Organization: AspenTech

Scope: 1,253 global Technology employees

Platform: Workday LMS

Timeline: October 2025 to July 2026 (includes 30-day tracking window)

Status: Successfully launched (June 2026 rollout, tracking active)

My role: Project Lead

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Executive summary

Assumed end-to-end leadership of a stalled, high-priority training initiative after the previous project manager was terminated. Led the turnaround, aligning stakeholders across competing departments and clearing a multi-tier HR approval process, to build and ready a mandatory, org-wide program for 1,253 cross-functional staff, including software engineers, product managers, technical leads, QA, and DevOps. Accelerated delivery under tight internal resource constraints while holding the timeline across concurrent core product tracks.

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The business challenge

AspenTech's Technology organization faced operational friction from a disconnect between engineering, product management, and user-experience standards. The cost showed up two ways:

Development rework: late-stage product revisions during delivery cycles, delaying launches and compressing market windows.

Siloed execution: product and engineering teams building features in isolation, without early cross-functional alignment, creating fragmented user workflows.

The mandate: take a stalled, mid-cycle project and develop, clear through enterprise approvals, and deploy an 8-module global curriculum to standardize how teams collaborate on product delivery.

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Resource management under concurrent load

The principal risk to this project was competing organizational capacity, my own included. Across the six-month turnaround I simultaneously owned product design for two core applications (SLM and the Compass field-operations app) and led digital accessibility compliance audits. I managed my own allocation across both deliberately, ensuring zero timeline slippage on either the day-to-day product work or the enterprise launch.

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Project execution and content development

When the original project manager was terminated on December 2, 2025, the initiative stalled and was at real risk of being abandoned. I stepped in to stabilize the remaining team and keep the project alive. On December 15, I assumed full ownership. I audited the existing work with the incoming VP of Product Design, retired the non-viable legacy plan, and reset the project vision: an in-house curriculum focused on collaboration and terminology, not generic design skills.

Content development (8 weeks): directed the UX subject-matter experts to develop eight modules based on their core expertise areas. The VP recorded both the Welcome video (establishing organizational priority) and the Accessibility module (drawing on his specific expertise in this domain). The SMEs delivered the remaining modules, and I coordinated all scripts, slides, videos, and supporting documentation across the compressed timeline, including writing, recording, and editing my own module.

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Discovery and strategic differentiation

Before locking the approach, I benchmarked the parallel UX training initiative being built by Emerson's PSS design team. On January 8, I received and reviewed their training materials. On February 24, I joined a working session with their team to compare directions and decide whether to merge efforts or run separately.

The benchmarking surfaced two decisive differences:

Platform: Emerson's program runs on Udemy (optional, self-selected enrollment). Our program runs on Workday, which made a mandatory, tracked, org-wide rollout possible, something their platform could not easily support.

Approach: Emerson focused on design skills. Their "UX Bootcamp" materials centered on teaching design heuristics for everyday development. Our program focused on collaboration, teaching non-designers what UX is and how to work with the design team.

Because the two initiatives served fundamentally different goals, I recommended running them independently rather than merging. That decision let us commit fully to a mandatory, collaboration-focused, AspenTech-specific curriculum, the strategic foundation for everything that followed.

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Challenges faced and how I solved them

1. Coordinating subject-matter experts with competing priorities

Problem: eight modules (script locks, slide decks, and video assets) depended on 5 UX and design SMEs plus leadership, each balancing the training against their primary product work, on a compressed 8-week sprint.

Action: set clear, non-negotiable milestone deadlines upfront. To protect their bandwidth, I cut meeting overhead, moved continuous feedback into dedicated asynchronous channels, and held targeted one-on-one troubleshooting sessions with each team member and leadership.

Result: 100% of the 8-module curriculum delivered on time and on quality, with zero scope creep.

2. Navigating bureaucracy for an unprecedented approval

Problem: a "mandatory" designation required navigating a four-tier HR approval matrix (HR Strategic Planner to HR Culture Director to HR Director to Senior Manager, HR Americas). Early guidance from the HR Culture Director was that mandatory status for a tech-org initiative was highly unlikely.

