National platform for biotech industry
My Role
I consult Life Science Cares (LSC) on the technical buildout of their first national volunteer platform. LSC is a national philanthropic organization and program operator backed by the biotech/life sciences industry. In my role, I work with the Executive Directors and program managers across 5 national affiliates -Boston, Philadelphia, Bay Area, San Diego, and New York. This project is ongoing with rollout starting fall 2023.
Evolution
For context, LSC serves two stakeholder groups: its corporate partners and nonprofits. LSC offers unrestricted funding to nonprofits. LSC then funnels volunteer opportunities from its nonprofit portfolio to its corporate partners. Additionally, LSC also manages several in-house initiatives, one of which I was tasked to lead when I first joined the organization in 2021. My entry point was to fulfill the hands-on residency component of my doctorate program at Harvard. My task then was to define the programmatic model and build the infrastructure for a biotech mentoring program.
Although not within my purview, I had a glimpse into the adaptive and technical challenges of managing volunteer opportunities for hundreds of biotech corporate partners. In early 2023, I was invited to envision and lead the buildout of the organization's first internal platform that would serve thousands of volunteers nationally. First, we looked at existing off-the-shelf tools. We quickly learned that these 3rd party platforms were designed from the vantage point of a single nonprofit listing their volunteer opportunities. In short, we needed a custom solution that could be multi-sided for corporate partners and nonprofits.
Leveraging my product management background and training in agile development, I was able to lead LSC through needs-finding, feature prioritization, tech stack formation, and sprint execution. My core focus was on distilling stakeholder feedback into an MVP that would be easy to use and comprehensive enough to meet our critical release criteria. The bulk of development spanned 6 months part-time.
Achievements
Delivered MVP under the projected budget while accommodating several high-value functionalities that were added later.
Received positive feedback during user acceptance testing who rated the platform as "easy to use" across 10 hypothetical tasks.
By design, MVP has unified the data intake, verification, and reporting across 5 affiliate cities.
Takeaways
Operate within budget constraints to find solutions that not only work but also can scale.
Facilitating sessions with a non-technical audience on ruthless feature prioritization and thinking in an agile-like way.
How to communicate progress and build support with a non-technical audience on a mission-critical technical project.
Itemizing tasks for users and gamifying those steps are more engaging and valuable for gathering insights than telling team members to log in and provide general feedback.
National platform for biotech industry
My Role
I consult Life Science Cares (LSC) on the technical buildout of their first national volunteer platform. LSC is a national philanthropic organization and program operator backed by the biotech/life sciences industry. In my role, I work with the Executive Directors and program managers across 5 national affiliates -Boston, Philadelphia, Bay Area, San Diego, and New York. This project is ongoing with rollout starting fall 2023.
Evolution
For context, LSC serves two stakeholder groups: its corporate partners and nonprofits. LSC offers unrestricted funding to nonprofits. LSC then funnels volunteer opportunities from its nonprofit portfolio to its corporate partners. Additionally, LSC also manages several in-house initiatives, one of which I was tasked to lead when I first joined the organization in 2021. My entry point was to fulfill the hands-on residency component of my doctorate program at Harvard. My task then was to define the programmatic model and build the infrastructure for a biotech mentoring program.
Although not within my purview, I had a glimpse into the adaptive and technical challenges of managing volunteer opportunities for hundreds of biotech corporate partners. In early 2023, I was invited to envision and lead the buildout of the organization's first internal platform that would serve thousands of volunteers nationally. First, we looked at existing off-the-shelf tools. We quickly learned that these 3rd party platforms were designed from the vantage point of a single nonprofit listing their volunteer opportunities. In short, we needed a custom solution that could be multi-sided for corporate partners and nonprofits.
Leveraging my product management background and training in agile development, I was able to lead LSC through needs-finding, feature prioritization, tech stack formation, and sprint execution. My core focus was on distilling stakeholder feedback into an MVP that would be easy to use and comprehensive enough to meet our critical release criteria. The bulk of development spanned 6 months part-time.
Achievements
Delivered MVP under the projected budget while accommodating several high-value functionalities that were added later.
Received positive feedback during user acceptance testing who rated the platform as "easy to use" across 10 hypothetical tasks.
By design, MVP has unified the data intake, verification, and reporting across 5 affiliate cities.
Takeaways
Operate within budget constraints to find solutions that not only work but also can scale.
Facilitating sessions with a non-technical audience on ruthless feature prioritization and thinking in an agile-like way.
How to communicate progress and build support with a non-technical audience on a mission-critical technical project.
Itemizing tasks for users and gamifying those steps are more engaging and valuable for gathering insights than telling team members to log in and provide general feedback.
National platform for biotech industry
My Role
I consult Life Science Cares (LSC) on the technical buildout of their first national volunteer platform. LSC is a national philanthropic organization and program operator backed by the biotech/life sciences industry. In my role, I work with the Executive Directors and program managers across 5 national affiliates -Boston, Philadelphia, Bay Area, San Diego, and New York. This project is ongoing with rollout starting fall 2023.
Evolution
For context, LSC serves two stakeholder groups: its corporate partners and nonprofits. LSC offers unrestricted funding to nonprofits. LSC then funnels volunteer opportunities from its nonprofit portfolio to its corporate partners. Additionally, LSC also manages several in-house initiatives, one of which I was tasked to lead when I first joined the organization in 2021. My entry point was to fulfill the hands-on residency component of my doctorate program at Harvard. My task then was to define the programmatic model and build the infrastructure for a biotech mentoring program.
Although not within my purview, I had a glimpse into the adaptive and technical challenges of managing volunteer opportunities for hundreds of biotech corporate partners. In early 2023, I was invited to envision and lead the buildout of the organization's first internal platform that would serve thousands of volunteers nationally. First, we looked at existing off-the-shelf tools. We quickly learned that these 3rd party platforms were designed from the vantage point of a single nonprofit listing their volunteer opportunities. In short, we needed a custom solution that could be multi-sided for corporate partners and nonprofits.
Leveraging my product management background and training in agile development, I was able to lead LSC through needs-finding, feature prioritization, tech stack formation, and sprint execution. My core focus was on distilling stakeholder feedback into an MVP that would be easy to use and comprehensive enough to meet our critical release criteria. The bulk of development spanned 6 months part-time.
Achievements
Delivered MVP under the projected budget while accommodating several high-value functionalities that were added later.
Received positive feedback during user acceptance testing who rated the platform as "easy to use" across 10 hypothetical tasks.
By design, MVP has unified the data intake, verification, and reporting across 5 affiliate cities.
Takeaways
Operate within budget constraints to find solutions that not only work but also can scale.
Facilitating sessions with a non-technical audience on ruthless feature prioritization and thinking in an agile-like way.
How to communicate progress and build support with a non-technical audience on a mission-critical technical project.
Itemizing tasks for users and gamifying those steps are more engaging and valuable for gathering insights than telling team members to log in and provide general feedback.