provided training, kept project documentation current, and interfaced with EPMO to ensure projects followed enterprise standards.

I prioritize project work for sequencing, funding, and implementation; review project scope; and track work breakdown structures to timelines, as well as budgets, to ensure schedule and project success. Also, I validate all milestones and deliverables through completion to meet their sponsors’ requirements.

Back in 2011 through 2012, I had the privilege of managing the GTM integration of the M&I treasury management products, services, customers and accounts into BMO Harris Bank. This included the following products and services – ACH, Lockbox, Remote Capture, File Transfer, Wires, Customer Experience, Collections, Disbursements, Correspondent Banking, Healthcare, OLBB, and Liquidity Management. Each of these products/services was a project in itself and wrapped up to me as the Program Manager.

In 2016 and 2017, I managed the Retail Strategy Product and Segments from inception to implementation; this included the following projects: CD and Money Market Products, New Checking Products, New Lending partners (Freddie Mac), New Investors, New Lending Products, HMDA updates, Addition to ATM Network, Electronic Deposit Account opening, and update to retail promo-codes.

From 2017 to 2019, I managed the BMO Harris Bank/1871 Partnership Program, small business account conversions to new systems, updates to SalesForce CRM, introduction of contactless debit cards (to the US market), and system updates to move from LIBOR to prime rates.

I deliver products and services to market.

Delivering projects is not about using a single software development methodology, it’s about using the best development method that suits your project, the stakeholders, the organization, and the client need. I have successfully managed many types of software development projects using methodologies from Waterfall to Iterative and Incremental Development.

I am the person that takes leadership ideas, dreams, and strategies to fruition. The execution of a new product into the market is done through me. The PM is the person that works with organizational, customer, and procured stakeholders to ensure that the product meets requirements, budget, time, and quality expectations.

The PM is the resource that raises risks, issues, possibilities, solutions, corrections and actions to leadership for a final decision.

It’s not always about the project methodology — please keep in mind that methods are only tools — it’s how the tools are used to make the final product that counts.

I am the person that is accountable for the project meeting organizational objectives. I am considered the voice of the client and am responsible for meeting the client needs within moral and ethical constraints. I will not do anything that is considered illegal, immoral, or unjust.

I work with project constraints – Resources, time, cost, and scope. I follow the corporate organizational process and enterprise environmental factors which is a fancy way of saying that I follow an organization’s plans, policies, procedures, guidelines, values, mission, and objectives.

Project managers are usually responsible for planning, executing, monitoring, controlling and closing a project. Since projects, by definition, have a beginning and an end, they are not permanent in length and are handed off to a customer, Operations, or Product Manager as part of final delivery.

All this work must be expertly managed to deliver the on-time, on-budget results, learning, and integration that organizations need.

My tenure with Project Management goes back to 1997 when I managed part of the US version of Canada’s mBanx, the virtual online bank which has evolved into BMO Harris Bank’s online banking presence.

Recent projects that I’ve successfully managed include:

• Branch Activity Board – Bring unified activities across the US enterprise
• Retail product projects – New Savings products
• Updates to Online Banking
• Small Business Online Banking
• Standardization of credit facility risk types
• EMV Debit Cards
• Customer Credit Pre-approvals
• Integration of M&I Global Treasury Customers, Accounts,s Products and Services into BMO Harris Bank
• Customer account alignment – (numerous from M&As)
• Credit Streamlining
• Past Due Remediation and reporting
• Over Draft Litigation