UX in a scrum environment
In January 2007, Classmates migrated from a waterfall development process to a Scrum (Agile) environment. As UX Manager, I developed and evangelized a strategy to integrate UX Into the Scrum process.
Later, I drove UX as Site Experience Product Owner, leading two global, cross-functional teams in major project development. Despite the unusual hours required by this, I greatly enjoyed working with the Hyderabad, India, team members, and coordinating between their efforts and Seattle's. We must've been a good match, because project velocity increased 50% within the first three months.
Alex's awareness of best practices for working with global distributed teams has led to smoother relationships across remote centers and higher productivity. Alex is a true pleasure to work with.
—Geethika Gummadi, Sr. Software Engineer, Classmates
what, where, & when
User Experience Manager
United Online (Classmates.com, MemoryLane.com)
Seattle, Washington
2008-2011
keywords
Social network, social media, SNA (social network analysis), IA (information architecture), UX, Scrum (Agile), UX strategy, content strategy, usability, SEO (search engine optimization), user-centered design, taxonomy, C2C, B2C, Visio, Omniture SiteCatalyst, Google Analytics, Yahoo Web Analytics, data warehouse, web analytics, Rally, Pajek, Microsoft Office (especially PowerPoint, Excel), presentations, road map, competitive research.
