Overview
Daxko’s website business supports a portfolio representing more than $1.87 million in annual recurring revenue. Historically, client websites were maintained as largely independent deployments, which meant fixes, updates, and new functionality often had to be handled site by site.
As Digital Production Manager and later Senior Digital Production Manager, I worked with Engineering and Design leadership to establish the strategy and operating foundation for a shared modular website platform. The initiative introduced a mono-repository approach, reusable components, centralized updates, clearer implementation standards, and a prioritized product backlog.
The rollout remains phased. The standardized architecture does not yet power the full portfolio. My role has been to define the product direction, translate recurring problems into delivery-ready work, and build the documentation and operating systems needed for adoption to grow responsibly.
- Company
- Daxko
- Project Role
- Digital Production Manager and Senior Digital Production Manager
- Project Dates
- August 2025 to Present
- Project Status
- Phased Rollout
- Product Type
- Website platform modernization
- Teams Involved
- Engineering, Development, Design, QA, Client Operations, Support, SEO, and client-facing implementation teams
Metrics
$1.87M+
ARR represented by the website business
Portfolio context only. The standardized platform does not yet power the full portfolio.
100+
Website implementations completed
Successfully completed across my time at Daxko while managing more than 20 concurrent implementations at peak.
6 months → 2 months
Expected theme-conversion timeline
Improved through clearer standards, documentation, backlog planning, and cross-functional alignment.
Phased rollout
Growing adoption of shared architecture
Reusable modules and centralized capabilities are expanding across a growing set of websites.
Challenge & Ownership
Problem Summary
The website offering had grown through individual client implementations rather than through a consistently managed product platform. Each website could have its own codebase, implementation history, and variation in functionality.
This created recurring problems:
- Bug fixes and security updates often had to be repeated across separate deployments.
- Features and components were rebuilt or adapted multiple times.
- Standard and custom functionality were not always defined consistently.
- Documentation did not provide one reliable source of truth for capabilities and implementation patterns.
- Theme conversions and platform updates required extensive coordination and rework.
Existing State
Teams delivered high-quality websites, but the operating model treated many implementations as separate projects. Improvements made for one client did not automatically create value for the rest of the portfolio.
Engineering, Design, Support, and client-facing teams often had to interpret the same functionality in different contexts. This increased maintenance effort, made estimation less predictable, and limited the ability to improve the offering continuously as a shared product.
Why It Mattered
The challenge was larger than delivery speed. The website business represented more than $1.87 million in annual recurring revenue, so fragmented architecture and inconsistent standards created long-term business risk.
A more scalable model could reduce repeated work, improve consistency, make updates easier to distribute, and give teams a clearer understanding of what the product supported. It would also create a stronger foundation for continuous improvement across a growing share of the portfolio.
My Role Summary
I acted as the product owner for this initiative in the absence of a dedicated Product team. I identified recurring implementation and maintenance problems, helped define the platform strategy, and translated the work into structured epics and backlog tickets.
I partnered with Engineering and Design leadership to clarify requirements, dependencies, implementation standards, and acceptance criteria. I also owned theme-conversion planning, product-level documentation, backlog prioritization, QA expectations, and delivery-readiness standards.
Responsibilities
- Defined the platform problem and desired future state.
- Created and prioritized epics and backlog tickets.
- Documented requirements, dependencies, and acceptance criteria.
- Refined work with Engineering and Design before delivery.
- Established standards for reusable modules and shared functionality.
- Owned theme-conversion planning and launch-readiness documentation.
- Improved QA, implementation, and transition workflows.
- Supported phased adoption without overstating platform maturity.
Decisions I Owned
- Which recurring problems should be treated as platform issues rather than one-off implementation requests.
- How backlog items should be grouped into epics and prioritized.
- What information and acceptance criteria were required before work was delivery ready.
- How standard and custom functionality should be defined and documented.
- How platform documentation should support Engineering, Design, Client Operations, Support, and customers.
- How adoption should proceed in phases based on technical readiness, customer needs, and business priority.
Scope Boundaries
I did not independently design or build the technical architecture. Engineering owned implementation decisions within the codebase, while Design owned visual-system decisions. My role was to define the product problem, clarify requirements and outcomes, structure the backlog, coordinate tradeoffs, and create the operating foundation for delivery.
The platform remains in phased rollout. It is intended to scale across the website portfolio, but it does not currently power every site.
Discovery & Product Strategy
Discovery Process
The opportunity emerged from patterns observed across website implementations, theme conversions, support issues, QA findings, and cross-team discussions.
Rather than treating each issue as an isolated project problem, I grouped repeated pain points into broader product themes. I compared where teams were recreating work, where documentation did not match live behavior, where handoffs created ambiguity, and where launch risk increased because dependencies were not visible early enough.
Evidence and Inputs
- Recurring development and support tickets across separate websites.
- Implementation delays caused by unclear standard versus custom functionality.
- Theme-conversion planning and documentation gaps.
- QA findings and backend behavior that did not match existing documentation.
- Feedback from Engineering, Design, Support, Client Operations, and implementation teams.
