From scattered sprints to a high-velocity storefront platform: 3× faster delivery
How Popup turned siloed teams, ad-hoc requests, and UX/UI drift into a predictable, design-system-driven engine with a high-quality and highly predictable delivery.
About
Popup is a no-code store editor and admin suite that lets e-commerce brands visually control the customer journey. It differentiates itself from other commerce platforms by combining the best features of Shopify, ClickFunnels, Funnelytics, and others. Breaking free from old paradigms, like rigid store blueprints and inflexible checkout experiences, Popup puts users in complete control of their customers' shopping experience.
My role
I joined as the first designer, then founded the Product Management (PM) practice, and finally became Lead Product. My roles spanned from product strategy and road-mapping to delivery rituals, hiring, and managing the end-to-end product process of the Store Editor, Admin, and underlying Design System.
Challenge
Build a product from scratch — then scale it without losing speed.
Phase 1 (2020 - 2021): No product, tiny team, and just a vision. We had to define the MVP, craft a differentiating UX, and ship a first version investors could demo.
Phase 2 (2022 - 2023): The product existed, but team growth outpaced the process; releases slipped, UX from the MVP was not scalling well, and visibility into in-progress work was near zero. We needed new systems to maintain a high quality of the deliveries while shipping faster.
Solution
Built processes, dashboards, and a design system to unlock speed and quality while growing:
Design-system reboot: Re-architected tokens, components, and guidelines, driving 95% FE component reuse and cleaning up legacy styles.
Cross-team delivery rituals: Weekly team planning and scope reviews reduce context switching and keep the sprint scope >90% planned versus ad-hoc.
Real-time project dashboard: Custom Clickup dashboard tracking velocity, scope, bugs, and QA. Leadership could spot blockers immediately, not just be informed about them later.
Team hiring & mentoring: Hired and mentored 2 Product Managers while rolling out living roadmaps, PRDs, and a design-engineering handoff process that halved idea-to-launch time.
Outcomes
Popup successfully transitioned from guesswork to a high-quality, high-confidence delivery model. This shift has not only improved our performance but also instilled a sense of confidence in the project's direction without slowing down our growth.
Sprint velocity: 3× increased velocity across product, design & engineering within a year
UX/UI consistency: 95% of screens perfectly using the design system components, slashing inconsistencies and QA defects
Engineering focus: 90% of dev effort on scoped work. Support & unexpected scope cut to <10 %
Team scale-up: A Design team was created, and 2 PMs were onboarded and fully ramped, raising roadmap capacity without quality loss
Visibility: Founders gained a single source of truth, reducing status-update meetings by 70%
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