Patricia Nevitt

Patricia Nevitt

After a stint in the Air Force, Patricia started her career as a C++ and Visual Basic developer on thin-client apps in the early days of the Internet. Once the Internet went mainstream, she had to make a decision: should she switch to a more java-centered skillset, or should she hone her writing and communication talents by switching to analysis?

She made the switch to analysis and she never looked back. She keeps her skills fresh by eliciting technical requirements, writing database queries, and occasionally grepping a repo for some code mining.

As a business and systems analyst, she brainstormed the Million Dollar Question during a job interview (and got the offer) while explaining her approach to root cause analysis. She developed the Requirement Trifecta after a hotshot young automation engineer turned her on to gherkin. She uses these approaches to develop one-pagers with a user story showing the why, a focused diagram illustrating the who and what, and a set of gherkin features to bring it all together.

As her career progressed, she started wading into the Product Owner role. She found herself training product managers on her approach to problem analysis using the Million Dollar Question, goal management with strict feature-to-goal tracing, and feature prioritization using a must-should-could approach. After training three product owners, she decided it was time to become one, herself.

Long before she became a product manager, she learned the value of establishing trusted relationships. She has discovered that just by listening alone, she can often earn someone's trust. So often, frustrated clients and difficult co-workers just want someone to listen to what they have to offer. And she cements that trust by delivering on her commitments.

She has spent the last twenty years working on financial software in the mortgage and healthcare payment industries.