Speaker

Wes Royer

Wes Royer

Director of Technology, Hearing First

Goochland, Virginia, United States

Product management and technology executive, personal career coach and startup consultant, event speaker, believer in outcomes over output, change agent toward Agile DevOps and ProductOps, former dotcom-era web developer, 501(c)(3) board member, husband, father, music curator, foodie, and proud member of my Goochland-RVA community. ESTP with a yellow Choleric personality type, sometimes mistaken as a red Sanguine, but formerly a blue Melancholic then green Phlegmatic. Favorite books: "Inspired" 2nd edition by Marty Cagan, "Phoenix Project" and "Unicorn Project" by Gene Kim, and "Five Dysfunctions of a Team" and "Truth About Employee Engagement" by Patrick Lencioni. (he/him/his)

Topics

  • Product Management
  • Product Development
  • Product Design
  • Product Innovation
  • Product
  • Agile Mindset
  • Product Discovery
  • Scrum
  • Leadership
  • Digital Marketing
  • Strategy

The Product/UX Partnership: Continuous Discovery in a WFH World

Your new assignment: Launch our first mobile app to compliment our legacy B2B product while opening the door for a B2C version of the product. Your squad will be split into multiple time-zones. And since this pandemic thing worked out so well, the entire company is going 100% remote. Also, this is an initiative outside the flagship product team, but you'll need to follow the new Agile Transformation process while regularly proving outcomes to executives and board members.

Emerging From The Great Imposter Syndrome

The pandemic lockdown didn't just normalize remote working at many companies, but it led to the "Great Resignation" or "Great Reshuffle," forcing many workers to re-evaluate their prioritizes, skills, lifestyle, and value. We all read the headlines of how the masses changed employers or even switched career paths, but you may not have heard about one of the main obstacles that many had to overcome to make this change. No, I'm not talking about "quiet quitting." I'm talking about (and myself admitting to) "imposter syndrome." What is it? Why do we all have it? And what are some simple tactics you can do to overcome it and move onto the next great step for ourselves? And to the managers reading this and attending, I'm not pushing for everybody to leave their job; instead, I hope for your employees to embrace a fuller potential in their job and life.

Being Agile before and during transformation

Year one: "You're hired! Now, I need you to spin up an Agile team and deliver some new products in the next couple months. Nobody on your team has done Agile or Scrum before. UX, what's that? User research is here and there. We haven't brought a new product to market without an acquisition in years, not to mention stood up a new external application. And no idea how to navigate legacy systems for accounts, content, and usage tracking."

Year two: "Great job last year. Now we are officially investing in Agile and Digital transformations across the entire company. We'll be migrating all teams to new enterprise tools. Everything your squad figured out last year may change. But we still need you to deliver some new products in the next couple months, while maintaining and building upon what you delivered to market last year."

Let me tell you a story... And don't worry, it all worked out, and it can for you and your team too.

Wes Royer

Director of Technology, Hearing First

Goochland, Virginia, United States