Spera

Overview

Spera brought together the tools independent professionals use to run their businesses. Project management, time tracking, invoicing, and payments often lived in separate systems, creating extra work around clients and getting paid.

As Director of Product Development, I led the product team across design and development. I worked with company leadership, a research partner, and internal and outsourced contributors to turn an early idea into working software.

The problem

Managing clients, tracking work, sending invoices, and receiving payments required users to connect several systems. Each introduced its own workflow and potential failure points, especially around financial transactions.

The platform needed to treat projects, clients, invoicing, and payments as connected workflows. It also needed to remain approachable for solo users and useful as their businesses grew.

The platform approach

Spera connected clients, projects, invoices, and payments across the platform, so work in one area could inform another. The design aimed to reduce duplicate entry and keep information consistent.

From an experience standpoint, the goal was to minimize friction without oversimplifying the underlying mechanics. Users should not need to think about accounting concepts to send an invoice, but the system still needed to enforce consistency, accuracy, and traceability behind the scenes.

I worked with the team to evaluate product decisions against user needs and practical payment requirements. That included collaborating with legal and compliance specialists on the constraints that affected the product.

Role and execution

I translated research and user interviews into requirements, workflows, information architecture, prototypes, and interface designs. I contributed HTML and CSS implementation while engineers implemented the application and payment technology.

I established product development processes, prioritized the backlog, and planned releases with internal and outsourced teams. I conducted user interviews and user acceptance testing, assessed release readiness with the team, and reported progress to leadership, investors, and the board. As the product became operational, I coordinated bug fixes and ongoing maintenance.

Outcome

The team took Spera from an initial idea into a working platform for managing work and income. My responsibilities continued through delivery and into ongoing product maintenance.

The experience deepened my understanding of how research, product decisions, team leadership, and payment constraints affect one another throughout a product lifecycle.