Product Delivery Lead for Agrigate

INTRODUCTION

Agrigate is an independent startup owned in a joint venture between Fonterra and the Livestock Improvement Corporation (LIC). Agrigate's core product is a web application that brings together a farm's key pasture, weather, nutrient, milk production and financial data together into a single dashboard with analytical and predictive tools to help farmers improve their profitability and environmental sustainability.  

I joined Agrigate following the launch of the MVP product when the team consisted of the interim CEO and two developers. 

THE CHALLENGE

To work with our CEO, Product Owner and external stakeholders to author and get funding for a delivery framework including people, process, budgets and partnership alignment. And then to take ownership of delivering the framework and supporting the CEO and Product Owner to dramatically enhance Agrigate's feature set so that the product meets farmer's value expectations. 

IMPACT

  • Worked with key stakeholders to agree a delivery plan that significantly unweighted resourcing, added new team roles (including job design for these roles), introduced an agile delivery framework and new tools to support enhanced quality outcomes

  • Built out the Agrigate team by sourcing, recruiting, and onboarding key staff across testing, marketing and product disciplines, as well as working closely with our development partner Figured to triple the size of the development team

  • Implemented an agile framework based on Scrum, coached the team and product manager on agile processes and fulfilled the role of Scrum master

  • Managed the implementation and rollout of analytics, reporting and user testing/observation tools

  • Successfully managed key vendor relationships across SEO, UX/UI, technology and recruitment

  • Managed operational and support components of the relationship with key integration partners (Fonterra, LIC, Rezare, Ravensdown and Figured)

  • Successfully managed the delivery of multiple critical features and product enhancements to take the product from it's initial MVP to a fully featured product - including:

    • Numerous UX enhancements (based on insights from analytics and user testing/observation) 

    • Integration with the Figured API to present farmer's financial data on the platform

    • Integration with Ravensdown's Hawkeye application to present farmer's nutrition data on the platform

    • Integration with historical data from Rezare's pasture API to present enhanced pasture data for farmers

    • New widgets and functionality to give farmers data for their Feed Wedge, Daily Milk Variance, Pasture Cover, Pasture Growth and Milk Production Curve

    • Delivery of Milk Benchmarking allowing farmers to choose a farm address, specify the farm system, peak herd size, herd breed composition, stocking rates and effective milking platform. Then see how they compare to other farms across key metrics kgMS, kgMS/cow, kgMS/ha and SCC (Somatic Cell Count)

    • Delivery of Multi-Farm dashboard for corporate farms with multiple farms allowing their managers to compare farms against each other on key metrics including milk, pasture and production data

    • Initial research and planning into frameworks and resourcing for utilising artificial intelligence (AI) 

    • Delivery of billing, integrated into Fonterra Farm Source to allow farmers to pay for an Agrigate subscription via their Fonterra Store Account