Dan Ford

Senior product manager with more than 20 years broad applications management experience who excels at leading cross-functional teams and coordinating multiple projects. Exceptional ability to partner with engineering based on experience both as senior product manager and as senior engineering manager. Solid experience in all aspects of product management from requirements through launch; product positioning and value proposition definition; competitive analysis. Excellent communicator. Passionate product champion.

Successfully delivered software as a service (SaaS) web applications as well as traditional enterprise applications. Deep expertise with content management applications, including workflow, searching metadata and full text, file viewing and markup. Domain experience in E-Discovery,E-Learning, and PDM/PLM.

Professional Experience


CT Summation, San Francisco, California 6/2008 – 7/2010
Senior Product Manager

CT Summation provides litigation support solutions to legal professionals in law firms and corporations. I am responsible for a new web-based product line targeting new markets and market expansion for SaaS and on-premises deployment. In 7/2010 CT Summation was acquired by AccessData.

CaseCentral, San Francisco, California 2002 – 5/2008
Senior Product Manager

CaseCentral provides a SaaS solution for corporations and the law firms that serve them. The products provide advanced Electronic Discovery search and workflow capabilities for repositories of hundreds of terabytes of data. Responsible for all CaseCentral products and data services, 67% of company revenue.

gForce Systems, Cupertino, California 2000 – 2001
Product Manager

gForce Systems was a small start-up that provided hosted (SaaS) enterprise e-learning services until acquired by Docent in 2001. Successfully managed the on time released of two new products from inception to commercial release. Department-wide responsibilities as well as direct responsibility for specific products, including: Sherpa Corp., Milpitas, California 1989 – 2000
Sherpa provided a distributed ECM (Enterprise Content Management) application with Product Lifecycle Management services. A small private company when I joined, Sherpa grew many times larger and opened offices across Europe. I held multiple roles with increasing responsibility at Sherpa. In 1998 Sherpa was acquired by INSO Corp, and then sold by INSO in 2000.

Senior Program Manager, 1998–2000
Program Manager for the company’s next-generation product, an enterprise-scale document management application with flexible workflow capabilities. Responsible for on-time delivery of a high-quality product by team of 30 people in all disciplines. Supervised senior technical domain experts; mentored junior contributors.

Senior Product Manager, 1995–1997
Product manager of 6 products that generated over 50% of the company’s revenue. Owner of the company product roadmap.

Software Development Manager, 1992–1995
First-line engineering manager responsible for 5 distinct products, both end user applications for document management and integrations with third-party applications.

Software Engineer, 1989–1991
Responsible for support for and enhancements to existing product built on a relational database in a client-server environment.

Education

Pomona College, Claremont, California

BA, Mathematics with CS emphasis

Professional Training

Market Research Best Practices
Customer Intimacy: Contextual Design, Market Sizing and Segmentation
Project Management and Project Leadership
Building High-Performance Software Teams
The Job of the Marketing Professional
Effective Communicating
Situational Leadership
Java Programming

Organizations

Silicon Valley Product Management Association

National Genealogical Society, New England Historic Genealogical Society

Awards

1996 Sherpa Award. For constant dedication and devotion to getting the job done with a spirit of willingness, cheerfulness and confidence while demonstrating the principles of commitment, communication and cooperation.
1995 Outstanding Contribution Award. For outstanding accomplishments in 1995.
1994 Teamwork Award. For demonstration of exemplary teamwork and cooperation with multiple departments to accomplish company goals.
1993 Sherpa Award. For constant dedication and devotion to getting the job done with a spirit of willingness, cheerfulness and confidence.
1992 Outstanding Contribution Award. For outstanding contributions by managing the release of Sherpa/View 1.0.
1991 President’s Award. For outstanding achievement in meeting product development schedules for PIMS.
1991 Teamwork Award. For demonstration of exemplary teamwork and cooperation with multiple departments in getting our product releases on schedule all year to accomplish company goals.
1990 President’s Award. For outstanding team effort in developing and delivering the PIMS 1.0 release on time.