Patricia McIlwraith
Product Owner, ConSol

After High School, I took a break from studies with a gap year where I worked to buy myself a car. I returned to university studies where I spent the next 4 years earning my Honours degree in Behavioural Sciences (Psychology).

My first job was with a small software vendor who developed and marketed Risk Management software to the insurance industry. Although we specialised in Worker’s Compensation for Self-Insurers, we had other modules that dealt with other lines of insurance as well as ‘frauds & forgeries’ for the National Australia Bank. I started as a Graduate Assistant System Consultant, assisting with demos, configurations and customer support and was with them for about two years.

After this, I did a short stint with the Victorian Government when WorkCare was introduced, working as an analyst, but was head-hunted back to my original company where I was responsible for Sales, Implementations and Support for the Southern States.

I was then approached to join a large insurer who was using our software, as a systems/business analyst, and spent about five years with them. I progressed to the role of National Claim Systems Manager, where I was primarily responsible for maintaining and managing the software for their local government operations.

I joined Yarris in 2004 as a business analyst to assist with product redefinition when migrating ConSol from ADABAS to ORACLE. In those early days, I was writing solution stories and assisting with testing. We had a customer support team in Brisbane but most of our development was done from the Melbourne office, in South Yarra.

Since then, I have worked in a variety of roles such as QA Team Lead, Quality Assurance Manager, Testing and Customer Support Manager, Business Analysis Manager and Product Owner.

I have been the Product Owner for Yarris’ ConSol & LPG products now for nearly 10 years. My primary responsibility is to try to make all things in my little domain run smoothly.

Having worked with ConSol for over 17 years, and for much of that time as the lead BA involved in product extension and growth, I am the product expert. I work with our architects to define the roadmap for long and short-term future development, our sales team to develop strategies to consolidate product identity and extend market penetration, our account managers to establish and maintain relationships with our existing customers, our customer experience team to assist with the more complex issues raised with them, our QA team to define and maintain our high level of quality and our developers to provide a business understanding of new requirements.

Part of my job is to work with my team to develop a schedule for our releases, as a project manager to ensure that we deliver to that schedule. I am a herder of cats and the person who, in addition to other roles and responsibilities, skirts around the edges of each project to make sure that the less pleasant jobs are handled. 

My career hope has always been to do something that I love and to make a difference. I have always enjoyed my time at Yarris as it enabled me to do both those things.  And beyond that, I love my team. Working with really smart people who bring so much to the table is a constant source of joy. We argue and challenge each other and are all constantly growing. I really appreciate them, for together our small team is capable of so much.

The main challenge in my role is managing the shifting priorities. There is so much I want to do with our products. In each of our releases, our roadmap product development desires have to be prioritised against our customer-initiated requests for new functionality and any production issues or improvements that may have been identified, in both our desktop and mobile products.

I am a bit of a workaholic, so I don’t have a lot of spare time. Most of the little spare time that I have is pretty much fully occupied with family – my husband and I truly enjoy spending time with our family, which includes our elderly parents, our three adult children and two precocious grand-children. We holiday together and catch up each weekend (when not in lockdown) for a sit-down dinner for everyone who can come. When alone, we relax together in front of the tv, play games on our phones, read and take walks. I am in the process of writing a book about my family history and last year I published a small adventure novel for my immediate family.