Leader in Agile Transformation Applies Methodology to Enhance Collaboration and Feature Delivery
August 23, 2024 — hh2 Cloud Services, the leading construction back-office platform, is thrilled to announce Julia Barnette as our new Vice President of Agile Delivery, effective as of January 2024.
Julia brings over 18 years of experience in product management and agile delivery and was a key driver in scaling a small, family-owned business to a large company with multiple acquisitions. She’s transitioned nearly two dozen product lines to agile delivery methodologies to help streamline workflows and accelerate time to market.
As hh2’s VP of Agile Delivery, Julia oversees the engineering department, which currently consists of 25 FTEs and contractors, and product software development lifecycle (SDLC). She also works closely with the product team and meets monthly with finance to report on work available for capitalization. Her main responsibility is implementing the agile delivery model across hh2’s product lines, which often means improving communication and collaboration between teams and departments.
hh2’s commitment to the agile delivery methodology was a major factor in her move to the company. “They’re open to developing and using an agile process … and the discipline agile contains.” Julia shares that not every company ‘buys in’ to the process, which is necessary for ongoing success.
She also has a strong work history with hh2 CTO Geoff Gohs. “Having someone that I reported to that I could trust [and] was working in the best interest of the business and the employees…was a big reason [for coming to hh2].”
Julia leverages her previous experience as a product manager and scrum master into her agile delivery role, giving her a better understanding of how product and engineering teams each approach their responsibilities and how the teams can improve collaboration to deliver better products or features, faster.
A critical part of her role at hh2 is helping the product and engineering teams find the right balance in determining what products or features to build and deliver. “It’s a lot about collaboration and communication … and making them comfortable understanding that product is the one that decides what we’re going to build, and [engineering] decides how best to build it.”
Julia has already taken steps to solidify the software development lifecycle, working with marketing, sales, product, architecture, engineering, and support teams to determine the most efficient and effective methods for each step of the process, from idea through delivery.
Along with creating a more collaborative environment at hh2, Julia is focused on delivering new features. Prior to her arrival, hh2 was primarily dealing with delivering fixes, and the company wanted to move into developing new features for their existing products to better address customer needs.
With the ambitious goal of delivering at least one new feature per quarter to customers, Julia and her team are “evaluating all of our opportunities … and once we have a prioritized list, we create a team [for each item, that will only] focus on delivering that feature to customers.” She reports that they’re already finishing up new punch clock functionalities for hh2’s Remote Payroll and hope to meet or exceed their feature delivery goals for the year.
hh2, a leading provider of cloud-based services for construction companies, continues to advance its back-office solutions to meet contractor’s needs. From our modern time-entry methods to integrated AP routing and approval and even HR management, we help streamline your operations so you can boost efficiency and focus on the job at hand.
Learn more about our construction industry-specific offerings at www.hh2.com.