MDE Profiles: Tazz Shaw

Bio:

A mildly eccentric natural born entertainer currently residing in Northeast Lincolnshire. A keen runner, running every day since 26/9/21. Accidently falling into the Digital world.

Favourite hobbies: Running Ultras and Marathons

Favourite marine creature: nudibranch

Party trick: Magically not appearing at parties? I can do the worm.

2 truths & a lie: I trained to be a ballet dancer, I have 3 children, I once ran 60 miles in a single day

CAREERS PROFILE

Currently Senior product owner here at TCE, focusing primarily on the MDE. I have had quite a diverse background of experience working in various industries, but I have always been drawn back to the sea and leverage my varied experience in different IT development roles.

Company/organisation: The Crown Estate - Digital

Role: Senior Product Owner

Responsibilities: Listen to our customers, understand challenges, create space to solve problems, bring the right people into the room, ideate and work with development teams and the marine team, to bring the MDE vision to life, one release at a time.

Why did you choose this career?: In reality this career chose me as I slowly developed into this role, I loved being a Business analyst but I couldn’t understand why development took so long, so I became a developer. I realised why things take time and learned to love the magic behind code, but I hated being told what to do so I became a Product Owner. I loved that I could steer the product and make decisions, but I hated that I couldn’t influence on an Enterprise level so I became a Senior Product owner. I now get to share my love for technology, get people excited, think about things from a company wide perspective, I get to be curious, I get to bring clever people together and seeing what we can create.

What do you love about your job?: What is not to love? This job enables me to bring people and technology together incrementally in a way that we can learn and grow rather than trying to guess everything up front. I get to learn from some amazing people both from the business and Digital and work on something that I personally believe has the potential to inspire the next generation.

What do you find challenging about your work?: Working out what is an assumption and how to validate. Also keeping true to the product vision and challenging the business on how we measure success and move the gauge.

Skills: Product management, Scrum, Agile coaching, coding, coaching

Career Pathway: Left school after GCSEs. Worked as a Car washer. Got a job as a check-in worker in Dover. Given an opportunity to be a Business Analyst. Moved to Lincolnshire to become a Developer. Became a Product Owner and eventually lead a team of Product Owners. Got a Level 5 in Management and Leadership as part of that Promotion. Moved through various product roles until finding my home here at TCE where my love for Marine and the environment met my passion for products.

Advise to someone looking to move into the marine/digital/design sector: Trial a few things, identify both what you enjoy and what you don’t like. There are loads of roles and opportunities in the digital sphere where you can specialise in more of what you like, even if, like me, you have not been privileged enough to go through full education. Be curious, be ambitious and ALWAYS try and work for a company that you share the same values, it makes it less like work and encourages you to be passionate and do something you really care about