Biography
Amos Ridenour
My first experience with Scrum is with manufacturing. We used a Kanban board to run a department of 20 people. We knew that to be successful we had to "cycle" the board each week. That meant that all jobs that came in on Monday needed to be out to the customer for approval or in production by Sunday of that week. This gave the department the ability to flex staffing each week while servicing our internal customers and end-customer. It also allowed to the department to take additional work from acquisitions with only current staffing or minimal staffing from the acquired company.
After getting training and certification, my roles are primarily as a Product Owner in the software industry.
My current role allows me to implement Scrum in a marketing department.
Work experience
MediaBeacon, Director, Marketing Communications
March 2015 - Present, Minneapolis, MN, US
Oversaw Marketing Communications department.
MediaBeacon, Director, OEM and Outreach
September 2011 - March 2015, Minneapolis, MN, US
This project is a software development effort to integrate MediaBeacon with Adobe InDesign.
This project used the Scrum methodology that aligned with the MediaBeacon platform iteration sprint. A partner was utilized to develop the InDesign portion of the software. Standups were used to update the in-house development staff that includes an office in Belarus. The partner received the product backlog multiple times per week. Software builds are performed nightly. The partner delivered builds as needed and they were incorporated into the MediaBeacon platform.
I attended all daily standups and did all documentation for the team (not typical for a Product Owner). I was also the primary contact for Sales and the partner. I collaborate with a marketing communications resource to create, and maintain, a manual for the product.
The software is currently being used by an international toy manufacturer. The customer was given builds on a weekly basis and iteration review meetings were held with the primary stakeholders for demos and feedback on previous builds. A major german car manufacturer, an international magazine publisher and an online fashion luxury destination are all scheduled to start using it in 2013.
This project has provided 1,500 hours of Scrum project experience and is ongoing.
A second project is for a large OEM opportunity. A multinational technology and consulting corporation wants to integrate their web content management system with MediaBeacon. This partner already uses Scrum with a 4 week sprint. MediaBeacon currently uses a 2 week sprint, but we have a dedicated development resource for this corporation and we are able to deliver finished builds in the corporation's sprint schedule. Their requirements include Globalization in 25+ languages, meeting accessibility requirements and adding support for thier LDAP, database and web content management products. The final result will be an integrated product offering that the partner can sell with the web content management system. We use continuous improvement to deliver builds every night and on demand in under 60 minutes. The features related to this corporation are part of the backlog and discussed in the daily scrum.
This is a more typical Product Owner role in that I interact directly with the corporation, manage budget, add features to the backlog and writes required documentation
This project has provided 750 hours of Scrum project experience and is ongoing.