Work with Holly

  • Product assessment

    A full assessment of your product(s), processes and teams. A detailed report with tailored and actionable recommendations.

  • Fractional CPO

    A flexible member of your leadership team, driving your product strategy whilst mentoring your team and improving your practice.

    A person is playing chess. They are picking up and moving the white king piece to win the game.
  • Interim consulting

    A targetted consulting period to build out a specific capabilty, install strategy and process or resolve an agreed set of problems.

  • Coaching

    Dedicated product coaching tailored to your needs. 1:1 sessions with an experienced product exec to upskill and gain clarity.

Product assessment

Want an external view of your product management and delivery practices? Perhaps you’re preparing for an investment round, scaling your team or you’ve got a feeling that things aren’t working as well as they could. A Product assessment gives you the information you need.

The assessment will be tailored to your specific needs and typically covers:

  • Product vision and strategy

  • Product value creation and success metrics

  • Discovery practices

  • UX assessment

  • Team structure and processes

  • Delivery practices and metrics

  • Go-to-market strategy

You will receive a comprehensive report with clear, jargon-free recommendations. Each recommendation will be fully actionable and tailored to the specific context of your company.

How we will work together

  1. Initial consultation - We’ll start with a discussion to understand your needs. We’ll cover your organisation’s current position, goals and key challenges. This is the time to define your specific needs from the assessment and agree any particular areas of concern for greater focus.

  2. Assessment period - The assessment can be held onsite or remotely depending on your needs and location. We’ll meet with your team and review all the artefacts you have related to product development, for example, product and business strategy documents, requirements / user stories and metrics. A product demo will enable me to gain a deeper understanding of your product and current position.

  3. Findings write up - Based on what was observed, we’ll create a report of the findings and recommendations.

  4. Follow up consultation - We review the report with you and/or your team to explain the findings, offer guidance and answer any questions you may have.

  5. Ongoing support - We can offer continued support with implementing the findings and recommendations. We can also offer accountability sessions to help keep you on track with progress and provide additional guidance.

Fractional CPO

Imagine a seasoned CPO working for you for just the time you need. Many organisations don’t need a full time product leader (yet) but would greatly benefit from having the expertise embedded within their leadership team. By working with you part-time, this creates a cost-effective way of gaining the experience and knowledge you need.

How we will work together

We provide regular support as a part-time member of your team. We may decide to work together just a few hours a month, or a couple of days a week. The frequency of that engagement may change over time to meet your particular needs. The flexibility means you only pay for what you need and when. The engagement might be a specific period of time to meet an agreed set of needs, or a longer-term, rolling engagement.

We will tailor the engagement to your needs, typically we can cover areas such as:

  • Product vision and strategy

  • Go-to-market planning

  • Product discovery and innovation

  • Delivery management

  • Process improvement and management

  • Organisation design

  • Budgeting and cost optimisation

  • Hiring management

  • Board and stakeholder communication

Having a dedicated fractional CPO means we can really get to know your organisation and tailor the approach specific to your needs. So that you get the most out of our time together and the best from your team. My goal is always to do what’s right for your company and help you get the most out of all the product development that you do.

Product and Delivery Consulting

Have you got a specific project in mind that you need an external consultant for? I provide interim consultancy on a fixed or rolling basis, whether you need someone to bring in and up-skill a product team, articulate your strategy, set up OKRs or improve your agile and delivery working practices.

The product and delivery consulting goals I cover include:

  • Putting in place or updating your product strategy

  • Perfecting your go-to-market messaging

  • Moving to outcome-focussed development and OKRs

  • Gaining traction with customer adoption and/or retention

  • Remediating your product delivery and agile ways of working, enabling you to release products reliably and predictably

  • Up-skilling and coaching your product team and/or leaders

  • Introducing design sprints and product discovery practices to your business to reduce risk

Product consulting is a highly targeted approach, aimed to get you on track and set you up for sustainable success. Agreeing specific goals keeps us focussed and on track to make sure they happen.

How we will work together

Depending on your needs, the engagement may be anything from a targeted workshop to a fully embedded period in your team to immerse in their context and provide targeted feedback and guidance on ways of working. We will work together to agree the outcomes and nature of the engagement. This will be on a full or part-time basis depending on those needs, for a set period of time.

  1. Define goals - We will hold a consultation to discuss and agree the goals of engagement. If further clarity is needed, we may decide to complete an assessment period to better define the nature of the engagement.

  2. Agree ways of working - To ensure success, we will agree how we work together. This will include access to the key stakeholders and teams that are critical to the change being successful. We may also agree access to the relevant artefacts as required.

  3. Consulting period - During the consulting period I’ll work with your teams and leaders towards the agreed goals. I’ll be available for the agreed days and actively working to deliver the best possible outcomes for your business. During the period I’ll provide continuous feedback on progress.

  4. Wrap-up - Towards the end of the contracting period, we’ll review the progress made and discuss any relevant next steps. This may include a future accountability meeting to help you ensure the teams keep moving forward long after the engagement has closed.

Product Coaching

When choosing the right coach for you, it’s important to find someone who not only has the right experience and approach to assist you, but also who you feel completely at ease with. That is why we will have a free chemistry session to ensure we are a good fit and that I can help you achieve what you require from coaching.

Coaching can be a powerful tool, having an experienced practitioner on hand to ask you the right questions and empower you to navigate through challenging situations, grow your skills and get the career you want.

Within that first session, we’ll understand what your current goals are and how we might work together to help you achieve those. As a Product Coach I use a combination of coaching models as well as product mentoring to ensure that you get what you need from our sessions. I’m fully flexible, we can agree to work for a specific period of time or work on a rolling basis so that we work together for as long as you need and you’re not stuck paying for sessions if you already feel you’ve got what you needed.

We’ll work together on whatever is most important for you at the time. Topics we might cover include:

  • Navigating difficult work relationships

  • Shaping personal career goals and direction

  • Building up product management skills

  • Leadership and management

  • Communication

  • Giving and receiving feedback

  • Working with exec teams

If you’d like to explore product coaching and mentoring with me, book a free call. This call isn’t about a hard sell, but about establishing whether I can help you and we are the right match.