New Relic’s Instant Observability (IO) platform served two purposes: as a product feature allowing users to quickly deploy monitoring for open-source technologies, and as a marketing tool since the web interface was publicly accessible.
I managed two teams: an India-based team creating IO integrations and a US-based Developer Enablement team that had built the platform. The site attracted approximately 100,000 monthly visitors but converted at only ~15%.
Additionally, the team had built IO using a static site generator (Gatsby), which prevented Marketing from running A/B tests or making content optimizations.
Architecture Redesign: Led the Developer Enablement team to re-architect the IO workflow. Instead of generating static sites, the system would output content to Marketing’s CMS (Drupal), enabling dynamic content management.
Cross-Functional Partnership: Built a working relationship between Engineering and Marketing Engineering teams—groups that typically operated independently. Created shared ownership of IO’s success metrics.
Optimization Enablement: Once on Drupal, worked with Marketing to implement A/B testing on layout, content, and user flows to systematically improve both traffic acquisition and conversion.
Key Insight: Technical decisions have marketing implications. A static site generator was the right engineering choice for a developer-focused team, but it created an invisible ceiling on growth. Sometimes the product management role is recognizing when organizational boundaries are creating artificial constraints on business outcomes.