Published Lean Customer Development, July 2014.I currently give web-based training on customer interviewing, enterprise change management, cognitive biases, and people management.

Understanding what helps developers collaborate, build effective solutions, and drive change within their organizations so we can build the best tools and processes for them.

Think about the best product team you’ve ever worked on – what made it great? Don't you wish you could build more teams like that?I'm building out a team to do *just that* - to help teams within Microsoft adopt product development practices that are highly collaborative, inclusive, and data-informed. I'd love to hear how you could help, your ideas - and your skepticism! Drop me a line cindya at microsoft.com

Tackling the toughest, most ambiguous research problems across Microsoft's entire Cloud & Enterprise division. Helping the org to more deeply understand customer needs so we can continue to build better products and cloud services.

I was recruited to Yammer to build a strong culture of design and customer research that worked within our fast-paced and data-driven product development organization. I've built up and mentored a team of 20 designers, researchers, and copywriters who are highly autonomous and successful at finding the balance between 'just right' and 'shipped'.Since Microsoft's acquisition of Yammer in June 2012, my role has expanded to include larger-scale evangelism of 'Lean Startup' tactics both within our division (Microsoft Office) and beyond.I serve on the UXLT, Microsoft's 30-person community of design leaders and frequently give talks on moving to experiment-driven, faster-paced development as well as the best ways to combine qualitative user research with quantitative data to be 'as smart as possible, as fast as possible.'

I provide mentorship to the early-stage enterprise startups participating in the Alchemist Accelerator program.

Mentor for Steve Blank's Lean LaunchPad XMBA class. I provide guidance to a team of 4 XMBA students who are using customer development tactics to validate the market for their startup idea.

* Grew KISSmetrics customer base from initial 30-customer beta to thousands of paying customers.* Prioritized feature development of our initial MVP based on customer development interviews.* Through constant outreach to prospects and current customers, provided continuous feedback on problems and opportunities we should address.* Conceived of and launched new KISSinsights product. KISSinsights is used by thousands of sites, including Kodak Gallery, Starbucks, and OpenTable.* Manage team of 3 who handle customer support, technical documentation, and product marketing for both KISSmetrics and KISSinsights.

Loomia helps publishers to better monetize their businesses through driving the most desirable, profitable user behaviors.- Initiated reset of corporate success metrics - from "landgrab" to towards targeting specific customers and aligning with their monetization strategies.- Created new product roadmap to reflect customer needs, changed product perception from commodity to differentiated solution.- Collaborated with VP Marketing on new market positioning and revenue model, increasing projected revenues 5x. Launched updated corporate website.- Delivered automatic content parser and web-based configuration tools, reducing average deployment time from weeks to days. Expected to phase out manual customer deployments by Q1 2009.- Writing PRDs and user stories, prioritizing 2-week agile iterations, working hands-on with development.- Introduced new product council to ensure that sales and customer service learnings make it back into the product.

Yodlee provides web-based banking software to the world's largest financial institutions, including Bank of America, American Express, Citigroup, and Fidelity Investments. Product suite is actively used by over 3MM end-user consumers worldwide and encompasses online services for personal finance, bill payments, mobile banking, and funds transfer.Have held responsibility for global teams up to 15 strong owning the user experience and common platform for the entire Yodlee product line, encompassing multiple product management, product design, and technical publications teams. Teams are based in Redwood City, CA and at the company’s offices in Bangalore, India.

Led 7-person design team handling all aspects of user experience, interaction design, and user research for the entire suite of Yodlee products. Hired as company’s first dedicated software design professional.Led product design and requirements for industry-changing Yodlee MoneyCenter suite. Customers currently include Bank of America, Scottrade, and Compass Bank. The Bank of America-branded service won a Best of the Web award from Online Banking Report when it launched in 2006.

TeamSphere was a venture-backed video games tools and development company that enabled video game publishers and developers to quickly and cost-effectively add persistent online features and premium services to their console, PC, and mobile games. Customers included SEGA, Vivendi Universal, and ESPN Videogames. As one of three founding members, responsible for interaction design, visual design, and information architecture for web-based software platform used by hundreds of thousands of consumers. Conceived and designed an innovative co-branding engine for which a US patent application was filed. Supervised junior interaction designer. Provided leadership without direct authority over engineering team.