- Patterns observed across more than 100 completed website implementations.
Recurring Problems Identified
- Repeated fixes and updates across isolated codebases.
- Duplicated feature work.
- Inconsistent module behavior and implementation patterns.
- Unclear product boundaries.
- Documentation that was incomplete or disconnected from the live system.
- Long conversion cycles and avoidable rework.
- Limited visibility into dependencies and delivery readiness.
Key Insights
- The primary issue was not individual project execution. It was the absence of a shared product operating model.
- Reusable architecture alone would not solve the problem without backlog discipline, implementation standards, documentation, QA, and rollout governance.
- Platform adoption needed to be phased because customer needs, technical readiness, and migration complexity varied across the portfolio.
- Documentation had to serve as a product capability reference, not only as internal implementation notes.
Product Strategy
The strategy was to evolve website delivery from a collection of isolated implementations into a shared platform that could improve over time.
The target model centered on a mono-repository, reusable modules, shared functionality, centralized fixes and security updates, consistent implementation standards, and a prioritized product backlog. The strategy also included a phased adoption model so new themes and migrated websites could move onto the shared foundation without creating unnecessary risk.
Proposed Solution
The proposed solution combined technical architecture with product operations:
- A shared mono-repository for reusable modules and common functionality.
- Centralized deployment of fixes, security updates, and incremental improvements.
- Epics and prioritized backlog tickets tied to customer, business, and platform needs.
- Documented requirements, dependencies, edge cases, and acceptance criteria.
- A clear definition of delivery readiness before Engineering begins work.
- Module and template documentation aligned with live backend behavior.
- Standardized QA, launch-readiness, and theme-conversion processes.
- Phased rollout based on technical readiness and customer priority.
Product Definition & Backlog
Epic Structure
Shared Module Architecture
Problem: Features and components were maintained independently across client websites.
Intended outcome: Create reusable modules and shared functionality that can be improved centrally.
Theme Conversion Standards
Problem: Theme conversions required extensive custom interpretation, documentation, and coordination.
Intended outcome: Establish repeatable implementation patterns, clearer scope, and faster delivery readiness.
Platform Documentation
Problem: Teams lacked a single reliable source of truth for capabilities, configurations, and use cases.
Intended outcome: Create product-level documentation that supports selling, building, launching, and supporting the platform.
Quality and Release Readiness
Problem: QA expectations and launch dependencies were not always visible early enough.
Intended outcome: Define validation steps, acceptance requirements, and release-readiness standards.
Backlog Approach
I converted recurring customer, implementation, and platform needs into epics and prioritized backlog tickets. Each item was structured around the problem to solve, intended outcome, requirements, dependencies, acceptance criteria, and delivery-readiness needs.
Backlog refinement was completed with Engineering and Design to resolve ambiguity, surface technical tradeoffs, and confirm that work was actionable before development began.
Prioritization Criteria
- Customer impact and frequency of the problem.
- Business value and relevance across the portfolio.
- Security, reliability, and launch risk.
- Technical dependencies and implementation feasibility.
- Potential for reuse across multiple websites.
- Effort required compared with expected long-term value.
- Readiness of documentation, design decisions, and acceptance criteria.
Requirements Approach
Requirements were written to connect business and customer needs with the expected technical and operational outcome. I documented what the feature needed to accomplish, which users and teams it affected, known dependencies, expected behavior, edge cases, and any documentation or rollout requirements.
The goal was to give Engineering enough context to make informed implementation decisions without prescribing code-level solutions.
Acceptance Criteria Approach
Every epic and backlog ticket included dedicated acceptance criteria. These criteria defined the observable conditions that had to be true before the work could be considered complete.
Acceptance criteria covered expected functionality, required configurations, applicable edge cases, QA expectations, documentation updates, and readiness for release or implementation. Completed work was checked against these criteria before delivery.
Delivery Readiness
A backlog item was considered delivery ready when the problem, intended outcome, scope, dependencies, requirements, and acceptance criteria were clear enough for Engineering to begin work without relying on unresolved assumptions.
Items also needed the appropriate Design input, documented platform context, known rollout considerations, and a defined validation approach.
Execution & Delivery
Collaboration Summary
The initiative required sustained coordination across Engineering, Development, Design, QA, Client Operations, Support, SEO, and implementation teams.
I facilitated product and delivery discussions, translated feedback between technical and nontechnical stakeholders, documented decisions, and maintained the backlog and source-of-truth materials. The goal was to keep teams aligned on the same product outcomes rather than allowing each implementation to develop its own interpretation.
Engineering Partnership
I partnered with Engineering to refine epics and backlog tickets, identify dependencies, evaluate feasibility, and resolve ambiguity before work entered development.
Engineering retained ownership of technical implementation decisions. I focused on clarifying the problem, desired behavior, business context, acceptance criteria, and rollout needs. We then reviewed completed work against the documented criteria and updated platform documentation to reflect live behavior.
Design Partnership
I worked with Design leadership to define implementation patterns, clarify standard versus custom behavior, support theme-conversion planning, and ensure page templates and modules were documented in practical, usable terms.
