Product Engineering @ McDonald’s
In my previous role- I worked for McDonald’s Corporation as a technology specialist-specifically within the drive-thru product engineering team. My function in product engineering was to holistically understand how our tech stack configures across the business and how we can enhance our current product to better serve the experience of the customer. In product engineering, we were on the back end of aligning with vendors and internal business units on how we could best prioritize our work to serve our restaurant owners and customers that flow through it. That being said, product is at the forefront of my everyday work life and I am consistently exercising how our team can best align with dependent products in order to manage a complex system of technology.
Main Tools Used
Miro
Our team used Miro to understand + visualize workflows and product logic. Across many projects, this tool was used collaboratively to brainstorm how to tackle the product vision.
Jira / Confluence
For development work, our team used Jira to write features, epics, and user stories to communicate our solution to developers + maintain product health. Documentation was linked to Jira within Confluence so that our team had a central source of truth.
Microsoft Power Tools
Our team used Power Platform to automate workflows + simplify complex analytics visually within Power BI. This allowed us to make easier sense of complex + large sets of data that validate business need, product deployment success, and testing.
Figma
Our team used Figma to mockup what changes we needed to our web or mobile experience based on feature enhancements. This allows our developers to visualize what the goal of a feature is. McDonald’s had great design systems in place that allowed us to quickly change out components and logic within our tech products.
How I use Design-Thinking in my everyday work.
Process Improvement
Designing processes and leaving wasteful ones behind is a main way that I use design-thinking in my everyday tasks. By reconsidering methods of work, I am able to better cater to management and project srakeholders by delivering information quicker and more tacitly. This has been done by re-evaluating project platforms and re-aligning on how we work with our vendors. I am able to naturally apply design to any task I am given and think outside of the box- no matter how mundane the ask.
Productivity + Professional Development
I have always been inspired by the way Google runs their campuses similar to a University by dedicating a certain percentage of time to research and development. I have adopted a similar mindset in my career by dedicating time to learn new tools and ways of ‘hacking’ your work so I can think on more strategic items and always deliver on what is seen as business priority. Regardless of job title, I believe there is ways to ‘design’ your role to cater to what your professional goals are and what you hope to gain in this part of your journey.
Notable Contributions
Learning & Development Improvements
I developed a proposal to the learning & development team to better cater personalized employee journeys based on core competencies and interests.
Testing Improvements
I worked alongside Digital partners to understand how we can better capture metrics in our testing phases to truly build a customer-centric experience that is validated by functional technology. Our team also built a standardized testing process to increase traceability in defect recognition within different components during different phases of testing (UAT, Systems Testing, Customer Experience Testing.)
Ways of Working Improvements
Alongside my managers, I assisted with proposing Ways of Working improvements for a project we worked on with a key vendor. This increased productivity, collaboration, and cost-savings by reducing idle development time. Our approach was catered through the design process in doing exploratory research into what is current + successful within our industry and how we can exceed process alignment within our function.
Employee Business Network Involvement
I am very heavily involved in our employee business networks- most notably, Global Women in Tech and Global Volunteer Network. I serve on an executive team alongside advisors to understand how to push for development for gender equity within technology. In addition, I am an ambassador for our volunteer programs and am connected with most opportunities to serve our community.