Russell Olsen is the VP of Product Management at Phytel, which provides health care organizations with proven population health software solutions. Russell and his product management team work on a product that helps healthcare providers better collaborate with their patients to improve care.
Always eager to learn new and efficient product development processes that will help his team and company, Russell enrolled in Femgineer Ship It Course.
Throughout the course Russell learned valuable techniques such as how to create mental models, paper prototypes, and user stories to help with product definition and feature prioritization.
Going through the process of creating mental models, helped Russell and his team to understand their target customers. His engineers gained a deeper understanding of what the customers needs were. The mental models he developed in the course also helped his team develop a better vision of what their initial prototype would look like.
After Russell went through the exercise of creating a paper prototype, he used the paper prototype to perform usability tests. He sent the paper prototype out to teams on customer sites and observed how customers interacted with it.
The feedback form customer teams was positive, and it provided further validation for the product’s workflow and value.This allowed him and his team to move on to the next step in product development: writing user stories.
Through Femgineer’s Ship It Course, Russell and his team gained valuable insight about their product, because they learned how to implement every step in the product development process.
“I’ve learned that every idea that comes into the development process has to be treated as it’s own little startup.” – Russell Olsen, VP of Product Management at Phytel
When it came time to start building out the product, Russell referred back to his lectures on reducing complexity. Sharing his learning with the engineers on his team. It helped them to focus on the needs of their customers, and develop a more efficient development process.
Russell has received extremely positive feedback from both executives and the development team. Executives feel more assured that they are pursuing the right idea, because the assumptions about it have been validated. While engineers are saving time by focusing on building features within the product that their customers need.
Russell is grateful for having enrolled in the course. Throughout the course he’s had the opportunity to practice concepts covered in lecture through the hands-on exercises and office hours. He also found the ability to collaborate and hold discussions with instructors such as Poornima Vijayashanker invaluable. The structure and guidance has made him a better VP of Product Management!
If you’re a VP of Product like Russell and want to see your product team succeed then check out our Ship It Course learn more about the course here. Applications are due this Friday February 12, 2016!
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