Setting The Tone with Latsamy Tanseri

After studying web design and marketing, Latsamy Tanseri started her career in the tourism industry. Initially a web designer, she moved on to a Product Owner position within the Pierre & Vacances - Center Parcs group, where she stayed for 8 years, before joining a restaurant, catering and professional events reservation start-up. Then in November 2020, it is still as Product Owner that Latsamy joined Believe.

What is the role of Product Owner within the Customer Product & Experience team?

The role of the Customer Product & Experience team is to ensure the best user experience possible by gathering feedback from customers in order to provide new features to satisfy them. There are different jobs in the team, with different skills like design or UX, but we are all experts in web and mobile.

I work mainly for Backstage, our online platform for independent labels and artists. My role as a transversal product owner is to guarantee the global coherence of functionalities in order to ensure an optimal and coherent user experience.  To do this, I act as a link between user requests and the different teams in charge of making improvements.

For instance, if I'm told that a button needs to be made more prominent, I'll first measure the click-through rate on that button to make a decision, call on the UX expertise of the designers to get their recommendation, and then talk to the developers to make the technical changes and figure out how long it will take. I'm the bridge between all the stakeholders.

What tools do you use on a daily basis to connect all these stakeholders?

I mainly use the Jira ticketing system, to communicate with both the developers and the Customer Care team, who can easily report problems encountered by users in this way.

After having centralized the requests of Believe teams or customers, I transcribe them into "user stories" which will be used as a basis for discussion with the developers on Jira.

How do you work with the teams in charge of developing the improvements you identify?

We all work together in two-week "sprints", each sprint starting with specific goals.  During the sprint, we have regular rituals with the developers.

Every morning, we have a 15-minute "daily" session, whose objective is to follow the progress of the developers and to give the key information. We have "refinements" every week, which is when I present my tickets and explain the improvement needs. Based on the different tickets presented, the developers discuss among themselves the solutions to adopt and estimate the development time in what are called "poker planning" meetings

Finally, at the end of each sprint, we have a retrospective, to tell ourselves what went well or not so well to do better for the next sprint.

What are the major issues you and your team have faced recently?

The main issue is capacity and resources, as the team of developers is split between three Product Owners, all with different scopes. Since they work in parallel, it is sometimes difficult to make fast progress on each of our topics. To address this issue, we make sure that we identify our priority topics and that each Product Owner can handle at least one ticket during the sprint.

Another thing I noticed as a Product Owner is that the different teams that use Backstage or work on it do not necessarily use the same terms to talk about the same thing. This has led to confusion and misunderstandings. So we're in the process of sorting things out so that all the teams use the same terms.

You joined Believe in 2020, how was your integration process?

I arrived at Believe in the middle of a COVID lockdown, we were working entirely from home. But that didn't stop me from getting to know my colleagues remotely, during meetings. And then we arranged to meet regularly in person at the office.

There are good onboarding tools that help you understand the culture of the company and the culture of the music industry, which is helpful when you come from another industry like me. There are tools like Believe Insider to learn more about the company's life and Believe Academy to get trained. It takes time but it's worth it.

What is your greatest pride since you joined Believe?

In 2021, I had the opportunity to coach an intern in career transition. I was able to pass on my knowledge and teach him what the Product Owner's job is. After 6 months working together, he was offered a job as a Product Owner at Believe, I was very happy! This pedagogical practice opened my eyes, and it led me to participate in the Job Forum of my city to guide middle school students in their school careers.

Join us on Welcome To The Jungle and make sure to visit Believe's Careers website to learn more about our business and our environment. You'll find a wide range of information about our team, the tech tools we work with on a daily basis and, of course, a list of all the current job openings.