Working @ Home | Clément Rasselet
10 August 2020
A Portrait of Clément Rasselet
Product Quality Manager and Product Owner
Interview with Clément Rasselet, Product Quality Manager and Product Owner.
How would you describe your role at QOS Energy? Please tell us about your occupation and missions.
At QOS Energy, I wear two hats: Product Quality Manager and Product Owner.
In my main role, Product Quality Manager, I am responsible for software quality for new and existing features. My mission is to ensure that excellent software quality levels are reached and maintained for both new and existing software features developments.
For my second role, Product Owner, I am in charge of designing product features which meet the clients’ requirements.
QOS Energy continuously develop new features and functionalities which aim to increase renewable portfolio performances using renewable data analytics, industrial IoT and cloud computing.
We have three agile teams working on different aspects of the platform: the current version, Qantum® New Generation, and the Data Supply Chain. My scope as Product Owner is the current Qantum® version, including the analysis studio, the reporting and cockpit features. Following the scrum framework, I build and prioritize the product backlog based on both the product roadmap – elaborated with the product manager – and user needs depicted in user stories. I then oversee the realisation with my team and guide functional testing and acceptance testing.
What do you enjoy the most about working here?
My motivation is to help renewable energy producers.
By providing an energy monitoring, renewable data analytics and management platform, I want to enable them to produce more green powered electricity by optimising their efficiency and performance levels.
Over the last 100 years since we started exploiting oil, we used half the natural fossil fuel resources that took the Earth 100 M years to produce: the ratio is baffling. Every second we release 1M kg CO2 in the atmosphere.
The number are quite insane. That’s why I think we should support energy transition, which is more essential than ever. To preserve Earth as we know it, its biodiversity, and hopes that our children will be able to know the world we have known, this is my primary motivation.
Otherwise, I appreciate working in a human-sized company, without strong hierarchy levels that slow down many projects. This was a positive change compared to my previous job, where the directors had been there for 30 years and nobody was willing to change anything. At QOS Energy, we are able to bring ideas and to be listened to by the managers, it is really motivating.
Have you met any challenges or special accomplishments you would like to talk about?
Challenges are something QOS Energy will never be short of. Our users and company are brimming with so many ideas and features this brings out the need to organise and prioritize them.
For instance, we have addressed this decisive topic through Product Management methodology, by implementing a tool and scoring system to sort ideas. That enable us to target the next software evolutions and make development decisions based on ROI indicators and objective criteria. I have been leading this substantive project in collaboration with the Marketing Director and Chief Product officer.
I am pleased with the application of this new tool and process, which we can build a consolidated roadmap and share it between the different teams: marketing, sales, operations, etc.
Can you tell us about your background and how you come to work for QOS Energy?
I studied mechanics in general engineering school, and specialized in mechatronics, a field that combines mechanics, electronics, and systems simulations. I went to South Korea on the last year where I focused on computer science to get a double degree. I was impressed by how advanced, the IT prominent South Korea, was compared to Europe.
Afterwards, I have worked for 1 year in Manchester, in a middle-sized company developing leak detection and monitoring systems for pipelines networks, based on data gathered from sensors.
Then I was as International Customer Support by a larger firm in the Geophysics domain, in Nantes. They carry subsoil studies to map underground resources for oil prospection purposes, with huge sensors networks (thousands) deployed on tens of km². I visited around 50 countries in 4-5 years and build solid field experience, thanks to which I joined the Product Department as Test and Validation Manager. I was working on an innovative project about sensors intercommunicating using Wi-Fi. As the systems were meant to be deployed in isolated areas (deserts / Alaska / Siberia) without internet or telephone access, we were aiming for a high-quality software that could not afford obstructing issues, so important human and material resources were allotted to testing. I was involved in the definition of product requirements, in lab test campaigns, in full-scale on-field tests, and in the launch of the final product. During this experience, I have learned a lot about tests and validations and passed several international certifications, like the ITSQB – international software test quality board.
As the job was related to oil prospecting, it drifted apart from my personal ethics. I was driven to work in the renewable energies’ domain which was booming around 2010. Looking for opportunities, I learned by chance about QOS Energy. where the Product Manager was seeking to strengthen the test/quality aspect of their team. Convinced by QOS Energy project at crossroads of data networks and renewable energy, I updated my resume and applied.
Apart from your work at QOS Energy, do you have side projects or hobbies outside the office?
For the past ten years, I have been working as a voluntary in non-profit organisations. I started as a Sponsor and Communication Manager in an aid organisation. I took part in a humanitarian project Argentina. I had the chance to spent 6 months there to build schools and provide access to education in an impoverished area near Bolivia, it was quite an adventure!
I am also quite involved in sports. I was president of a multisport inter-company association for 3 years that proposed basketball, volley; table tennis and indoor soccer to employees. And it has been 5 years since I have joined the Nantes Triathlon Club. With 285 members it’s the largest one in the area. I have been involved as Sports Commission Director at first – to plan and organise the trainings – and I’ve been elected President of the Association 2 years ago. We hold three big sports events, a duathlon, a free-for-kids triathlon in summer, and an internal event for beginners who wants to discover triathlon.
As a triathlete, I have run marathons and half-ironmans (2 km swimming, 90 km biking and 21 km running). I am quite proud of going under 3h at the Paris marathon in 2016, for which I had spent 3 months preparing by training 4 times a week. It was nice to explore Paris without cars and I enjoyed this different experience of the landmarks, among 50 000 other runners. Others personal records are 1h20’ on Half-Marathon and 36’ on 10km race.