Action: drew on my benchmarking of Emerson's parallel program, which ran on an optional Udemy platform, to build the business case. An optional model would depend on self-selection, while a mandatory, Workday-based model would guarantee the org-wide shared vocabulary needed to head off late-stage engineering rework. I presented the recommendation clearly rather than asking leadership to decide.

Result: secured unprecedented mandatory approval across the global Technology organization, a 30-day completion mandate for existing staff and permanent integration into new-hire onboarding. Established a replicable framework for future mandatory training approvals.

3. Resolving a critical infrastructure bottleneck

Problem: the single corporate Workday LMS administrator was fully backlogged with company-wide open enrollment and performance reviews, leaving no resource to manage our course upload. This threatened the launch timeline.

Action: recognizing the threat to the critical path, I offered to upskill in the Workday backend and run the uploads myself. The offer was not taken up, but a dedicated administrator was assigned a few weeks later.

Result: the administrator was new to the role and the complex uploads were slow, so I drove her ramp-up to launch. I set up regular sessions with her and her trainer to lock down support and clear her open questions, and coached her one-on-one through the setup, keeping the critical path moving to a successful launch.

Project status and business impact

Asset readiness:

100% completion of an 8-module, about 47-minute customized enterprise media course

All supporting documentation finalized (6 downloadable PDFs)

Workday upload resource secured and ready

Scale and scope:

Global deployment confirmed across three reporting organizations

1,253 personnel enrolled across all product functions (engineering, PM, QA, DevOps)

Unified collaboration framework established

Process and governance outcomes:

Created a replicable framework for securing mandatory localized training approvals across the enterprise

Established precedent for mandatory training designation (first of its kind in the organization)

Performance metrics (June 2026 rollout)

Early signal (first 24 hours): 4 out of 5 stars across the first 5 ratings.

Scale-up performance (first week): as more ratings came in, the average settled at 4.5 out of 5 stars across 47 total ratings, the original 5 plus those that arrived over the first week.

30-day metrics: pending full tracking of completion rates, long-term adoption of terminology, and design adoption across the product functions.

Note: the ratings are an early, first-week signal from a small set of responses relative to the 1,253 enrolled. Fuller impact metrics will be updated after 30 days of participation.

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Core PM competencies demonstrated

Project recovery and crisis management: stabilized a vulnerable initiative during a sudden leadership vacancy, managed the transition, and reset the baseline under pressure.

Upward leadership and governance: built a benchmarking-based business case to influence executive stakeholders and overcome institutional resistance.

Stakeholder navigation: worked across a four-level HR hierarchy, built relationships at every level, and secured unprecedented approval for new organizational policy.

Scope and risk management: absorbed a major scope change, from a local optional course to a global mandatory program, while protecting the critical path and holding the launch timeline.

Execution under constraint: delivered on an aggressive schedule while concurrently owning two product-design tracks and accessibility compliance work.

Strategic thinking: benchmarked a parallel initiative, identified key platform and approach differences, and made a deliberate call to differentiate rather than merge.

Communication: clear timelines, transparent about constraints, regular stakeholder updates, and recommendations rather than questions.

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The takeaway

Recovered a stalled enterprise initiative, redirected it under new leadership, and delivered mandatory training to 1,253 global employees on an aggressive timeline, while simultaneously managing multiple concurrent product design and compliance initiatives. Demonstrated a proven ability to lead under adversity, navigate complex approval hierarchies, overcome organizational resistance, coordinate cross-functional teams, and drive strategic decisions despite significant resource constraints.

Building the product-design accessibility program within AspenTech's company-wide initiative

Product-design accessibility lead · AspenTech (an Emerson company) · Dec 2025 – present
WCAG 2.1 AA · Section 508 · VPAT/ACR · SAFe

Everything below ran off a structured accessibility enablement plan I helped build — three prioritized goals with owners, timelines, and success metrics — which is what makes this one coordinated program rather than a set of one-off projects.

