Lean Agile @ Hearst

We had an Executive advocate from the outset and aligned on goals early: First priorities focused on assignment desk features for internal teams with public-facing functionality limited to assignment emails and draft assignment responses. We released a core platform in the first four weeks.

The next several releases focused on streamlining assignment, review, update, and approval workflows. Our next focus was integrations with Hearst’s CMS, analytics and payment systems.

HTML5 atop WordPress
interfacing with proprietary CMS and microservices on AWS resources
and SaaS analytics, payments, and
ad serving

The current Sprint and backlog were available to all staffers on the team. Work completed, in progress and planned were communicated to the wider engineering teams, brand partners, and executive sponsors .

A priority in parallel was to create live revenue reports for Paid and Social teams.

Web apps and workbooks

consumed from
BigQuery, social accounts, public and private marketplace metrics
across brands

We built the next platform to create and distribute casual web games at scale in support of a partnership with Microsoft.

Esquire Challenge for Moovember. Shaving puzzles

HTML5 on AWS Cognito, Lambda, DynamoDb, Mobile Analytics
interfacing with proprietary CMS, microservices and SaaS partners

We applied the same successful Lean Agile framework to collaborate effectively across colleagues within Product, Editorial, Marketing, Finance, and Legal.

By Steve McNally

I build products, teams and business lines that blend publishing, marketing and advertising technologies for global brands and startups.