Get to know Chynara, who is a highly professional project manager at Appello solving any challenges and delivering best quality products to end users. She is also great at dealing between technical teams, stakeholders and market needs.
- What is your favourite project you’ve managed My favourite that I managed so far is Hey Baby Print Co because it is probably the cutest project out there possible as it helps young Mom’s upload and submit their newborn babies’ photos throughout the year, which is then printed into a super fine album. Go have a look at their website and instagram, the baby photos are the most adorable!
- How long have you been in the industry? I’ve been in the Project management industry for 3 years now, 2 years out of which I worked in Agile environment as a Scrum Master. I started out in Strategy Department of one of VEON’s telecom subsidiary companies in Kyrgyzstan, and our team was leading the digital transformation of the 500-employee company. I then moved onto working in a Digital department, where I helped to form one of the company’s very first five scrum teams. I was also a chapter lead for Scrum master community in the company, where we shared with our experiences, and trained new Scrum Masters. Looking back, I am glad I got to experience Scrum in a large organisation, because now I know how different the two environments can be.
- Highlight your key leadership principles? My key leadership principles is to give my full trust to my team members, because if they made it to my team it already says a lot! I also like to over communicate and am not afraid of asking (what at first might seem like) ‘silly’ questions. I know that if I can’t understand something, the users will probably have a hard time understanding also. Finally, I constantly gauge my energy levels and try to leverage on my productive times, as well as give myself rest for me to be productive. I am a believer of working smart, and for that to work I need to be super self-aware, and well-rested for me to be 100% focused on what needs to be done, and also have the brain capacity to brainstorm/problem-solve where necessary. This is important because an exhausted leader is not a good leader, because the team can always sense if the leader is burnt out.
- Which tech are you most excited about? I am most excited about data science field to be honest, I like how data is being visualised and communicated these days using a variety of tools such as Python pandas, MatPlotLib, or Javascript D3.js library to name a few. Since we as humans are generating so much data every second, there is a lot to crunch, and the insights we get from this data is beyond powerful. Machine Learning and AI are one example of how data can help someone totally non-human learn to be at least somewhat human
- In your opinion, what makes a successful app? In my opinion a successful app has 3 key ingredients: well-tested idea (aka a good MVP); strong developers, designers and PM team; and good timing. Without any one of these it’s hard to build a successful app I believe.
- What do you think are the biggest challenges organisations are facing regarding developing new technology solutions?
If we are talking about large organisations, really it’s the size of the organisation that can become a challenge, because as new layers of management, so does the time-to-market time. It’s important to have decentralised, autonomous teams if the organisations want to keep innovating.
If you would like to work with Chynara on a project, get in touch!