Design input was incorporated before delivery readiness when a feature affected layout, visual behavior, configuration, or customer-facing usability.
Stakeholder Alignment
I kept stakeholders aligned through backlog reviews, documentation, implementation planning, QA discussions, and launch-readiness checkpoints.
When priorities competed, I framed decisions around customer impact, portfolio value, technical dependencies, risk, and reuse. This helped teams make tradeoffs with a shared understanding of why the work mattered.
Risks and Dependencies
- Existing websites used different codebases and implementation histories.
- Not every client could migrate at the same time.
- Documentation needed to remain aligned with live backend behavior.
- Theme and module decisions required coordination between Engineering and Design.
- Centralized changes could create broader impact if QA and release controls were weak.
- Platform claims needed to distinguish current adoption from intended portfolio scale.
Implementation Approach
The work moved forward through a phased approach:
- Identify repeated platform and delivery problems.
- Group the work into epics and prioritize the backlog.
- Document requirements, dependencies, and acceptance criteria.
- Refine delivery-ready work with Engineering and Design.
- Create implementation standards and product-level documentation.
- Validate modules, templates, and workflows through QA and real implementations.
- Expand adoption as themes, websites, and teams become ready.
QA and Validation
QA and validation were tied directly to the acceptance criteria defined in the backlog. Validation included functional review, configuration checks, proofreading and content review where applicable, comparison with documented module behavior, and confirmation that launch dependencies had been resolved.
Findings were converted into updated backlog tickets, documentation changes, or implementation guidance so the same issue would not need to be rediscovered on later projects.
Documentation Created
- Module-level capability and configuration documentation.
- Page-template documentation covering layout options and implementation patterns.
- Theme-conversion backlog and launch-readiness materials.
- Standard versus custom functionality guidance.
- QA tickets, validation workflows, and backend-aligned documentation.
- SOPs and transition processes supporting related platform migrations.
Training and Enablement
The documentation was designed to support multiple audiences, including Engineering, Design, Client Operations, Support, and client-facing implementation teams.
I also created and refined training resources so teams could understand platform capabilities, identify the correct implementation pattern, and use the documentation as a reliable source of truth.
Outcomes & Reflection
Quantitative Outcomes
- Helped evolve a website business representing more than $1.87 million in ARR while establishing the foundation for a standardized platform.
- Helped reduce the expected theme-conversion timeline from approximately six months to two months.
- Successfully completed more than 100 website implementation projects across my time at Daxko while managing more than 20 concurrent implementations at peak.
Qualitative Outcomes
- Established a shared platform strategy and product operating model.
- Created structured epics, backlog tickets, requirements, acceptance criteria, and delivery-readiness standards.
- Improved clarity around standard versus custom functionality.
- Created a stronger source of truth for platform capabilities, templates, and module behavior.
- Improved coordination among Engineering, Design, QA, Support, and client-facing teams.
- Created a foundation for centralized fixes, updates, shared functionality, and continuous improvement.
Developing Outcomes
- Growing adoption of the shared architecture across additional themes and websites.
- Expansion of reusable modules and centrally managed functionality.
- Reduced maintenance effort across websites that move onto the shared foundation.
- More consistent customer experiences and implementation outcomes across the portfolio.
Limitations
The standardized platform does not yet power the full $1.87 million ARR portfolio. Migration and adoption remain phased, and some outcomes will become measurable only as more websites move onto the shared architecture.
The six-month to two-month theme-conversion improvement reflects the expected delivery model established through the initiative rather than a claim that every future conversion will take exactly two months.
Future Opportunities
- Expand platform adoption across additional website segments.
- Measure maintenance reduction and delivery consistency after broader migration.
- Introduce stronger product analytics for module usage, support demand, and implementation outcomes.
- Continue improving release governance and shared QA automation.
- Use customer and support insights to guide the next generation of reusable capabilities.
What I Learned
Scalable architecture is only part of building a platform. The technical foundation must be supported by backlog discipline, shared standards, accurate documentation, QA, stakeholder alignment, and a realistic rollout model.
I also learned that product ownership often begins by recognizing patterns others experience as unrelated problems. By connecting repeated implementation issues to a shared system, I was able to help move the conversation from delivering individual websites toward managing an evolving product.
What I Would Do Differently
I would establish formal platform measurement earlier. The initiative created strong operational and architectural foundations, but earlier baselines for maintenance effort, ticket volume, module reuse, and implementation variation would make long-term impact easier to quantify.
I would also define a more formal stakeholder cadence at the beginning so roadmap decisions, adoption readiness, and release expectations could be reviewed through one consistent governance process.
Skills Demonstrated
- Product Strategy
- Platform Strategy
- Technical Product Ownership
- Epic and Backlog Management
- Requirements Definition
- Acceptance Criteria
- Delivery Readiness
- Cross-Functional Leadership
- Platform Modernization
- Technical Documentation
- QA and Release Readiness
- Phased Rollout Planning
Closing Takeaway
The most important outcome was not a single website launch. It was establishing the strategy and operating foundation needed to turn repeated delivery work into a shared product platform that can become more consistent, maintainable, and valuable over time.
