Svein Børge Hjorthaug Email & Phone Number

Fetsund, Viken, No

Product Owner for the coop.no web platform and related services. Coaching the local teams in Agile methodologies and iterative development, while focusing on continous development of smart web services that make a difference to Coop's members. Coop is the largest membership-based retail chain in Norway.

Knowit Experience is an agency specializing in building best-in-class digital experiences for clients who wants a stronger and better engagement with their own customers. This ranges from new websites, service platforms, eCom solutions, as well as support with overall digital strategies. As a Scrum Product Owner I have worked with key stakeholders in order to help define a product vision, break it down and define user stories and acceptance criteria, building and prioritizing a product backlog, and representing user knowledge/feedback in the delivery team as features are built. I maintain and promote the product vision within the delivery team and strive to come up with solutions that are not just an upgrade to current level, but makes a shift forward. As an Agile Coach I have held team sessions focusing on team agreements on ways to work, communicate, and raise issues. I have held several training sessions and presentations related to methodology and processes, and I have held retrospective sessions focusing on learnings and summaries of recent development sprints. I have been a trusted sparring partner for people who have led their own agile projects or had associated roles in their teams.As a Strategic Advisor I help companies through digital transformations by working with them on their requirements, being hands-on as far as functional and systems architecture. This has gone as deep as working with third parties on the delivery of APIs and adapting use of frameworks for the subsystems we developed, reviewing them against needs.As a Scrum Master, I have built and lead cross-functional delivery teams on behalf of clients who need subject matter expertise to get their services up to modern and leading standards, using Agile methodologies to achieve optimal progress and a safe and fun working environment.

Greater Oslo Region

As Senior Program Manager for Microsoft News, I was in charge of innovation and development of digital products and services that delivered news from local & global market media brands to a number of endpoints on all canvases (desktop, tablet, phone and TV) in the Microsoft ecosystem. These products and services were used by every Microsoft News market globally (~70). I worked with all of these markets to define feature requests, and with remote engineering teams (based in Seattle, Dublin, India, and China) to develop, test, and roll out these solutions. Special global ownership of video media and technology. In addition to working in central teams on the player itself as well as ways of displaying video content on our platforms, I helped all MS News markets globally define a strategy, drive innovation, and redefine, develop, and roll out services. Tactical follow-up of OKR’s, with an eye on performance vs growth opportunities on market level. Overall Nordic market product ownership for the content management system. Defined ROB framework for Nordic region based on areas of ownership and accountability/follow-up across markets. Support localization process. Give local markets a voice in central processes/teams, ensuring that global software requirements are aligned with local needs and support the actual KPIs of the business.As our teams started using Agile methodologies, I became an eager advocate and would coach several market teams on how we wanted to work in order to correctly influence the product and engage with stakeholders. For a time I managed a team of product managers who was part of the overall product management team representing specific markets. Based on good feedback from my reports I was recruited to become part of Microsoft’s Mentor Ring & Career Advisor programs, helping people to evaluate the rate of their professional development and status as well as planning for the next steps in their careers.

Greater Oslo Region

MSN is Microsoft’s news service, consisting of a series of properties for desktop and devices which provide the best news from local in-market media partners (as well as well-known global brands).As International Program Manager, I was responsible for the overall technical deployment of web services in local markets (esp. Norway/Nordics), driving both local & global implementation projects for Microsoft’s content management systems & media platforms on web and in apps (tablet/phone). Defining and deliver features for MSN/Bing Apps by setting local strategy for Norway (& Nordic markets). Partnering with centralized international planning/development teams to make it happen.Bridging the gap between global markets and centralized engineering teams. Ensuring that local editorial needs are met and able to address the overall business targets. People/team management, focusing on providing clear focus and attain a great level of collaboration with our stakeholders. I strive to provide each of my reports with clear individual goals as well as an overall team direction. I have filled a mentorship role for several PMs in my wider team. I also took on an international coordinator role for the Video & Multimedia product in MSN, supporting the multimedia side of our business for all existing platforms and apps. This grew into a full PM vertical & horizontal product ownership for the wider MSN organization. I won a Gold Star award for deployment of Video services on Xbox and VOD/Smart TV, which is a special recognition of a highly successful contribution.

