Shunfa Xu

Introduction

Shunfa serves Thoughtworks as a Senior Consultant, Business Analyst with 9 years of experience in offshore product delivery. He is currently focusing on To-B product innovation. He was a full stack developer (Ruby + React JavaScript) from 2013 to 2018, then played the Business Analyst / Product Manager role from 2018.

During his 9 years experience of offshore product delivery, he served clients across several industries, including Telecom, Automobile, Airline, Global Talent Mobility, Tax, Immigration, NGO and Field Service, engaged in various products & projects, ranging from technical projects, such as Microservices & Cloud, to more product focused ones, e.g. Legacy system modernization, SaaS replatform, 0-1 product innovation.

Overall, he is an innovative Product Manager / Business Analyst, with a solid technical background, experienced in various industries & business domains.

Experience

  • Business Analyst, Senior Consultant, Thoughtworks Software Technologies (Wuhan) LTD., 2020/03/01 - Present

  • Business Analyst, Consultant, Thoughtworks Software Technologies (Wuhan) LTD., 2019/02/26 - 2020/02/29

  • Developer, Consultant, Thoughtworks Software Technologies (Wuhan) LTD., 2016/07/04 - 2019/02/25

  • Software Developer - Ruby, ActiveNetwork (Chengdu) Co., Ltd., 2015/03/23 - 2016/06/23

  • Junior Software Developer - Ruby, Beijing Shinetech Technology Development Co., Ltd. Wuhan Branch, 2013/07/01 - 2015/02/27

Education

  • Bachelor’s Degree of Engineering, Automation, Jianghan University, 2009/09/01 - 2013/06/30

Awards/Certifications

  • Certified New Product Development Professional (No. C182148), awarded by PDMA Certification Committee on Sep 24th, 2022.

Books/Publications Authored

  • Co-translator of Austin Govella’s book Collaborative Product Design (ISBN: 9787519853297), published in June 2021.

Open Source Projects

  • Designer and developer of GoPlan Web, an open source web application for task planning.

Languages

  • Mandarin Chinese: native
  • English: fluent

Product / Project experience

Timeline

  1. Senior Business Analyst, Business Process Integration Platform, Global talent mobility services firm, 2022/02/12 - present
  2. Senior Business Analyst, Microservice Replatform, German multinational automotive corporation, 2021/08/16 - 2022/01/28
  3. Offshore Product Manager, SaaS RePlatform, Leading U.S. franchisor of in-home services, 2021/01/19 - 2021/08/13
  4. Senior Business Analyst, Mobile Forms, Leading U.S. franchisor of in-home services, 2020/10/13 - 2021/01/15
  5. Senior Business Analyst, SustainChain, an U.S. non-profit organization focusing on UN’s 17 SDG Goals, 2020/04/16 - 2020/10/12
  6. Business Analyst, Digital API, Australian low-cost airline, 2019/04/08 - 2020/04/03
  7. Business Analyst, API Gateway, Thoughtworks TechOps Platform, 2018/11/19 - 2019/01/18
  8. Agile Coach, Thoughtworks School, Thoughtworks, 2017/02/27 - 2018/09/30
  9. Full Stack Developer, Self Service, Major telecom operator in Australia, 2016/07/04 - 2017/02/24
  10. Ruby Developer, ActivityCloud, Active Network, LLC, 2015/03 —2016/06
  11. Full Stack Developer, TenderChase, Australian construction company, 2014/02 — 2015/02

Business Process Integration Platform, Global Talent Mobility Services Firm

2022/02/12 - present

Shunfa is the Product / Business Analyst of the offshore delivery team. He worked closely with the client and the team to build an innovative Business Process Integration Platform product from 0 to 1.

He is responsible for the following:

  • Client engagement & stakeholder management
  • Product roadmap and prioritization
  • Requirements elaborating & analyzing
  • User interview & Market research
  • Sprint & Backlog management

Microservice Replatform, German multinational automotive corporation

2021/08/16 - 2022/01/28

Shunfa was the Project Manager / Business Analyst of the offshore delivery team. he worked closely with the client and the team to rebuild the first 2 main APIs of their legacy on-pre Mainframe Aftersales system in a Microservices & Cloud environment.