Strategy & structure
The accessibility enablement plan — the prioritized roadmap (3 goals, objectives, owners, timelines, success metrics) that tied the workstream together; I built the product-design portions

Audits & conformance
9 VPAT/ACR conformance assessments completed
7 designers coached through the audit cadence
4 product audits completed (3 designer-led)
Audit process + WCAG 2.1 template — built from scratch

Training & enablement (sessions I led / presented)
Designer lunch-and-learn — ~12 attended (the full design team)
PM lunch-and-learn — 118 attended across 2 sessions
Marketing/web enablement — delivered
Self-serve channels — intake email, UX newsletter, monthly office hours

Awareness event I ran
Treasure Hunt — 81 invited · 18 attended · 3 hands-on tasks · prizes for all

Program-wide context (the broader initiative)
9 enablement webinars · 400+ employees reached in live attendance
~1,150 staff in program scope across 6 roles

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Overview
AspenTech launched a company-wide program to build accessibility into how its teams design, develop, and test software, run day to day by a three-person accessibility team. I led the product-design workstream within it. Starting in December 2025 — when I was first asked to learn how to run an accessibility audit — I built the design org's accessibility practice end to end: the audit process and template, a coaching cadence that scaled auditing across the design team, the customer-facing conformance assessments clients request, and the training, channels, and events that drove adoption.

Why this matters
Accessibility has moved from a best-practice nice-to-have to a revenue-protecting requirement. Under the DOJ's ADA Title II rule, public entities' web and mobile content must meet WCAG 2.1 Level AA, with compliance deadlines extended to April 2027 for larger entities and April 2028 for smaller ones. Those obligations flow down to vendors, and AspenTech's client base shows why: public and government-funded universities fall under Title II and have to confirm that the software they procure is accessible, while private oil, gas, and utility clients carry VPAT requirements through their own procurement and contracts. Different buyers, different drivers — same deliverable. Each one needs a VPAT, the formal conformance report a client uses to evaluate a product before it buys or renews, which ties accessibility directly to revenue: if a product can't demonstrate conformance, affected clients can't renew. Getting products audited, documented, and remediated ahead of those deadlines is what keeps contracts renewable.

The challenge
Many AspenTech products were originally built without accessibility input, creating compliance gaps and a poorer experience for users with disabilities. There was no shared standard across teams, no accessibility built into how the org designed, developed, and tested software, and no repeatable way to respond to the VPAT requests already coming in. The company-wide program set out to change that across design, development, and QA. My mandate within it: stand up a repeatable accessibility practice in the product-design org, drive its adoption, and keep visibility on progress.

My role
I led the product-design accessibility workstream within the three-person accessibility team. I built the audit process the design org uses, drove its adoption through a structured coaching cadence, completed the VPAT/ACR assessments clients request, and ran the design-side training and awareness. This was a multi-team program — I didn't run the whole initiative — but the product-design practice was mine to build.

How I structured it
The program ran on a written accessibility enablement plan — a prioritized roadmap of goals, objectives, owners, timelines, and success metrics — that I helped build and contributed the product-design portions to. It was organized around three sequenced goals: transform the org to an accessible mindset (train product teams, educate the org); make all new work accessible (an accessible-by-default design system, accessibility embedded into the design and development process); and bring existing products up to standard (audit on demand, prioritized by usage). Each activity carried an explicit priority, so the team always knew what came first and why. Training came first — you can't fix what people don't know how to build. Legacy-product audits were handled on demand, focused on the high-usage applications and core workflows where customer and compliance risk was greatest. And design-system developers were trained ahead of everyone else, since the foundation others build on had to be in place first.
[image: program scope slide] [image: prioritized key-activities plan]

What I built
I built the product-design accessibility practice across four areas.

Planning & structure. I helped build the accessibility enablement plan and owned the product-design portions — the prioritized roadmap the design workstream ran on.

