Chris Peterson     chris@chrissonofpeter.com   email
Welcome to the online version of my resume. It includes much more information about who I am, my skills and my experience. I am a mix of many things: Analyst, Developer, Animator, Illustrator. I love learning things that have technical complexity, and I find the process of designing technical solutions to be extremely fulfilling. If you want to know more about who I am, read on...
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Who I am

  • Product Manager
  • Product Owner
  • System Analyst
  • Business Analyst
I am currently the Product Owner of two scrum teams, each with their own busy backlog. I run a two hour refinement session four days per week, sticking to the Scrum best practice of allocating 10% of the sprint to refinement.

I am constantly learning new things and new parts of the business. This includes business processes, legal constraints, compliance rules, system processes, behind the scenes technical details, and customer experiences.

On a daily basis I am learning about the needs of my stakeholders, typically having no previous experience in their area. I imagine the thing they describe and document it diagrammatically so I can show my colleagues I understand. I then use it to complete feature mapping: the diagram becomes the road map for feature development, user stories, acceptance criteria and automation testing, all carefully managed with sprint planning.

In addition to the Scrum Product Owner training, I also took the Scrum Master training. Though I do not typically work in this role, I take on Scrum Master responsibilities when necessary.

I am a person that people come to when there is an emergency and a fix in the system is needed ASAP. My manager recently asked me to lead a discussion concerning a particular issue, and he asked that I drive the discussion and document the process. This is something I am now very adept at doing as I typically take notes in some form of a process diagram. Once this was done and we identified the problem I wrote the acceptance criteria for the story that my team then worked on, and we turned it around - end to end - in about 4 days. The development and validation in the lower environment did not take that long, but we did have to wait to get it into production.


Experience Timeline

  • Lead Product Manager since 2021 (CSPO and A-CSPO through ScrumAlliance.org)
  • Lead Business Analyst since 2005
  • UX/UI Design since 2000
  • Scrum and Agile methodologies since 2017
  • Large Scale Scrum starting mid 2022
  • Developer/Product Designer 2021 - 2023 (Freelance)
  • SDLC management - attending release calls, making sure code is promoted to the correct release/branch, toggle management, UAT coordination

















Skill set

Technologies: I work on projects with microservice architecture

Read more...



Tools

I use the following tools pretty much on a daily basis

JIRA
  • Planning sprints
  • Planning project increments
  • Creation/management of user stories
  • Progress tracking
  • Team velocity reporting and 3+2s

Confluence
  • I mostly use confluence for documentation and communication with other teams
  • I create pages with testing scenarios for the more complicated projects. I use grids in confluence to trace test scenarios back to JIRA acceptance criteria

Figma and FigJam
  • Figma for UX/UI design
  • Fig Jam for planning: in Large Scale Scrum we identify the initiatives that will be worked on in a quarter, and I collect all relative information and references in a Fig Jam document
  • Fig Jam for process analysis, requirements gathering, progress tracking:
    • I always create some kind of process or system diagram - like a future state process - and then I use it to track what JIRA stories are required
    • Labels on the steps of a flow diagram can easily be linked to the actual user story in JIRA, which makes looking up questions from the team pretty easy. I like doing this because I gain an extremely in-depth understanding of the new functionality and can match that with all of the development work.

Sharepoint, including administration of Sharepoint sites

Naturally I use Microsoft Word, Excel, Visio and Note on a daily basis.
  • I utilize MS Word when compiling testing information.
  • I spend several hours per week reviewing Excel spreadsheets, analyzing production data for various projects
  • I like Visio because it sort of resembles the Adobe illustrator. I am extremely proficient in Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop as well


Section 4 Submenu 2

Click on the different Section links in the navbar to see the smooth scrolling effect.

Who I am

Product Owner
Every quarter I also do the high-level planning for our PI sprints (a feature of Large Scale Scrum). I create the parent Jira stories and write value statements (as a...I want...so that) and high level acceptance criteria in BDD-compliant format. Then I work with the tech lead on each team to begin fleshing out the major pieces of the work. From there I run one or more sessions with our stakeholders to better understand their business needs, and continue the process of writing stories and refining them with the team.

I regularly hold a PO Counsel call with the tech lead once (sometimes twice) per week. We use this time to strategize about what the team is doing, discuss any stories that have a technical priority (e.g. logistically important or time-sensitive user stories that are needed) etc

One of the things I have gotten used to in Large Scale Scrum is the switch from one quarter to the next. For example, I am running refinement sessions to wrap up the work in quarter three, and at the same time meeting with stakeholders to document the needs of the quarter four work so I can transition to creating those user stories. The overlap typically lasts for about two sprints.

I use Confluence to create test scenario for larger initiatives. Not only do I use this to track the testing, but it is also used to help track which scenarios are covered by automation testing

Onboarding new teams: At the time of this writing I am onboarding a brand new team of contract developers. They don't know anything about the company and so one of the first things I did was create a sprint of validation activities for the team. Testing is the best way to learn...but it's also valuable for my other team as their current project will require a massive amount of testing.