He was responsible for the following:

  • Client engagement & stakeholder management
  • Product roadmap and prioritization
  • Requirements elaboration & analysis
  • Sprint planning & release management

SaaS RePlatform, Leading U.S. franchisor of in-home services

2021/01/19 - 2021/08/13

Project Description

SaaS RePlatform is the SaaS modernization of a legacy field service management software developed by a leading U.S. franchisor of in-home services, the platform enables franchisees to manage the life cycle of the in-home service business, including:

  • Customer service management
  • Field service management
  • Opportunity management
  • Marketing campaign management
  • Reporting dashboard

Personal responsibility

As the offshore product manager, responsible for the successful delivery of the modernized SaaS platform, including:

  • Client engagement
  • Manage product roadmap
  • Lead offshore product team (BA & UX)
  • Requirements elaborating & analyzing
  • Wireframes & Feature design

Team contribution

Joined the team with the goal of moving the product towards its initial production launch, have been working closely with the clients on product analysis and design work. Together with our onshore and offshore UX & BAs, we analyzed and designed major features such as Agreement Management from the ground up, based on user research & feedback. Helping ensured the success delivery of all scoped features for the new platform for its first release.

SustainChain, U.S. Non-profit Organization

2020/04/16 - 2020/10/12

Project Description

SustainChain is a platform that was established to help unify and accelerate efforts to achieve the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals.

Personal responsibility

As the offshore BA, responsible for the successful delivery of the SustainChain platform, including:

  • Inception & Discovery
  • Requirements elaborating & analyzing
  • Wireframes & Feature design
  • Client facing & communication

Team contribution

Joined the team shortly after it’s inception, have been working closely with the clients on a daily basis. Together with our UX designer, we analyzed and designed 15+ major features based on user research & feedback. Helping ensured the success launch of several critical features for the platform in preparation for the 75th General Assembly of the United Nations.

Digital API, Australian low-cost airline

2019/04/08 - 2020/04/03

Project Description

Digital API is the company’s enterprise API platform which:

  • Utilizes Micro-service architecture with Domain Driven Design
  • Enables high quality, personalized customer experiences. Doing this by providing the data and features required and abstracting away details to let front-end teams focus on what they do best.
  • Gives the company a more agile and responsive posture by being a platform that makes it easy to collect, mix and leverage data -which in turn allows the company to take advantage of and rapidly respond to market changes, opportunities and future unknown technology developments.

Personal responsibility

As the Digital API team’s Business Analyst, responsible for the requirements and project management throughout the whole product lifecycle, including:

  • Business requirements analysis
  • API design
  • Project management
  • Release management
  • Client relationship management

Team contribution

As the first offshore BA for the account, by working closely with our delivery team, I helped achieving:

  • First production release of Digital API
  • Success delivery of 36 APIs, ranging from Notification to Payment, from scratch
  • Facilitaing all kinds of scrum meetings like sprint planning, backlog refinement, retrospective and showcases.
  • Ensuring stable delivery during project migration period

Besides ensuring the successful production release of Digital API, I also have a habit of consistently improving our process and ways of working, including:

  • Revised our story template and Definition of Done, which unifies every checkpoint spreading across multiple sub-tasks into one single checklist. This makes it much easier to gaining context and work progress of every story.
  • Continuiously improve our backlog by elimilating the use of sub-tasks to manage different aspects of story ticket, which greatly reduced our number of tickets in backlog (from 180 tickets to 40)
  • Utilizing technique like User Story Map to visualize our Beta and MVP release scope and current delivery status, which helps both API team and client teams get a clear picture of our roadmap
  • Helped team aligning on many conventions, like API naming and time format standardization, which serves as a framework for our future API design
  • Actively communicate with both API team and client teams, weekly catchup with key roles, to make sure requirements gets understood and delivered exactly as our clients expected, which greatly reduce the number of requirements redo.

API Gateway, Thoughtworks TechOps Platform

2018/11/19 - 2019/01/18

Project Description

The TechOps Platform team is a global delivery team that implements the Thoughtworks Digital Platform Strategy, committed to creating a digital platform within Thoughtworks that improves product development efficiency and data availability. API Gateway is one of the three main products in the digital platform, providing reliable and easy-to-use API management service for Thoughtworks’ internal R&D teams.

Personal responsibility

As the API Gateway team’s Tech BA, responsible for the requirements management throughout the whole product lifecycle, including:

  • Business requirements gathering
  • Feature design
  • Iteration management
  • User testing
  • Feedback management

Team contribution

During my time with the team, I participated in the early design and delivery of several major Epics, including:

  • Release of the API self-service publishing feature

  • Data Events product Inception

  • Feasibility validation of the API OAuth OIDC authorization scheme

  • Requirements analysis and functional design for API system reliability monitoring

In addition to ensuring the successful delivery of iterations, I went a step further to optimize team’s current requirements management process and improved the overall delivery processes, including:

  • Based on the INVEST principle, bring clearity to the once ambiguous story writing, and made ensure that every story has corresponding Persona, business value, User Journey and clear AC guidelines.

