Meet Gaëlle, Product Owner at Sublime

Hi, can you say a few words about you?

I’m Gaelle, I have been at Sublime for two years and a half. I’m from Normandy but right now I realise that I have spent more time living elsewhere, in Paris and in London mainly while traveling a lot. So, can I still introduce myself like through those long-gone origins?

Can you tell us about your position at Sublime?

I’m a Product Owner within the Labs (the technical department of Sublime). This role is a bridge between the business and the development teams to ensure we develop features that bring value, either through innovation or by solving existing problems.

It is a very interesting role as you get to work with pretty much everyone in the company along as our clients and partners to learn about their needs, and then collaborate with the development team to summarise, prioritise and ensure the delivery of the right product.

What are your main challenges as a Product Owner?

For the context: we use the scrum framework to deliver our projects. Meaning that we work in “Sprint” which is – for us – a two weeks period during which the scrum team (the dev team and myself) commit themselves in delivering features X and Y. X and Y are the steps leading to the delivery of the whole product.

One of the key tasks of a PO is to decide on those steps while making sure each of them brings value to the customer. They can be challenging to identify as they need to be big enough to deliver value and small enough to make sure it is doable during this time by the dev team.

Another challenge can be that you must learn to say “no” to some requests, while still encouraging people to share their needs and provide feedbacks. Luckily, I have good colleagues nice enough for that matters!

Who has been the biggest influence on your career? Why?

Probably my second manager, Stéphanie, during my first experience in the ad tech industry at 24/7 Realmedia (yes that was long time ago!). She has a great work ethic, taught me a lot technically and professionally, and has been an inspirational manager. She was the total opposite of my first boss in that regard and it reconciled me with a good vision of the management. I never told her that, so please don’t repeat.

What do you miss most about your colleagues during the confinement?

I’d love to say the cooperation and intellectual emulation, but I feel like we are not doing too bad remotely. So, I would say I mainly miss the casual drinks, the lunch outside or even the little run in the parc des Buttes Chaumont!

A passion outside of work?

Travelling! But I have decided to reduce my flight consumption – I mean prior to not having the choice to do so. So now I travel closer and slower, mainly by train and bike, and it is as much fun! My next trip in May was supposed to be a bike trip from Basel to Budapest, I try to remain optimistic on the subject… But I guess I’ll have to be happy if I can just go from where I live to our office by that time. After all, it’s the journey that matters, not the destination (and it’s such a pleasure to ride the Boulevard de la Chapelle every day…)