Ivo Gabriel
Product Owner with a background in Systems
13 years in tech, 5+ years leading cross-functional IT projects, and one product of my own in production with around 200 users.
A versatile profile to guide versatile development.
- Product
- Strategy
- Goals
- Technology
- Quality
- Architecture
- People
- Leadership
- Teaching
TIC Platform
The product that became inevitable
The need in the process was so pressing that I could no longer ignore I had the answer to that pain. It is a platform for publishing ideas and handling the group applications that carry them out. It improved turnaround times by 400%, raised the quality of the results, and cut friction and stress for the team.
The evidence
- 154
- moderated ideason a single board, with states and permissions
- 156
- applicationsmatched to groups by hand, deliberately
- 3
- featuresI decided not to build
- 0
- weeksof transition to the new platform for users
And that's only the first half of the app.
Development kept going, and it was a success…
How the process went
The decision that defines the product most is one I turned down. Having the platform assemble teams automatically by matching applications to projects was ruled out, and I didn't build it: the real criteria are implicit, a teacher knows which profiles won't work together, and that lives in no form field. It has to be an intentional decision.
Read the full case(decisions, build vs. buy, what didn't work)
How I work
The vision sets the product, the product shapes the process.
Everything has a reason, and every decision is deliberate.
I share a common base of knowledge with every area of a project. I write code, I plan business and marketing strategy, I design flows, interfaces, architecture. When I define a requirement or make a decision, there's a reason behind it, and I can show it from the perspective of each area involved.
Effective communication is what makes a team cohesive.
The daily work of a leader or a teacher, which is what I get to be, is carrying a vision, holding it in front of people who don't share it yet, and explaining the why behind the what. It's the core competency of the role.
A reasoned "no" shapes the build too.
The case above is largely an inventory of what I decided not to build: automated matching, public applications, AI-assisted idea writing.
Other projects
CREW builder — putting volunteer teams together
- Product Owner
- Developer
Built to replace one Google Form and five spreadsheets where every cell was edited by hand to staff 200 people across five camps. Automated pipelines, clear interfaces, far less friction: the people running it now spend their effort on the team they are putting together, not on the paperwork of recording it.
Automated assignment grader
- Stakeholder
- Developer
Reads a repository's architecture, flags the key pieces, takes the code and the commit history, and scores it against a weighted rubric through the Claude API. 52 teams graded in the latest round.
Turnero Digital — real-time virtual queue
- Product Owner
- Developer
It cuts friction at the front desk by coordinating on-demand service for both sides. The customer joins the virtual queue with a QR code, watches their position update live, and gets a notification when they are called. The provider runs the queue live from a panel and gathers the data that goes on to guide business decisions.
Different settings, same skills
These skills and this experience aren't limited to tech projects. I get to be part of many others, like camps and music production spaces, where I'm often the one guiding a project, setting up continuous improvement with as little friction as possible, and leading teams of 40+ people in very fast-moving settings. I can tell you more about that too.
- Camps
- Music production
If you want to know more about my experience, get in touch.
A message, an email, a call. Whatever works for you.