[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":91},["ShallowReactive",2],{"layout-home-shell":3,"site-home-decide":31,"case-study-barrows":47},{"id":4,"brandName":5,"contactLabel":6,"contactPath":7,"extension":8,"footerTagline":9,"linkedin":10,"meta":11,"navAriaLabel":19,"navLinks":20,"skipToMainLabel":27,"slug":28,"stem":29,"__hash__":30},"homeLayout\u002Flayouts\u002Fhome.md","Jani Rostoll","Say hello","\u002Fcontact","md","Senior product manager.","https:\u002F\u002Fwww.linkedin.com\u002Fin\u002Fj3noriginal",{"body":12},{"type":13,"value":14,"toc":15},"minimark",[],{"title":16,"searchDepth":17,"depth":17,"links":18},"",2,[],"Primary",[21,24],{"to":22,"label":23},"\u002Fwork","Work",{"to":25,"label":26},"\u002Fabout","About","Skip to main content","home","layouts\u002Fhome","brLUdx_GTKbsDLNtg8EHGH-VMTIGJP404rrBlKZJgOQ",{"id":32,"decide":33,"extension":8,"headline":34,"intro":35,"meta":36,"metaDescription":41,"ogDescription":41,"ogTitle":42,"pageTitle":42,"path":43,"portrait":44,"slug":28,"stem":45,"__hash__":46},"homePage\u002Fpages\u002Fhome.md","I start by using the product myself, the way a new person would. Then I frame the problem, say the trade-off out loud, and keep everyone aimed at the one outcome that matters.","I help teams decide what to build, and what to cut.","I'm a senior product manager. Most of my work has been with technology that was new to the people who had to use it, from a robot for children to card machines for merchants. Technology like that lives or dies on trust, and trust is the part I work on.",{"body":37},{"type":13,"value":38,"toc":39},[],{"title":16,"searchDepth":17,"depth":17,"links":40},[],"I'm a senior product manager. From a robot for children to card machines for merchants, I work on the part of new technology that decides whether it lands: whether people can trust it.","I help teams decide what to build, and what to cut","I started in design, sketching screens for that robot in Centurion. From there I moved into UX, then into owning the product at Barrows, and then spent about five years looking after in-person payments at iKhokha. These days I'm at Spot Money, learning a consumer banking app the way a new customer would.","\u002Fimages\u002Fjani-portrait.webp","pages\u002Fhome","M5-aG3MK8x67ZMD3EbB_7EItQ814rCvX6oskO0NVWSs",{"id":48,"title":49,"body":50,"callouts":76,"client":77,"decision":76,"extension":8,"heroAlt":78,"heroImage":76,"meta":79,"metaDescription":80,"outcome":76,"quote":76,"quoteBy":76,"role":81,"sections":76,"slug":82,"stakes":83,"status":76,"stem":84,"summary":83,"tag":85,"thumbnail":86,"thumbnailAlt":78,"thumbnailAspect":87,"thumbnailAvif":88,"year":89,"__hash__":90},"caseStudies\u002Fcase-studies\u002Fbarrows.md","Building a team that didn't need me",{"type":13,"value":51,"toc":74},[52,56,59,62,65],[53,54,55],"p",{},"The software team at Barrows was brand new when I joined. Not the people, though. Some of the developers had been there for years and others had just graduated, but a new scrum master had only recently pulled them together from separate projects and handed them one backlog, along with two systems that didn't talk to each other. One ran manufacturing. The other went out into the field with the people auditing and installing displays in stores. Our job was to turn those two into one.",[53,57,58],{},"Updates went live over FTP. There was no Git, no code reviews and no pipeline, so I could have written the rulebook myself. Instead, I asked the team what good looked like to them and let them go and find out. They read, they took ideas home from dev conferences, and they came back with a plan of their own. My part was making room for it on the roadmap and helping steer it all the way into production. By 2020 they were reviewing each other's code and shipping through a pipeline they had designed. I never did write that rulebook.",[53,60,61],{},"Then one day the servers went down. The real ones, in the cold room, with the blinking lights. For two days nobody could write a line of code, so I put pens and printed phone templates on a table, and everyone sketched the next release, our QA engineer and our junior developer included. Then we mapped it end to end on sticky notes. That map became our plan, our progress report and the thing stakeholders could actually react to. When we tested it with field staff in a sandbox, it showed us we'd need to support the old process and the new one side by side. Finding that in a pilot, and not in a nationwide rollout, saved everyone a lot of pain.",[53,63,64],{},"People build better when they've helped decide what to build. I gave that team the context once, and then I trusted them with it. I'm still in touch with them, and they're still building.",[53,66,67],{},[68,69,73],"a",{"href":70,"rel":71},"https:\u002F\u002Fmedium.com\u002Fj3n-original-media\u002Fcross-functional-story-mapping-for-great-agile-team-collaboration-df4a73ba6e26",[72],"nofollow","Read how we ran the story mapping, on Medium",{"title":16,"searchDepth":17,"depth":17,"links":75},[],null,"Barrows","A hand-drawn sketch of a software team standing around a whiteboard story map of sticky notes and phone sketches.",{},"When I joined Barrows, the software team had only just become a team and was still deploying over FTP. I asked them what good looked like, and by 2020 they were shipping through a pipeline they'd designed.","Product ownership","barrows","When I joined Barrows, the software team had only just become a team, and updates still went live over FTP. Instead of writing the rulebook myself, I asked them what good looked like, and by 2020 they were shipping through a pipeline they'd designed. And when the servers went down for two days, we planned the next release with pens, printed phone templates and sticky notes.","case-studies\u002Fbarrows","Case study","\u002Fimages\u002Fwork\u002Fbarrows-sketch.webp","16\u002F9","\u002Fimages\u002Fwork\u002Fbarrows-sketch.avif","2018-2020","bW0GYUTxdxmRn9EbUUHDS1havkDuN6EjnpKWcUCSlg8",1791314776435]