YABBLE - Bringing structure to SaaS product development.

Yabble is a New Zealand AI startup that transformed the market research industry through automated insights and natural language processing. In 2024, Yabble achieved a major global milestone when it was acquired by international research and data group YouGov.

THE CHALLENGE

Yabble came from market research, not software development. The team had deep customer expertise and strong ideas, but software was initially approached with the flexibility of a creative project.

Ideas could evolve quickly in a meeting and become new development requests almost immediately. Requirements moved, priorities changed, and changes that appeared simple from the business side could have significant consequences for the developers.

As the product grew more sophisticated, the gap between creative ideation and technical execution became increasingly difficult to manage.

WHAT I SAW

The answer wasn't to restrict the creative process or simply ask developers to move faster. The two sides worked differently and needed a better way to connect.

The business needed space to explore, challenge and evolve ideas. The development team needed clear requirements, priorities and enough stability to build effectively.

The problem wasn't either side. It was what happened between them.

WHAT I DID

My initial role was Product Manager, translating rapidly evolving business ideas into clear, executable product requirements and working closely with the development team to get them built.

Over time, I used that understanding of both sides to create a more sustainable product process.

Using Jira and Confluence, I built a structure that allowed ideas to be captured, developed and prioritised before becoming development work, giving the business room to think creatively without passing every change directly downstream to developers.

THE OUTCOME

The result was a clearer path from idea to decision to product to development.

The business retained its ability to move quickly and explore new ideas, while the development team gained the context, clarity and stability needed to execute them.

More importantly, the structure didn't depend on me to keep it running. Years after I had stepped away completely, the processes and systems I put in place were still being used as Yabble evolved into increasingly sophisticated technology and AI, and remained in place through the company's successful exit.

That's a result I'm particularly proud of: not creating a process that worked while I was there, but building something the team could own, evolve and continue using long after I was gone.