Candice Giffin

Experience

• 

  Microsoft

  Jul 2001 - now

  ● Led a team of almost 20 people (FTE and vendors) working to realize the quality and release stability needed for all the interim customer touchpoints and significant events within an MR Project schedule.● Evaluate and Validate Platform and Experience Quality: Ensure the best customer experience at each evaluation by driving current Prototype Software quality issues across the team to resolution.● Deliver the Prototype Software trains on schedule: Enable Microsoft Engineers daily access to the software images they need to realize the quality promised at each customer touchpoint.● Support our team culture to be an environment in which every employee can bring their full and authentic self, where all voices are heard, and everyone can do their best work as a result. Show less As the Qualcomm and Windows Platform Co-Engineering Program Manager, my responsibilities included:Driving co-engineering efforts with Qualcomm across the Windows Platform, while improving work management and tracking, to build better understanding and expectations for the feature and leadership teams in Windows Platform and Qualcomm regarding what is being delivered when.Integrating with prioritized Microsoft device teams to facilitate the delivery of high value features that enables the creation of differentiated first party devices.Aligning internal Microsoft teams’ expectations and work to the optimal Qualcomm product, fostering the most effective communications and workflow, to better identify and deliver business partnership value to Qualcomm and the Microsoft teams involved. Outside of my engineering role, I lead actionable diversity initiatives within my organization and integrated with Microsoft working groups (e.g. Women of Windows, Women's Leadership Council, and Human Resources) to foster diversity education and dialogue at the local level in support of Microsoft's goals to realize a more diverse and inclusive workplace. Show less First worked as a Release Manager for Windows Bridge for Android before transitioning to the Web Platform, the platform technology built in Windows that underpins Edge. Responsibilities revolved around managing the end game for releasing the next experiences, planning the next-next release scope and book of work, servicing fixes for the currently released and downlevel experiences, and team communications – from sharing daily details, to demystifying the Rhythm of the Business, to enabling the collection and thoughtful access to our team's deeply held knowledge and subject matter expertise, and improving the future through understanding past issues and mistakes.Before that, within the Revenue Operational Excellence release process, coordinated all Operational teams in support of the Ready to Transact pillar, which covers all the projects needed to enable customer purchase at launch, on behalf of Visual Studio 2013 quarterly updates and the planning motion for Dev14 launch. Additional responsibilities included oversight of the Operations Developer Loyalty Programs. Show less As the Xbox Release Manager and Beta Program Owner my most significant accomplishments included:Delivered 500K Public Beta Users for the X360 London Release, the largest Public Beta audience on record, through direct console registration, which was widely reported as the best onboarding experience Beta users have had in the Xbox Public Beta history. This was achieved by partnering closely with all the teams needed to be successful for release – Engineering, Live Services, Marketing and Evangelism, & Support – and driving our v-team to land our cooperatively created plan to deliver eagerly anticipated features to our community.In 2 years, successfully delivered 4 worldwide roll outs of the new Xbox 360 Operating System to 40 million customers and 3 worldwide launches of the Xbox One Operating System to 3+ million consoles with no zero day updates required or recalls.For the Xbox One Launch (November 22, 2013) every piece of content on the console, from the operating system to all the games and apps, was ingested and released by my team of two. Daily responsibilities included properly ingesting and deploying builds to the Beta audiences, managing the communication channels for the Beta audience to educate on known issues and focus areas for new features, fully supporting the Beta audiences’ Operating System and hardware needs when systems aren’t working, and ensuring audience feedback and issues are fed through to the proper Engineers for product improvements and better customer support when the product released to the world.Overarching responsibilities focused on improving the Beta Programs value proposition for the organization and Xbox Product lines while streamlining the processes and tools used to manage, support, and grow the Program. Show less In my role in Xbox Certification my most significant accomplishments focused on scale, I:Created the XDK New Country Onboarding Process delivering 3 new countries in 6 months (after no new countries in multiple years). Reconciled needs from 7 teams to ensure a repeatable and scalable process. Negotiated and transitioned appropriate ownership responsibilities for ongoing country onboarding work.Increased the Authorized Xbox Test Program (AXTP) Vendor membership by 15%. Drove program awareness and education with partner teams in preparation for the next level of program expansion (2012). In the course of 8 months the expansion plan was created, approved, and completed. This is significant because in 3 years prior there had been no program changes and it was completed while supporting the drive to expand access across all platforms – first for Kinect, and then Windows Phone LIVE Games and Games for Windows LIVE. Show less Highlights from Previous Roles at Microsoft:• Designed and delivered the Windows Services Real Time Monitoring gadget. The gadget allowed Service Managers to educate their users on Service Status immediately and enabled Windows 7 Engineers to see the status of the tools and services they needed to execute their daily work—a project management coup.• Overhauled and evangelized the Windows Engineering Manual (WEM), a user guide designed to be the trusted source for all tool and process documentation Windows engineers (potential audience of 5000) need to build Windows vNext. • Realized significant program cost savings for the Windows SelfHost service by driving the planning and deployment of an upgraded UI capture tool. The team was able to handle 3 times the testing load capacity with the same headcount. Show less

  • Principal Product Manager Lead

    Aug 2021 - now

  • Senior PM Manager

    Jan 2019 - Aug 2021

  • Senior Program Manager

    Apr 2017 - Jan 2019

  • Senior Program Manager

    Apr 2014 - Apr 2017

  • Program Manager 2 - Xbox Beta & Release Manager

    Mar 2012 - Apr 2014

  • Program Manager - Xbox Certification

    Jul 2009 - Mar 2012

  • Program Manager

    Jul 2001 - Jul 2009