Isabelle Lehodey

Microsoft Incorporated – Redmond, WA Oct 2003 – May 2016

Advanced through progressive assignments to drive complex application releases, operationalize agile transformation. Created program governance, communication, and processes to meet expected goals on time, within allocated resources/budget. Relied on influencing and listening skills, trusted partnership with engineering and operational teams, to remove obstacles and create consensus in a highly matrixed environment.

Senior Program Manager (2009 - 2016)

• Developed program to transition online journeys from product to customer centric in alignment with Microsoft’s new business model. Oversaw decommissioning of online properties, migration to spa technology and retirement of 85 sites / 200,000 KB articles.

• Spearheaded the introduction of agile at scale and DevOps, trained 120 team members in incremental delivery practices and mentored product owners. Mentored over 100 engineers to self-organise and release fit for purpose solutions and build high tolerance for change. Attracted top talent recruits from within Microsoft.

• Led 5 direct and 5 dotted line teams through planning, incremental deployment and continuous data driven improvement of support.microsoft.com, increasing NSAT from 40 to 75 in 2 months.

• Secured funding from GM for phase 1 covering incident management, ML content search and myaccount. NSAT increase earned phase 2 funding to iterate on design, add RPA and click to call on time for Windows launch. Increased ROI by re-using most of the templates and services to revamp commercial segment sites.

Senior Application manager (2007 – 2009)

Change Management, Incident Management, Entitlements, Purchase Order Management

• Optimized legacy support eco-system when entrusted to lead a greenfield initiative to offer new Restful Entitlement APIs via a Service Bus and convincing each business application to invest and consume

• As the expert for Entitlement, led scenario focused engineering development of new support scenarios such as paid support or device repair across internal organisations, external integration banking partners, PCI compliance officers, product managers and stakeholders. ensuring transparent iterative communication.

Global Program Manager (2003 – 2007)

• Built up substantial PM and adaptability skills by taking on increasingly challenging IT projects, greenfield applications, and product launch readiness as a member of PMO’s shared services team. Developed organizational leadership skills in a highly matrixed global environment reporting to service leaders.

• Prevented O365 launch delay by using design thinking to identify problem and potential solutions. Set up a tiger team to run down the options fast and report recommendation to C-level. Established reputation as an influencer able to think out of the box and deal with ambiguity.

• Spearheaded an RFP process that resulted in $8m cost savings. Product managed the new application integrating external and internal systems: vendor data, currency rates, taxes, performance rating, finance.

• Lead team of six developers and UX designers to deliver staff journeys for HSBC loans and credit cards applications as part of a large company wide cost cutting effort through digital transformation

• Doubled agency profits by completing two projects in the assigned time

• Introduced new product management approach: carved sprint time aside for design exploration with underwriters, creative agency and ran continuous Usability Testing so application was incrementally release to production, available for performance and integration testing.

• Achieved high velocity with daily releases, no tech debt, no assumptions, daily sync with 24/7 teams to work out issues together, mitigate dependencies and coordinate relationship with creative agency.

• Gained consensus from leadership to optimize the entire organisation around EV and EV cloud and establish two Agile Release Trains with 6 cross functional teams (90 people). Created a sense of urgency for change and innovation by openly communicating products’ P&L and visualizing the risk of end of life.

• Doubled scrum teams’ velocity in three months with co-authored user stories, time boxed spikes, group estimation, or introduction of BDD. One after the other, teams reached self-organisation maturity, proposing product improvements and new features for the product roadmap, and completing enablers. Direct reports: 6.

• Identified large disparity in knowledge early in EV cloud migration to Azure and blocked one sprint for cross training, setting up environment for all and run-down design options

• Exceeded planned release’s scope with hackathon born features: reduction of data indexing and ingestion time for archiving by 15% or new coding language for the UI interface to look and feel on par with competition.

• Overhauled approach to clear 100 tech debt bugs after spikes revealed fixes could resolve multiple bugs. Monthly hotfixes resulted in incredibly positive feedback from customers, a great motivator to get work done.

• Anchored agile adoption with leadership through education on how continuous delivery flows through the organisation and set target goals such as better communication, being present and show appreciation.