When:  Thursday, May 19 (5:30pm - 7:30pm)

Building Faster Horses: Taking Over an Existing Software Product

Product Managers, or Product "CEOs", are tasked with running a business within a business. Each product has its own life cycle that begins with the birth of an idea and ages through its design and construction, grows to "walk" on its own and hopefully lives a long and meaningful life adored by those who know it. Just like the product grows, the team that supports it must grows as well!

In this presentation Stacy will discuss his experiences transitioning from a software consulting company to take over a product it developed for a client as the technical product manager. By the time of this PMI meeting nearly 90 days will have passed since Stacy started his new position over the product, and he'll talk through the lessons learned and strategy followed to land, learn, evaluate, educate and execute in this new environment with a product just reaching its first year in production.

Stacy Vicknair is not a hammer, and that's a good thing.

As Technical Product Manager for EME, an electronic medical evaluation product by Prime Occupational Medicine, Stacy has to leverage his multi-tool skill set to help define and measure the company's product goals, align the priority of work towards those goals, and to do it all while improving the technical quality of the product. These skills come from Stacy's experiences as a small business owner, his six years in software consulting and his 10 total years working in software.

Stacy is certified as a Professional Scrum Master (PSM-I), Distinguished Toastmaster (DTM) and has numerous Microsoft certifications for software development and application life cycle management. To give back, Stacy has spoken for local user groups and conferences in Louisiana and Texas and has been involved with the leadership for the Baton Rouge .NET User Group, the Baton Rouge Architecture Group, and Toastmasters International District 68. His focus on giving back led Microsoft to award Stacy with its Most Valuable Professional award six years in a row from 2009 to 2014. Today Stacy remains active in the community by planning a Project Management track for Baton Rouge SQL Saturday 2016 and by acting as a small business mentor and the Technology Chair for SCORE's Baton Rouge chapter.