Two separate problems existed within Checkr. Engineering had built a development environment for running quick tests and experiments, but it wasn’t being leveraged beyond dev use cases.
Meanwhile, the Sales team was conducting prospect demos in Checkr’s production environment, polluting the database with fake records and creating data integrity issues. Their demo workflow required approximately 2 hours of preparation per prospect, combining time in production with Google Sheets to simulate the full customer journey.
Cross-Functional Connection: Recognized that Engineering’s dev environment and Sales’ demo needs were two sides of the same coin. Brokered a partnership between the two teams that neither had identified.
Requirements Definition: Worked with Sales to define specific demo use cases and scenarios that would make the portable environment compelling for prospects. This included the ability to customize the environment with prospect logos and branding.
Product Development: Led the engineering team to adapt their dev environment into a portable Checkr that Sales could spin up for any prospect, pre-loaded with relevant use cases and customized branding.
Key Insight: Product Management often creates the most value by connecting existing capabilities to unmet needs across the organization. The engineering team had built something valuable; Sales had an urgent problem. Neither had visibility into the other. The PM role is to see across silos and create unexpected combinations.