Oslo, Norway

The Subsidiary Program Manager (SPM)-role is a part of the Windows International team, a subdivision of the main Windows development organization located in Redmond, USA. I was based in Norway and responsible for the technical & linguistic localization of Windows & related components. Support different groups (product planning, development, localization, and testing) during the overall product cycle to make high quality international products which matches specific market needs. Raise local issues/opportunities to the internal product and engineering teams to get them prioritized.Build a network and flow of communication that linked development product groups, subsidiary offices, customers and partners. Provide accurate & relevant info on local user needs, market requirements, legislation and competitive situations. Write specifications for market specific features and perform release QA. Launch Media Center in Norway. I wrote the business case and did feasibility tests to get the green light for a Norwegian release. This was eventually released in 2006 (“Emerald release” for XP), and again in 2007 (“Diamond release” for Vista). o As part of this, I built a media test lab, hired testers and oversaw the overall work with technical adaption, translations, partner negotiations and QA/testso Manager responsibilities for Nordic Media Center test labHands-on production of components for Norwegian Windows ecosystem, includingo Norwegian handwriting-recognizer and special lexicon for Windows Tablet PCso language packs for Nynorsk for Windows and Office (both XP and Vista)o adding support for Sami characters and locales as well as lobbying to have them included in the Unicode standard.Partner onboarding – adding local partners to platform services (i.e. photo printing utility in Vista, media partners in Media Center and telephony partners in the Mobility CenterFinal sign-off on all Norwegian product (anything Windows, Media Center, various Service Packs)

Oslo, Norway

Funcom is one of the world’s biggest independent developer/publisher for computer & video games, delivering titles on PC & console for Nintendo, Sega and Disney. In recent years the focus has been developing own concepts, like The Longest Journey, The Age of Conan, and Sci-Fi online multiplayer game Anarchy Online. I was hired as Project Manager for the Anarchy Online project, including overall development and its various teams, including people management.The team grew to include coders, designers, graphic artists, world/level builders, audio/SFX and QA/test. At most this added up to around 60 participants. I recruited a lot of them with interviews that involved anything from creative workshopping to role-playing. Due to exponential growth of team, I built and rebuilt project organization several times as needed and reevaluated our goals and status. We set up plans and built routines that allowed us to follow them. Budgeting for the $15,000,000 project (1999 rate), in addition to overseeing day-to-day planning and development strategies, team meetings, general project communication, and reporting.Process-wise, I adapted the RUP (Rational Unified Process) development process and the UML-notation to fit Funcom. I focused on establishing company-wide standards for designs, specifications and workflows, while eliminating bottlenecks and person-dependent processes in our organization and production environment.Anarchy Online was launched June 2001 and went on to win many awards, including “Best MMORPG” at the ECTS awards and “MMORPG of the year 2002” in PC Gamer US. Internally, the project also served as an important research/learning project for future online titles.

Lørenskog, Akershus, Norway

LCC Europe is based in Norway and is a subsidiary of LCC International in the US. The company was a global market leader in providing autonomous measuring systems for mobile phone networks, which measured network performance to locate bottlenecks. The customers were teleoperators all over the world.With customers demanding different levels of support and deliveries at various times, our internal projects (and consequently, deadlines) were impacted by customer requests all the time. I was hired to coordinate these incoming requests to ensure that we used our engineering resources correctly across project departments. Through building statistics, we were able to determine which customers were more “demanding” and where our efforts actually went, gaining new insights and improved ability to plan ahead. After a while I also ended up working with the deployment team on improving the coordinating of testing activities. At one stage I was also asked to take charge of the adaptation of a new development- and test procedure by overseeing the introduction of the Rational Objectory Process (an object oriented software development process, today known as RUP). This led to me having a role as Process Manager in addition to the other roles.