  • The Roadmap, which was originally fragmented and ambiguous, was clearly managed using the User Story Map and a periodic Release plan was developed to ensure that everyone knows the value and context of what we’re delivering.

  • Actively communicate with all team members, clarified several key but inconsistent concepts, ensured that everyone speak the same language, and effectively improved communication efficiency and made product logic clear.

  • Optimized the original fragmented rights management, proposed a complete set of unified rights management rules, ensured that everyone understands the rules the same way, and ensured the accuracy and reliability of rights management.

  • Shortened the user feedback cycle time, by doing user interviews before each iteration, and verifying the accuracy and prioritization of requirements through product prototypes and user validation before actual development.

Thoughtworks School

2017/02/27 - 2018/09/30

Project Description

Thoughtworks School is the Thoughtworks China Capacity Building Team responsible for the culture and skill training for new hires.

Personal responsibility

In 2018, as the owner of agile training for graduates in China, in collaboration with the operations team and major business units, designed and implemented the 2018 Thoughtworks China cultural and agile training program for more than 100 graduates nationwide.

In 2017, as the main person in charge of agile training for the Wuhan office, I was responsible for the 2017 Wuhan graduate training program and 2017 Thoughtworks Summer Coding Camp for more than 60 undergrad students in Wuhan.

Team contribution

In the 2018 Thoughtworks China cultural and agile training program, I directly participated in the following activities:

  1. Requirements gathering with various business units, as well as previous participants.

  2. Design of the Training program

  3. Design and development of the curriculum

  4. Collaboration between more than 60 trainers and 113 graduates nationwide to carry out the agile technical training program

  5. Work with other agile coaches to provide after-hire agile technical training for graduates from Chengdu and Wuhan.

  6. Feedback gathering and program data analysis

In the 2017 Thoughtworks Summer Coding Camp, I directly participated in the following activities:

  1. Visiting major universities in Wuhan, and formed partenership with schools to co-host the Summer Coding Camp

  2. Design of the Coding Camp

  3. Design and development of the promotion website

  4. Marketing and organization of the program

  5. Design and development of the curriculum

  6. Training more than 60 undergrad students along with 2 other coaches

  7. Feedback gathering and program data analysis

Self Service, Major telecom operator in Australia

2016/07/04 - 2017/02/24

Project Description

Self Service is a website and mobile self-service top-up product of one of the major telecom operators in Australia. Carrier users can use this product to do self-service top-up and package purchase for calls and data.

Personal responsibility

As a member of the development team, responsible for the development and delivery of product functionalities.

Team contribution

In addition to ensuring the successful delivery, I strived to improve code quality, test stability and coverage, and improved the development process, including:

  • Shared Ruby development best practices among team members.

  • Successfully fixed dozens of once mysteriously failed test cases, and fixed bugs in the test code itself, improving the stability and coverage of the test.

  • Improved the Git collaboration process for the large development team by adopting upstream merge and non-upstream rebase strategy, replacing the old Upstream Rebase strategy (which Git officially not recommend).

Other Thoughtworks short-term projects

  • Front End Developer, OCAL, REAP Public Welfare Education Game, 2018/10/23 - 2018/11/16

  • Front-end developer, MBB, German luxury car company, 2017/11/20 - 2018/01/26

ActivityCloud, Active Network, LLC

2015/03 —2016/06

Project Description

ActivityCloud is a web application that provides data analysis for events such as sports events, providing event organizers with multiple types of data analysis, including: demographic distribution, social enthusiasm and activity recommendations, helping event organizers and participants find sense quickly and accurately. Activities of interest.

Personal responsibility

As a member of the API Service Development team, I am responsible for feature development.

Team contribution

In addition to ensuring the successful delivery of iterations, I continued to improve code quality at work, including:

  • Implement a data management solution that uses ActiveRecord instead of DTO.

  • Found a FireFox browser bug while debugging a production issue, and later submited a bug to Mozila and watched it fixed.

TenderChase, Australian construction company

2014/02 — 2015/02

Project Description

TenderChase is a building tender web application for an Australian construction company, providing builders with easy-to-use supplier tender information management.

Personal responsibility

As the only full-stack developer, responsible for product requirements communication, product architecture and user interface design, and feature implementation.

Team contribution

In addition to ensuring the successful delivery of the product, I also improved several product features, including:

  • Redesigned the once complicated and incomprehensible supplier bidding interface to a new interface with clear logic and easy operation, which significantly reduces the difficulty of use and better user experience.

  • Found missing an API that Dropbox Ruby SDK did not provide while implementing a feature, so submitted a Pull Request to the Dropbox Ruby SDK project which later merged by the maintainer.