Ryan Hohnbaum

Ryan Hohnbaum

I’ve worked in software development for my entire career starting in the Bay Area in 2002. For the majority of my roles, I functioned as a Product Manager. Once I learned about Scrum, I immersed myself into learning about the method to help strengthen myself and my teams.  Ultimately, I became a Scrum Master and now an Enterprise Agile Coach at the largest Health Insurer in the state of Hawaii. 

Early in my career I worked at Leapfrog Toy Company, one of the largest toy companies in the world, as a Technical Producer.  I was the Product Manager and Project Manager for LeapTrack®, an educational assessment and instruction system. Representing a team of engineers, I coordinated with other cross functional teams to refine the system's software and hardware. Activities included prototyping, conducting user testing, writing functional specs, determining project cost and time-lines, and gaining executive approval of the project. I helped to develop the first five game titles for the Leapster™ learning system as well as revisions of the LeapTrack® assessment system. 

From LeapFrog, I moved into online advertising for several bay area startups.  My first was Adteractive, named one of the top 10 fastest growing bay area companies in 2005 by San Francisco Business Journal.  I was the company's 30th / 200+ employee and first Product Manager. I managed the company's flagship mortgage vertical which was the fourth largest mortgage lead generation business in the country.  Daily activities included definition of features and enhancements, multivariate testing and analysis of campaigns, and publisher / advertiser management.   Managing a team of 6 direct reports, I incubated new product lines within the lead generation and customer acquisition space.

After Adteractive, I joined Aptimus Inc., acquired by Apollo group (University of Phoenix) to function as its online marketing division and manage one of the country's largest online lead generation ad budgets. I oversaw product development to accommodate key business partnerships.  I created new organizational structure, processes, and guidelines for the operations of the business development and product management groups.

I left aptimus to take a hiatus and travel with my fiancé throughout Asia.  Upon returning to San Francisco, I joined Vinyl Interative, a small advertising startup which supplied a large percentage of business to Apollo group.  At Vinyl, I led teams through the creation of new organizational structures, Product Marketing / Development processes, and distribution channel guidelines.  I evangelized optimization strategies across online advertising channels.  At this time, I married my wife and we decided to move to Hawaii to start a family. 

I moved to Hawaii in early 2009 and was hired at Hawaiian Airlines as the Web Sales Product Manager. Reporting directly to the Sr. Director of Sales and Marketing, I was responsible for all web sales through the HawaiianAir.com website.  Activities included conducting A/B testing and analysis of sales funnel conversion, and driving projects with inter-departmental teams to improve the customer's user experience while increase sales of both flight tickets and secondary ancillary products.  It was in this role that I was first made aware of Agile Software Development.  My team and I embraced Agile principles and initiated a iterative development approach to release small enhancements and bug fixes. 

In 2011, I was promoted to the Sr. Program Manager of all Customer Applications. I was asked to lead a $15M IT replatforming initiative to rebuild the Hawaiian Airlines websites and infrastructure while transforming the organization's software development methodology to Scrum.  It was at this time that I earned my CSM.  As the Program Manager, I drove the definition and execution of the overarching Customer Applications portfolio roadmap through coordination with web, mobile, and kiosk application teams, as well as their executive stakeholders. I defined a program management framework to synchronize Scrum teams and triage portfolio issues and created transparency to executive leadership through the use of information radiators, along with reporting on sprint and release progress metrics.  I also customized the Microsoft TFS Agile process template work item types to better accommodate the Scrum teams’ mechanics.

In 2013, I was recruited by Blue Cross Blue Shield of Hawaii (HMSA) to drive a multi-year / multi-million dollar replattforming initiative to redesign the HMSA.com website and it portals. I was hired as the company’s first Scrum Master where I defined the role and its performance criteria.  In this role I directly manage two consumer web product teams while training the organization in Agile development practices.  As the Scrum Master, I lead negotiations of product roadmaps and Mentoring 4 Product Managers and 15 developers on Agile principles, Scrum ceremonies, and responsibilities.  To help support these functions, I gained my CSPO. As the Enterprise Agile Coach, I am leading the ALM Transformation initiative for the state’s largest IT organization, defining new development processes while training product management, application teams, and all levels of leadership.

Outside of HMSA, I began an online forum (AgileScrumHawaii.com) to connect Agilists in the state of Hawaii and help others to cultivate Agile experience.