Recent Projects
Travel and Expense Modernization
Force Optimization
My favorite projects are ones where I can create order out of chaos in a way that’s really useful to my stakeholders. Below is some more information on recent projects where I was able to create positive change.
About: Intuit wanted to modernize its travel and expense programs to meet the needs of the modern business traveler. As the travel landscape has changed significantly in the post-Covid world, these programs needed to be reimagined from the ground up.
Objective: Reimagine the end-to-end business travel and expense process. Create a program with a world-class experience where employees felt supported and empowered throughout their journey.
My Role: Using data and employee feedback collected throughout the year prior, I made a wish list of improvements all geared towards created a more personalized experience for the traveler. Tasks ranged from updating quick reference guides to provide better self-service support, to creating travel guides for each Intuit office, and implementing system improvements for smoother expense reporting. Once our wish list was compiled and a 12-month timeline mapped out, I began reaching out to employees to gather baseline customer satisfaction metrics, and set up 1 on 1 interviews to gain in depth feedback on the current experience and ways to improve it.
Outcome: After interviewing over 2 dozen employees, we identified key areas for transformation and were better able to prioritize tasking. My central work shifted to creating travel guides and updating guides on our intranet. Working cross-functionally with the travel and expense teams, executive assistants, and key employee experience partners, these materials are now easily accessible and adopted across the company.
About: The Naval Special Warfare Force Optimization office coordinates the optimization, restructure, and transformation of U. S. Navy SEAL Teams, comprising a force of 10,000 military and civilian members.
Objective: The office tracks 7-10 simultaneously projects that span the Naval Special Warfare enterprise. With so many moving parts, the team needed an easy way to organize, view, and update each project.
My Role: After meeting with my team and other stakeholders, I began working through each project’s documentation, and entering all tasks, dates, and points of contact into DevOps. Using robust metadata, each project was easily searchable. Using Kanban boards to view task status gave the team and an at-a-glance view of each project’s status.
Outcome: With a better way to visualize the data, the team is now able to easily update each project and provide status updates to key stakeholders across the Naval Special Warfare Enterprise.
The Learning Management System
About: The Naval Special Warfare Center is the training command for basic and advanced U.S. Navy SEAL training. Since 2019, the command had sought to upgrade many of its training courses to include virtual classrooms and pave the way for hybrid training. When I joined the team, they were using the LMS 365 system, a third party learning platform built of Microsoft SharePoint. We quickly found the platform to be cumbersome and our users were reluctant to use it. By the end of 2020, we decided to divest from this program and build the learning management system (LMS) in house.
Objective: We wanted to build simple, effective classroom tools for students, instructors, and schoolhouse administrators. We knew our users enjoyed using Microsoft Teams and used it as a base to begin building the new product. We also incorporated other Microsoft tools including Forms, PowerApps, and PowerBI.
My Role: As we began to build the new system, it became clear we needed someone to manage the project and enter user stories and tasks into DevOps. Using Scrum as our framework, I began to map out the project and work with the team to prioritize tasking and plan sprints. In addition to serving as the product owner, I also wrote after action reports, white papers, and standard operating procedures.
Outcome: Once we were organized in DevOps, the team was able to focus on building the minimum viable product, which we were able to do within 2 sprint periods, about 1 month. With the baseline built, we were able to begin bringing courses online, get better user feedback, and build new features.