We recently had the opportunity to get Coforma’s Vice President of Delivery James (Jamie) Newberry’s take on “the real art of product delivery,” the importance of humility and vulnerability in building collaborative partnerships, and what it takes to delight those partners and the communities they serve through product management.
Jamie’s journey in the tech world kicked off during the PC boom, “before Dell was Dell.” After years of navigating rapid shifts in PC technology, he moved into telecommunications as a product manager, overseeing manufacturing, marketing, and engineering. Before finding his way to civic tech, Jamie worked as a consultant and even co-founded a company that helped set up satellite systems.
As the Vice President of Delivery at Coforma, Jamie helps ensure successful project outcomes, builds trust and lasting relationships with our partners, and fosters a service-minded approach within our delivery team. He also brings a wealth of stories, insights, and expertise, guiding our teams as they craft creative solutions and build technology products that improve people’s lives.
Can you describe Coforma’s approach to product delivery?
Our product delivery approach is rooted in human-centered design principles and emphasizes user research from the outset. Delivering solutions that will be truly impactful starts with understanding who your customers and end users are, identifying their needs, and crafting products based on what you find.
One challenge when it comes to delivery is striking the ideal balance between extensive research and the creation of an MVP (Minimum Viable Product). Releasing the MVP quickly builds trust with our partners, as they see tangible results, but what we learn in the discovery phase will help build a lasting foundation for the project.
The real art of delivery is about finding that balance: when to release the MVP, how to iterate, and how to earn and maintain trust with your partners. Once you achieve those initial milestones, the rest of the journey becomes much more manageable.
It’s important to keep in mind that early product iterations may not always align perfectly with partner expectations, but that gives them the opportunity to offer valuable feedback.
My hobby is woodworking. When I’m building something new, I make scrap models first and learn a lot about what doesn’t work in the process. I chuck the scrap models but keep what I learned. Similarly, in Coforma’s work, it requires courage and faith to release an early version of a product, but I believe the act of being vulnerable is important at this stage.
The ultimate goal of delivery is to delight the customers. This could be the person using the solution or our partners funding the project. They’ve entrusted you, an unfamiliar entity, with delivering solutions that are going to make a difference in people’s lives.
How do you build trust and foster collaborative partnerships with our government clients?
The essence of our approach is partnership. We encourage open communication, inviting government partners to join our meetings and openly discuss project details.
A critical element of our relationship-building is active listening, which is intrinsic to our research process and baked into our product management and engineering practices. It’s about asking questions, being quiet, and really listening to the answer. Understanding the contract is vital, but listening to the client is just as important. We engage in in-depth conversations, ask questions, and try to grasp their vision.
Our government partners want to know that we’ll not only deliver what’s asked but also understand their underlying intent and bring our insights to the table. This mutual dialogue helps build a collaborative relationship based on sharing expertise. When we reach the point of, “Okay, we’re working on this together to build something,” the relationships are fantastic.
How do you respond to challenges when they come up on projects?
How a hitch is handled early on, in the absence of established trust, can set the tone for the entire partnership. Instead of retreating behind contract technicalities, we step up, partner with our clients, and find solutions. And we’re very, very, very transparent in how we work.
The real measure of a contractor’s effectiveness in dealing with challenges isn't just in their task execution but in the enduring relationship they curate with their partners. If you read feedback from our partners, most of them are very positive because they love that we've built that trust in our relationship and cultivated that dialogue.
What are the core principles that guide the delivery team at Coforma?
At its simplest? We’re here to serve; we’ve got a service-minded approach to the work we do. It may sound cliché, but we assist government agencies when they seek our help, not just for themselves but for the people they serve. It’s important to maintain a perspective of empathy and to always be thinking about the end user. When you lose that focus, you can end up creating ineffective products.
From research to product management and engineering, fostering open communication and soliciting feedback are key to our approach. Our research and insights are valuable, but they’re only as useful as the questions we ask and the people we seek answers from. Sometimes, despite our best efforts, the response isn’t what we hoped for. It’s humbling, but it’s also an opportunity to learn and improve.
We also have to be agile and adaptable. The lovely thing is, the more you delight people the more they expect. And I say it’s a lovely thing because once they realize it can be this good, they’re going to realize how much more they can benefit from it. When they realize the potential of what can be achieved, they’ll expect more, leading us to innovate further.
This not only benefits the end users but also the government agencies. They have objectives to meet, and if they can provide their services more efficiently and effectively, they can achieve those goals without wasting effort or resources.
To learn more about how Coforma works closely with government partners to create digital services that make a difference in people’s lives, visit https://coforma.io/services/.