Frugality Flashcards
QUESTION: Tell me about a time when you had to work with limited time or resources.
Title: Advocated to build vs. buy
Situation:
Recognition that our solution didn’t complete the customer journey (wanted attribution)
Customer reallocating budget on solutions that demonstrate campaign effectiveness
Executive team evaluating buy vs. build options but “buy” options were cost prohibitive in my opinion
Obstacle/Task:
Required a deep understanding of what our customers needed
Action:
Interviewed customers to understand what they were looking for in an attribution solution
Not just commercial pods, but in-program attribution (not found in market)
Developed a financial model that projected expense less than $100k in dev cost
Prototyped the solution using QLIK, Alteryx and salesforce workflows to simulate product
Created proposal with financial model and 4 devs (2 off shore) to materialize MVP
Communicated a product vision, budget and prototype success to stakeholders for approval
Applied an agile approach to incrementally develop and delivery on schedule to build trust and confidence
Results:
Launched an application in 6 months and on-schedule
Came in under budget
Recognized 5 consecutive QoQ revenue growth
Closed loop on customer need keeping them within our ecosystem of applications
Product innovation awards by FUTURE and IAB
What this story demonstrates (skills, principles):
Frugality
QUESTION: Tell me about a time where you turned down more resources to complete an assignment.
Title: How do you eat an elephant (piece by piece)?
Situation:
Galvanize a team by conveying a strong vision and picture of success
Organically drive passion and velocity through effective communication
Positioning individuals and teams for success; delivering for the customer
Tasked with fulfilling a contractual client roadmap containing 36 small to large features and capabilities
Business expectation to complete work within 1 quarter (w/o product input)
Unable to bill customer until list is complete and deemed “product ready”
Customer planning to terminate competitor’s service and transition asap
Obstacle:
Other teams, like customer success, mobilizing around completion date
Team was discouraged by an unrealistic timeline
No change in resourcing or headcount
Business pressure to generate revenue
Action:
Decomposed features and developed a matrix with each functional team
Design, Front-end, API, Engine, Database, QA
Hosted several full day working sessions with QA, Dev and Designers
Each respective workstream provided estimates
Arrived at a 9 month estimate
Achieved buy-in from functional owners tied back to accountability
Communicated revised timeline to respective stakeholders to reset expectations
Results:
Finished one month behind schedule due to customer scope creep
Incrementally introduced features when ready building team confidence
Capabilities enriched the product and benefited the broader customer base
Co-founder acknowledge team’s contribution during all hands
Activated second largest contract in company history
Empowered team through vision, accountability, communication, and execution
What this story demonstrates (skills, principles):
Hire and develop the best.
Earn Trust. Allowed everyone on the team to contribute to the timeline
Frugality
QUESTION (2nd): Tell me about a time when you had to work with limited time or resources.
Title: Automated Takeaways (TODO)