Process & audits. I created the WCAG 2.1 audit template the design team standardized on, translating the standard's A and AA criteria into practical, repeatable checks designers could apply themselves. Around it I built a two-round coaching cadence: a kickoff 1-on-1 where each designer committed to auditing a product during the PI sprint, then a follow-up session to review their findings and refine the work — with the template improving each cycle from their feedback. I scoped the hands-on audits to the 7 designers who actually own products, and the cadence has produced 4 completed audits so far, 3 run by the designers I coached and 1 by me — proof the process scaled beyond my own hands. Separately, I completed 9 VPAT/ACR product assessments — the customer-facing conformance reports clients request to evaluate how accessible a product is before they buy or renew.
[image: coaching cadence diagram] [image: audit template] [image: audit roadmap tracker]

Training & enablement. I ran the introductory lunch-and-learn for all 10 product designers and presented at the PM lunch-and-learn. For the designer session I designed and delivered the design-specific content — how to design accessible products, the audit walkthrough, and a live audit demo — alongside a colleague who covered the shared fundamentals. I also ran the marketing/web enablement, and built self-serve channels to scale the program beyond myself: a dedicated accessibility intake email and a UX newsletter article.

Awareness. I organized and facilitated an in-person accessibility awareness event, the Treasure Hunt. I invited 81 people across design, PM, and engineering via Outlook and Teams, built the challenge content by auditing our products for the issues attendees would hunt for, and coordinated with marketing to promote it across the office screens. The 18 attendees each completed three tasks to spot real issues — missing alt text, low contrast, keyboard traps — and earned a prize. When several systems went down at the last minute, I pivoted the activity to a live website on the spot, keeping the session running.
[image: Treasure Hunt promotion on the office screen]

Making it stick
The hardest part of any enablement program is making the change outlast the kickoff. Rather than treat training as a one-off, I worked to embed accessibility into the existing SAFe delivery process: accessibility acceptance criteria added to the Definition of Done (with accessibility defects treated at the same priority as functional ones), non-functional requirements defined at the Initiative and Epic levels, and accessibility surfaced in PI planning and system demos so it stayed visible every increment. I also helped launch monthly accessibility office hours to give teams standing access to the team.

Rollout
I sequenced delivery to respect real dependencies and a global org. Design-system developers were trained first. Sessions ran across March 2026, with separate Americas and Europe/Asia sittings to cover time zones, and recordings shared for anyone who couldn't attend live — alongside a standing resource library of cheat sheets, policy, and references to support onboarding.

Outcomes & impact
At the program level, the accessibility team delivered 9 enablement webinars across the org — 1 for designers, 2 for PMs, 6 for developers — reaching 400+ employees in live attendance across design, PM, and engineering, and launched a central resource hub and monthly office hours. My direct contribution: 9 VPAT/ACR assessments completed; the audit cadence built and run across 7 designers, producing 4 completed audits (mostly designer-led); the WCAG 2.1 audit template the team standardized on; the designer and PM lunch-and-learns and marketing enablement; the self-serve intake email and newsletter; and the Treasure Hunt event.

What this demonstrates
Program execution — built a repeatable process from scratch and drove its adoption. Commercial awareness — tied the work to contract renewals and revenue, not just compliance. Coordination and follow-through — ran a structured two-round cadence with 7 designers, turning an optional practice into tracked commitments. Delivery management — worked a growing queue of VPAT requests against client deadlines. Stakeholder enablement — trained designers and PMs and built self-serve channels to scale the program. Communication — translated technical standards into practical guidance and promoted the work org-wide.

Reflection
When I started in December, I'd never run an accessibility audit. What the next few months taught me is that moving a whole organization toward accessibility isn't about auditing every product yourself — it's about building a process simple enough that other people will actually use it, then getting them to own it. The clearest proof was watching designers run their own audits and flag fixes to developers before release, without me in the room. If I did it again, I'd push the Definition-of-Done and non-functional-requirement changes even earlier, because embedding accessibility into how teams already work is what makes it outlast the training.