Paul Gothard

Background

About Paul Gothard

I am relentless in the pursuit to make a difference. I put myself in the customer’s shoes to get to the bottom of problems by developing the deep empathy essential to get to the bottom of their problem.As an Architect, I launched digital products on a subscription platform. One product allowed a retailer to deliver items to vehicles. The retailer was charged for their first delivery and then was entitled to make deliveries for a year without additional charge. Based on that requirement, the development team proposed a solution that would create thousands of vehicle subscriptions to be able to turn off the delivery entitlements in a year. I threw a wrench into that complicated costly proposal by asking a series of questions to fully understand the product’s capabilities and the team's needs. Their unmet need was to bill for the first use. Since the delivery product already had the ability to stop the delivery entitlement, the proposed solution was not needed. This discovery allowed that product to use an existing subscription API to charge the retailer for the first delivery creating a more straightforward invoice. As an Architecture Practice Owner, the courses I inherited did not resonate with my customers. First, I used insights gained by listening to, observing, and surveying customers to develop empathy to understand their pain points. One major problem was the exercises. Customers didn’t understand the relevance of exercises to their jobs and had difficulty completing the steps needed to achieve the desired result. I refocused the lecture content to have more real-world applicability, then I improved the exercises by providing a summary of the exercise’s goal that reinforced that content. To simplify the exercise, I used analogous thinking to identify companies (IKEA and Lego) that created great instructions and transformed the exercises from text-based lists to graphic-driven actions. These changes allowed customers to gain practical knowledge of the software’s capabilities and how to utilize them.Architect Role:• Developed architecture curriculum, certification, whitepapers, of models• Experienced in solution, data, business, process, and enterprise disciplines• Established the architecture practice for Gordon Food Service• Defined API integrations at Ford• Certified in TOGAF 9Other Roles: Innovator, Product Owner, Businessperson, Developer, Mentor, Project ManagerIndustry Experience:• Banking/Financial• Technology • Insurance• Pharmaceutical/Healthcare• Government• Consumer Goods/Retail