Product Manager

• Nov 2021 - Present

Senior Product Manager

• Feb 2020 - Nov 2021

Secondmind believes that people powered by AI make better decisions. As one of four Product Managers, I collaborate with our software engineers, machine learning engineers, and researchers to build decision-making capability for clients in various sectors, such as Transportation & Logistics. I own the delivery of products throughout the product lifecycle, working with stakeholders like clients, business development, UX, and others.One of my early achievements was authoring Secondmind Labs' Open Sourcing policy, working with stakeholders to establish how our research projects might benefit the wider community, the ways in which making our software Open Source could help Secondmind, establishing how we go about releasing them, and setting expectations regarding how we manage the Open Source projects we are custodians of.I enjoy establishing better ways of working as a product group and a wider organisation, with a focus on continuous improvement. This includes running retrospectives, trying new ideas such as internal hackathons to better understand our capabilities, and encouraging the use of Lean/Agile practices.

Product Manager

• May 2019 - Feb 2020

Product Owner

• Nov 2017 - May 2019

I was a Product Manager within the "Ocado Smart Platform". In this role, I helped to build the end-to-end grocery eCommerce and fulfilment platform that Ocado has licenced to Aeon in Japan, Kroger in the USA, Sobey's in Canada, Groupe Casino in France, ICA in Sweden, Morrisons in the UK and Bon Preu in Spain.In a short space of time, I gained experience working on Order Management, Geolocation of international addresses, integration of Warehouse Systems with the platform, and Supply Chain systems. I sometimes worked in tandem with other Product Owners to assist them in the delivery of the products in their domain, helping my team to adapt to new challenges and domains as demand within our programme of work fluctuated. By putting aside my personal objectives, I was able to help my team continue to deliver the most valuable work at the most effective time. This helped to improve delivery across the whole of the platform, and I shared my understanding of this way of working with other teams, product owners and development managers at a departmental off-site.Within a few months of working as a Product Owner, I received a Peer Award thanks to a nomination from my team in which they said: "Lawrence moved into the role of PO recently joining Order Management OSP, quickly picking up the domain understanding. Despite tough challenges, Lawrence is always proactive in unblocking stories, challenging standards, and representing his team across OSP, in addition he is approachable, professional, good-humoured, insightful and always willing to help the team in any way."I also carried out various initiatives aimed at helping my department work more effectively. I organised "Town Hall" meetings, took part in a workshop that defined the role of Product Owner across the whole of Ocado Technology and instigated various improvements to the process through which we managed our product portfolio and collaboration across it.

Software Engineer

• Sep 2012 - Nov 2017

Worked on a variety of legacy and greenfield products that shape the incredible technology that powers Ocado, primarily coding in Java and operating in a DevOps manner. Was involved in the testing, launch and support phases of Ocado's second Customer Fulfillment Centre (Dordon) as it went live in early 2013. This work focused on creating some of the sophisticated Warehouse Management Software for Ocado's famously highly automated warehouses. Later, I was part of a team that built Ocado's first dedicated Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system, as well as maintaining and extending our existing Marketing, transactional email and SMS communications systems. Ocado didn't have Product Owners until some time after I joined this team, so I often worked closely with Ocado's head of marketing to help establish which new features should be built and how they should be prioritised. During this time I also helped establish these products as part of the new, greenfield, AWS cloud-based "Ocado Smart Platform" that would later be sold to international retail clients.Before moving into Product Ownership, I spent two years improving the on-road Delivery Systems that helped drivers to make their way to customer's houses. I took part in many user workshops and worked closely with senior stakeholders, including the Director of Service Delivery, in order to improve the day-to-day lives of our drivers. Working on this product also brought me even closer to Ocado's customers, as the drivers are the only human interaction between Ocado and our customers. The products we built in this area had a very significant impact upon this relationship and I found this aspect of my work particularly impactful and meaningful.

Ecosystems Analyst

• Apr 2011 - Aug 2012

Working with another intern, I built a simulation of Betfair's sports betting exchange. The simulation was designed to allow Betfair's pricing team to obtain early feedback on various different pricing strategies, allowing them to see how their changes would affect the balance of user interactions across the betting exchange.Betfair's exchange is similar to a stock market for betting odds, with users placing bets directly against other users of the site. This made for an interesting "ecosystem" to analyse. We spent some time analysing the behaviour of different customer groups and defined personas that covered different user traits. We then created simulations of these user traits that utilised different types of AIs to place bets on realistically simulated sporting events. Running this simulation repeatedly showed us how the different user groups would change behaviour in reaction to changes in fees charged to them.This began as a six-month industrial placement over the summer of 2011, but continued on a part-time basis during my final year at university.