Experience Timeline

  • Lead Product Manager since 2021 (CSPO and A-CSPO through ScrumAlliance.org)
  • Lead Business Analyst since 2005
  • UX/UI Design since 2000
  • Scrum and Agile methodologies since 2017
  • Large Scale Scrum starting mid 2022
  • Developer/Product Designer 2021 - 2023 (Freelance)
  • SDLC management - attending release calls, making sure code is promoted to the correct release/branch, toggle management, UAT coordination

Skill set

  • Sprint setup and management in JIRA
  • Interfacing directly with clients - at all levels of the business - to identify their needs.
  • Collaborating on requirements with leadership, process owners, SMEs and empowered users
  • Documenting process on the fly: I have become very adept at mapping out a process while in discussion. The benefit is that you force the group to think through the process. It drives deeper and deeper questions and facilitates greater understanding during and after. It also serves as a living record of what was 'known' at the time
  • Developing high level features
  • Creating user stories: writing acceptance criteria in Behavior Driven Development (BDD) format and following INVEST guidelines
  • Data analysis and visualization: I always find that querying the database can help me get to the root of a problem. I'm comfortable with SQL and can find my way around a database. I really think that, as a Product Owner of a system, I should be as familiar with the database as I am the front end of it.
  • Preparing and Reporting status to leadership at multiple levels, including creating proposals and 3+2s
  • Regularly engaging in planning and prioritization
  • Managing the backlog
  • Providing UI/UX design guidance: using my education and UI/UX sensibilities to help design user experiences that are pleasing and sensible.
  • Monitoring the burndown report (and other JIRA reporting) to better understand the team's velocity and predictability.
  • Ability to "see" the long and short term goals for a project: I have been working on technology projects since 2000
  • Confident and diplomatic communicator: as a Product Owner I am not a manager. I must use my power of persuasion to motivate and change opinions
  • Leading large group discussion - both in person and virtually: I feel comfortable in front of large groups, whether on MS Teams or Zoom or in person
  • Coaching other Product Owners in practice, Agile and Scrum
  • Planning releases and creating road maps for the work
Technologies:
  • Java-based web applications
  • Microservices
  • ADA tagging
  • Document generation
  • Typescript
  • Interface libraries: Angular, React, Vue
I work on projects with microservice architecture

Read more...

Work History

I started my career by obtaining a Master's Degree in Medical Illustration from the University of Illinois at Chicago. Illustrating surgical textbooks is a fascinating type of Information Design, because you really have to think about what information is important to the series and what information is exteraneous or noise. This taught me a lot about hierarchies of information and how to visually communicate an idea. It also taught me about gathering requirements and meticulous detail. The first requirements I ever gathered were from a doctor.


But my break into web technology came as a research assistant at UIC's computer center where I helped setup the Instructional Technology Lab and learned HTML, Javascript and C. From there I worked at other companies as an Analyst, Web Developer, Web/UX Designer and Project Manager. From August 2000 to mid 2002 I lived and worked in Prague, Czech Republic as an Analyst and Project Manager (I even learned to speak some Czech).

I returned to the US in 2003 and started freelance web design and development. I attended classes at Simpson College in West Des Moines, IA to learn object-oriented programming in Java. I took on many projects that required me to learn and use Javascript, ASP, PHP, MS SQL, MySQL and Flash Action Script.

In 2005 I started my career at Wells Fargo, working as a Business Analyst.

Credit Risk Review Revamp

It was decided that the first area to focus on should be Credit. The project started with a big room planning session where the team blocked out all of the features

A proposal was created and a tantalizing mockup to go along with it. This was a basic wireframe-style mockup that was completed before any of the analysis was done

I setup a weekly session to interview credit underwriters about their work.

Virtual Chemistry - Left side menu

It was decided that the first area to focus on should be Credit. The project started with a big room planning session where the team blocked out all of the features

Development

I am working towards being a full-stack front-end web developer, in that I have slightly more experience with the client-side scripting languages. Here are all of the programming/scripting languages and supporting libraries I know, in order of my experience using them:
  • HTML5/CSS
  • Javascript
  • Typescript
  • PHP
  • SQL (My and MS)
  • Java
  • Python
  • C#
  • VB Script

Libraries I know or am currently working with:
  • three.js
  • Node.js
  • knockout.js
  • Vue
  • React
  • babylon.js
  • bootstrap.js

Development IDEs and software project management tools:
  • MS Visual Studio
  • IntelliJ (Maven)
  • GIT Extensions




Education

Iowa State University: Biological Pre-medical Illustration

The program at Iowa State is sort of unique in that it combines all of the science and art you will need in order to qualify for a graduate level program in Medical Illustration. While there, I was also heavily involved in computer illustration and design due to multiple computer labs that were available.

University of Illinois at Chicago: Master's of Biomedical Visualization (Medical Illustration)

My focus was Medical and Surgical Illustration, Graphic Design (including Information Design), Computer Illustration, 3d modeling/animation and Facial Prosthetics. It was fortunate for me that I was a research assistant at the UIC Computer Center. This is where I got my start as a web developer.