Conner Smick

Experience

• 

  Intel Corporation

  Jun 2011 - Jan 2012

  MECOP Project Managment Intern

  Member of the Project Management Office within Intel’s desktop motherboard division.• Developed and implemented process improvements for product change control.• Facilitated communications between IT, Marketing, Finance, and other functional teams regarding product development. Managed several projects using MS Project, SharePoint, and Excel.

• 

  UTi Worldwide

  Jan 2012 - Jul 2014

  Project Coordinator

  Project Management for global implementation of an internally developed web-based operations platform.• Facilitated communication across international teams by leading meetings and documenting issues, action items, business requirements, and deliverables.•Coordination across IT, Finance, Operations, and Marketing teams simultaneously implementing global operational and financial transformations.• Performed a variety of project related activities including: updating schedules, project communications, and weekly status reports to directors.• Provided on-site project management and operational support for platform implementations in the Netherlands, Germany, Australia, China, and US. Show less

• 

  DSV - Global Transport and Logistics

  Aug 2014 - Mar 2016

  IT Business Analyst

  BA work with a focus on technology tools supporting supply chain logistics business.• Embedded member of an agile scrum web software development team.• Championed the creation of essential documentation, including comprehensive business requirements, process flow diagrams, scope documents, and ROI analyses.• Translated business requirements into actionable user stories, acceptance criteria, and use cases to facilitate communication with development teams.• Assisted with QA testing and defect analysis/prioritization.• Conducted interviews with end users to identify system issues and gather insights for continuous improvements. Show less

• 

  NWEA

  Nov 2016 - May 2023

  Collaborated with cross functional teams to develop the strategy, roadmap, and solution backlog for NWEA's flagship education assessment product.Initiative analysis and road mapping:• Created initiative documents detailing market opportunity, success criteria, strategy alignment, market definition, and buyer/user personas.• Led initiative analysis efforts, ensuring solutions were thoroughly explored, validated with users, and well-defined for development teams.• Conducted quarterly road mapping activities to create capacity-based plans, aligning outcomes with product priorities.Market launch:• Coordinated with development teams to prioritize features and ensure timely delivery for market value.• Participated in market launch planning and operational readiness to support successful product releases.• Accountable for the achievement of initiative success criteria throughout design and development.Product strategy and development:• Project lead for the design and implementation of a computer adaptive assessment engine leveraging machine learning techniques, particularly reinforcement learning.• Product Manager for the migration of core product services from collocated data centers to cloud hosting (AWS). Enhancing scalability, reliability, and security.Product metrics:• $150 million in annual revenue, 13.5 million students across 30% of US schools tested annually, with a peak concurrency of 350k users. Show less Leader of both onshore and offshore development teams. Skilled in guiding the design, implementation, and release of technology solutions delivering business value.Product ownership and leadership:• Experienced working on both front-end (UI/UX design-focused) and back-end (data requirements, business rules, logging, system integrations) solutions.• Supported multiple impactful projects, including performance optimizations to support scaling of an enhanced business rules engine, an organization-wide user access management (SSO) implementation, and innovative solutions to support remote testing.• Led a team responsible for developing secure testing applications across various platforms, including Chrome Kiosk/PWA, iOS, macOS, and Windows OS.• Represented the voice of the user within agile teams, advocating human-centered design principles.• Effectively managed project intake and prioritization from multiple sources across the organization, including product roadmap, maintenance, and tech debt.• Triaged and prioritized defects to maintain product quality.Stakeholder management:• Interfaced with internal and external stakeholders to elicit business problems, establish project success criteria, and define detailed requirements.• Facilitated discussions between technical and non-technical audiences to align diverse perspectives and project goals.Project management:• Continuously assessed project risk factors and provided recommendations for effective mitigation strategies.• Regularly communicated development timelines and schedules to management teams.Scaled agile framework (SAFe) competencies:• Participated in SAFe ceremonies, including Product Increment (quarterly) planning, daily standup, team retro, PO sync, system demo, and release management.• Proficient in a broad range of agile, project management, and collaboration tools such as Jira, Confluence, Target Process, Trello, and Miro. Show less Product engineering BA for education assessment products.• Conducted analysis activities within a scaled agile framework (SAFe).• Managed epics/features through a Kanban analysis process to scrum team backlogs.• Elicited and communicated requirements across a wide audience of technical and non-technical stakeholders including product management, UX, architecture, program management, research, and development teams.• Defined data requirements to inform API designs.• Defined and documented specifications for state testing reports, ensuring compliance with regulatory standards.• Completed feature analysis and user story creation in support of multiple scrum teams.• Documented business process flows, enhancing clarity and understanding of critical workflows.• Conducted GAP analysis activities, reviewing RFP items and assessing current organizational capabilities to inform product roadmap planning. Show less

  • Senior Technical Product Manager

    Jun 2022 - May 2023

  • Product Owner

    Jul 2020 - Jun 2022

  • Senior Business Analyst

    Nov 2016 - Jul 2020
• 

  HMH

  May 2023 - now

  Senior Technical Product Manager

  Results-oriented Technical Product Manager/Product Owner with 10+ years of experience leading solution development and delivery in agile environments. Skilled at translating strategic goals into actionable roadmaps, bridging the gap from business stakeholders to technology teams, and delivering innovative solutions.