The Product Evolution team at Wizeline is responsible for the complete ownership of client products, monitoring how each product functions in the present moment while identifying potential features to improve maturity for the future.

A Wizeline Application Owner is responsible for the day-to-day activities of the Wizeline Product Evolution team and serves as the first point of escalation related to the delivery of our services. This role is unique to Wizeline and one of the key ways we differentiate our services from competitors. Our Application Owners bring a consulting mindset to their projects and are expected to take ownership of the product and its evolution with an understanding of the client’s business. They work closely with the client stakeholders to understand their business requirements and prioritize and plan sprints of work. 

That’s not all. An Application Owner is also responsible for establishing DevOps culture and best practices across client and Wizeline teams. This role has a deeper understanding of the support model to identify efficiencies and is accountable for the day-to-day activities of the Wizeline team. They facilitate project delivery, keep track of the project’s health and assist the team with developing strategic solutions based on data-driven decision-making.

Application Owners Accelerate DevOps Maturity & Enable Self-Sufficient Teams

An Application Owner drives the DevOps Culture from ad-hoc to an optimized setup in the Wizeline team as well as the client’s organization.

They are the ones who help our Software Evolution Engineers to be part of a self-sufficient team and achieve better collaboration with other client teams.

Key Responsibilities for Application Owners at Wizeline

When we start with a Product Evolution project, the Application Owner is responsible for ensuring effective knowledge transfer and service transition by identifying the client’s pain points during the discovery phase. In addition, they are responsible for developing the best practices and tooling to help the client prioritize the most impactful solutions.

They understand the client’s business and team dynamics to ensure more client-centric solutions. They set up working agreements with the client, defining SLAs and KPIs, so there is less room for misunderstandings, and all stakeholders are on the same page with the right expectations. They remove silos between teams to enable better collaboration, bringing structure to the project.

They also continuously analyze the team capabilities and facilitate training and mentorship in areas required as the Product Evolution team oversees end-to-end product management and evolution and can experience a continuous learning curve for the team.

How Application Owners Help Deliver Greater Impact

In recent projects, including work for well-known brands like Sunpower and Arc XP, our Product Evolution teams have been responsible for managing and optimizing customers’ existing applications, adding features to meet new business requirements, streamlining processes, improving workflows, and reducing risk. 

Here are some ways our Application Owners have supported the Product Evolution team and added value to these projects:

• Ensured all teams were streamlined on the processes and tools for the projects and coordinated needs between multiple platforms to ensure efficiency
• Established reporting metrics to track the project’s progress
• Developed best practices for incident, problem, and risk management and enhanced proactive communication
• Developed and owned the workflow for the team and customer collaboration and managed all stakeholder communication to improve visibility and build relationships
• Assisted the team in identifying technology opportunities areas within the different related processes and applications
• Managed the collaboration of Wizeline’s engineers with the client’s product teams while enhancing closer communication between the different product teams

As a result of all the above, our customers have enjoyed great success and improved collaboration. The Wizeline team is regarded as an asset for the client as we are a group of engineers who are well versed in the business needs of the end-users and act as valuable technical consultants in product growth and innovation. Here are some highlights of client success so far:

• Reduced the backlog of issues by 49% in 18 months with technology optimization and DevOps best practices
• Improved the customer support process by removing silos and ensuring seamless collaboration across the Wizeline and client’s teams
• Increased visibility by introducing reports, dashboards, and improved tooling
• Dramatically decreased high-revenue impacting backlog incidents by 44.6% in one week after implementing a technical solution for faster resolution

Optimize Big-Picture Product Evolution with Wizeline

Application Owners are valuable assets to any product team and drive a high amount of impact. We’ve identified that in projects with no Application Owner, teams may face critical issues such as:

• Limited stakeholder communication & visibility
• Lack of organization and structure in collaboration
• Lack of strategic optimization of the application (i.e. weighing team effort vs. business impact)
• Improper use of tooling
• Lack of processes and best practices

Wizeline offers an array of Product Evolution services to help you stay ahead, enabling you to focus more on innovation while increasing operational efficiency. Learn more on our website or contact our team at consulting@wizeline.com to start the conversation.

Or, if you’re interested in becoming a Wizeliner and joining our Product Evolution team, we’re always hiring! Check out our careers page and apply today.