I'll lead your API development and build developer engagement until your customers' developers are your best allies. I focus on the developer experience so developers can focus on user experience.
Good APIs are a force multiplier for your product. They enable the integrations that help you build revenue by building on others' work. I will help you build your software and integrate it with others in a strategic, cost-effective, incremental approach.
I stand at the intersection of business goals, customer needs, and technical possibilities.
The Good Stuff
Simple Roadmap for a Multi-Portfolio Team. This simple roadmap shows the development work being undertaken for a team that develops features and enhancements in multiple areas of the product platform.
The Why? For a New Feature. This lightweight presentation is the sort I give to my engineering team as we kick off a new project to show them how the work we're planning fits into a bigger picture.
Project Tracking Dashboard. I designed and implemented this dashboard to provide client leadership a place to check in and showcase my team's progress on their project.
Presenting an API Design Initiative. I created this presentation to win teams over to an API-first design with a unified design standard.
API Design Standard. To provide a superior user experience for developers, I assembled and led an ad hoc team of 20 execs, managers, and engineers to develop and promote a standard for a unified API standard. This document resulted from those sessions.
API Documentation. As product manager for a public API, I was responsible for overseeing and guiding the development of effective API documentation for 350+ client and partner developers. My team and I decreased the time-to-hello-world from weeks to hours.
Food Orders API. This is a gross and horrible little API that works. You can run on your machine pretty easily. You're not allowed to judge me because I'm not an engineer and I'm not claiming to be one. I'm just hacking around to keep learning. One day I'll replace it with something cleaner that lives in Heroku or something, but for now, "Look, Mom! No hands!"
Hypothetical PRD. I wrote this brief product requirements document to show my thoughts on specs. It is for hypothetical customization work for a hypothetical client's requirements for a hypothetical content management system.
Pitch for Product Improvements. I created this slide deck to walk the audience through problems in their web site and web application and how I would prioritize solutions.
Embed in 60 Seconds. (🎬) I created this video while at Zoomdata to show non-technical audiences how easily their tech teams could use our product.
Anatomy of a Good Ticket. In this quick blog post, I describe and give examples for what goes into a good user story or ticket for a modern software development team.
Courses
Metrics for Product Managers | LinkedIn | 2 Feb 2019 (course removed from LiL). Learn key metrics to measure your success as a product manager. This crash course is part of Cole Mercer's product management training...
Applying Agile MoSCoW Prioritization | LinkedIn | 24 Dec 2018. In this course, Claudine Peet shows how to implement MoSCoW prioritization in agile project management.
Transitioning to Product Management | LinkedIn | 10 Nov 2018. In this course, product manager Cole Mercer shows you how... to jump into a product management role with a nontraditional background.
Education
Loyola University Maryland, BA cum laude in history