Conlan Seder

I’m a Devel­op­er turned Prod­uct Man­ag­er with a focus on Oper­a­tions and Sales. A prob­lem solver at heart, I’m able to iden­ti­fy issues in process­es and devel­op a strate­gic roadmap to imple­ment a solu­tion. I’m very com­fort­able run­ning a project through the prod­uct life-cycle, while focus­ing on keep­ing stake­hold­ers aligned and up-to-date. I take a coach-style approach to lead­er­ship and iden­ti­fy team mem­bers’ strengths, areas for improve­ment, and what dri­ves them, to help each indi­vid­ual excel in their role.

I know what you’re think­ing, but I’m not the stereo­typ­i­cal devel­op­er-type! I’m able to switch between tech jar­gon and layman’s terms which helps me col­lab­o­rate with clients and oth­er busi­ness units. While I was a devel­op­er, my touch-point on projects was nat­u­ral­ly clos­er to the end of the project, allow­ing me to see the trick­­le-down effect of cer­tain choic­es. Now, because of this, I have a unique abil­i­ty to iden­ti­fy risks ear­­ly-on that can cause a project’s health to decline. This under­stand­ing of poten­tial project risks also allows me to craft very accu­rate project plans and keep them on track. My back­ground also allowed me to accel­er­ate my career growth. I quick­ly went from junior/​intermediate lev­el tasks to imple­ment­ing a strate­gic revamp of the way ZGM brings in dig­i­tal projects and the project life-cycle. I have imple­ment­ed numer­ous orga­ni­za­tion lev­el changes to improve the process­es around task man­age­ment flow, project scop­ing, risk assess­ment, esti­ma­tion, resourc­ing, qual­i­ty assur­ance, and post-project ret­ro­spec­tives. In order to achieve this, I cre­at­ed an imple­men­ta­tion roadmap. This roadmap includ­ed work­shops for oth­er busi­ness units, and small­er, group knowl­edge trans­fer ses­sions to ensure the rest of the orga­ni­za­tion was on board and aligned. A ris­ing tide rais­es all boats! I believe that shar­ing knowl­edge is crit­i­cal for orga­ni­za­tion­al growth and for each indi­vid­ual project’s success. 

In my cur­rent Prod­uct Man­ag­er posi­tion, I approach each project with two ques­tions,​‘what are we going to build?’ and​‘how do we build it the right way?’. This approach allows us to find the root cause and iden­ti­fy what we’re build­ing, ensure all busi­ness objec­tives are cap­tured, and that the right KPIs are set and mea­sured. Then, using the data, we’re able to pri­or­i­tize our focus on areas that will have the largest impact on orga­ni­za­tion growth. 

From all those changes, came a dras­tic increase in prof­itabil­i­ty. For projects that required a long-term engage­ment (min. 6 months), these new meth­ods of scop­ing, risk mit­i­ga­tion, and esti­ma­tion yield­ed an increase in prof­it up to 23%. For small­er main­te­nance tasks, I cre­at­ed a min­i­mum engage­ment amount, which led to an increase in rev­enue by up to 463%. By cre­at­ing, sell­ing, and run­ning a new ser­vice offer­ing, I was able to gen­er­ate over $100,000 with­in the first 8 months of intro­duc­ing them.

Skills

• PROCESS DEVEL­OP­MENT
• REQUIRE­MENTS GATH­ER­ING & ANALYSIS
• SCOP­ING & ESTIMATING
• RISK ASSESS­MENT & MITIGATION
• BUD­GET MAN­AGE­MENT & COST ANALYSIS
• STRATE­GIC PLANNING
• AGILE/SCRUM, WATER­FALL, & HYBRID METHODOLOGIES
• PROCESS CREATION/IMPROVEMENT & IMPLEMENTATION
• RESOURCE PLAN­NING
• TEAM LEAD­ER­SHIP
• PROD­UCT LIFE-CYCLE MANAGEMENT
• STAKE­HOLD­ER MANAGEMENT
• QUAL­I­TY ASSURANCE

Experience

PROD­UCT MANAGER - ZGM MOD­ERN MAR­KET­ING PARTNERS

Feb­ru­ary 2019 — Present

Past projects: Hone Ath­let­ics (Web­site, iOS & Android Apps), AIM­Co, AGLC Game­sense, City of Edmon­ton Sui­cide Pre­ven­tion, Alber­ta Health Ser­vices (Healthy Work­places, Healthy Com­mu­ni­ties), Boost­er Juice, Wolf Wil­low Homes

• Gen­er­at­ed over $100,000 in rev­enue with­in 8 months by intro­duc­ing a new diag­nos­tic (research & strat­e­gy) phase at the start of client partnerships.
• Increased the min­i­mum unit of time sold from one hour to a half-day, result­ing in a rev­enue increase of up to 463% on small­er tasks.
• Cre­at­ed a rush fee for last-minute urgent/​important requests that off­set the devel­op­ment team’s task-switch­ing and impact to oth­er projects.
• Built a series of tem­plates in Asana to cre­ate effi­cien­cies across the agency for future dig­i­tal projects.
• Added process­es that were miss­ing pre­vi­ous­ly such as ret­ro­spec­tives (post-mortems) to con­tin­ue team growth and process improvement.
• Ran work­shops for oth­er depart­ments for knowl­edge trans­fer and improved collaboration.

LEAD FRONT END WEB DEVELOPER - ZGM MOD­ERN MAR­KET­ING PARTNERS

Feb­ru­ary 2015 — Novem­ber 2020

Past projects: Telus Spark, Dis­tress Cen­tre Annu­al Report (2016 — 2018), Nature Con­ser­van­cy of Cana­da Annu­al Report (2016 — 2018), Jay­man Homes, West­man Village

• Involved in every large project through con­cept­ing, UX, design, devel­op­ment and QA.
• Com­plex prob­lem-solv­ing with a solu­­tions-based approach.
• Led team’s shift to SASS, Git, Grunt, Flexbox, Vue, and oth­er var­i­ous meth­ods and tools, ensur­ing we’re competitive.
• Dri­ver of a cohe­sive team environment.

WEB DEVEL­OP­ER - FREELANCE

Sep­tem­ber 2014 — Present

PAST PROJECTS: Bril­liant Begin­nings, Neal’s Yard Reme­dies Canada

• Start to fin­ish eCom­merce project life-cycle includ­ing project and account man­age­ment, UX, devel­op­ment and QA.
• Devel­op­ing and main­tain­ing busi­ness rela­tion­ships to ensure the client is thrilled with the process as well as the fin­ished project.