Product Bakery – The Product Management, UX & Design Podcast

Product management and design collaboration is what we've talked most about in the past. The same goes for product and engineering collaboration. In this episode, we talk about how product designers and engineers should collaborate to ensure seamless delivery to production. Follow us on LinkedIn: Alex Dapunt: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexdapunt/ Christian Strunk: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christianstrunk/⁠ ✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩ 👨‍💻 Linkedin: ⁠Product Bakery⁠ 📸 Instagram: ⁠@productbakery⁠ 🐦 Twitter: ⁠@productbakery20⁠ 🌍 Website: ⁠https://www.product-bakery.com/

We enjoyed talking to the analytics veteran and product evangelist Adam Greco. Adam has more than 20 years of experience in the industry. We talked about the importance of good data for marketers and product teams, the shift from sales-led growth to product-led growth as well as the upcoming trends around machine learning and AI. Table of content: 00:30 - Intro Adam 02:40 - The rise of data 05:10 - Privacy, GDPR & more 13:25 - Marketing vs. product analytics 19:00 - Tracking based on business questions 27:20 - Good tracking vs. bad tracking (example) 33:10 - The trend of AI  36:45 - Adam's advice for product teams Linkedin: Adam Greco Website: amplitude.com ✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩ 👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery 📸 Instagram: @productbakery 🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20 🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/

The product manager vs. product owner discussion is still a thing. What's the difference and how do companies distinguish these roles? This time, we shared our thoughts and experiences around the titles. ✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩ 👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery 📸 Instagram: @productbakery 🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20 🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/

Giving and receiving feedback can be very challenging. Especially when it comes to the topics that bother us. In this episode, we talked about how we're giving feedback as well as the negative side effects of not speaking the truth. ✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩ 👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery 📸 Instagram: @productbakery 🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20 🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/

Do you have a place where you collect every idea of a stakeholder, team members, etc.? Are some ideas getting lost sometimes?  We discussed some approaches to manage ideas and report transparently on the progress of the stakeholder requests. ✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩ 👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery 📸 Instagram: @productbakery 🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20 🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/

Christian was at the Berlin Product Conference 2023 and hosted a panel discussion about the importance of user-centricity in product development. The whole conversation was recorded including the QA session.  Panel Guests: Henning Witzel - Head of Product Design @NewStore Benjamin Keyser - CPO @Latana Vamsi Krishna Wuppalapati - Interims CPO @Phyntelligence ✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩ 👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery 📸 Instagram: @productbakery 🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20 🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/

Netflix shared their new salary ranges due to the legal requirements for open positions. Interestingly a senior designer role has a range between $50k - $600k. We discussed the crazy range and what you can do to get the salary that you deserve! ✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩ 👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery 📸 Instagram: @productbakery 🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20 🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/

Creating a good product strategy is one thing. Another is ensuring that the whole company buys in and follows the strategy. We talked about how important it is to clearly communicate our plans as product leaders. Need inspiration? Check out this product strategy template: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1mLNt7f6CPPa3FzNxnHZAS7pxgp-QDOLL2UtsBe7fcKI/edit?usp=sharing ✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩ 👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery 📸 Instagram: @productbakery 🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20 🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/

"I don't have time to..." is maybe a quote you've said or heard many times. We made a deep-dive into time management and talked about the root-causes. Meeting attendance decision tree: 👉 https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ZfkXdTt7hfkxWNe9ujPe4QdmoaWsuilS/view?usp=sharing 👈 ✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩ 👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery 📸 Instagram: @productbakery 🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20 🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/

Today, we talked about the recent news on FTX (crypto exchange) and the current mass layoffs the tech industry faces. We took a deep dive into how the current economic situation impacts hiring, culture, how people are approaching job search, and more! ✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩ 👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery 📸 Instagram: @productbakery 🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20 🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/

After an eventful year, we're heading into a short break. Thank you all for the support throughout this year and see you back in 2023. ✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩ 👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery 📸 Instagram: @productbakery 🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20 🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/

We're sure you've heard about ChatGPT! In this episode, we discussed the new technology and the threats and opportunities of this new enhanced AI. ✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩ 👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery 📸 Instagram: @productbakery 🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20 🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/

Backlog management is not only a task for product managers. Design teams need to manage and prioritize their work as well. Therefore, we talked about how to best manage and coordinate the work between product and design. ✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩ 👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery 📸 Instagram: @productbakery 🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20 🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/

The new Arc browser is on its way! This time, we discussed how browsers have developed and what we expect from a product & design PoV from a good browsing experience. ✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩ 👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery 📸 Instagram: @productbakery 🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20 🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/

Maybe you've experienced something similar... Many times people work on features or solutions... if you ask the question though: "what's the problem" you are not getting a real answer... In this episode, we discussed why people tempt to jump to solutions and how you can be more problem/customer-centric. ✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩ 👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery 📸 Instagram: @productbakery 🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20 🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/

After more than 91 episodes we finally talked about design thinking. This time, Alex got interviewed about his opinion on design thinking and how to apply it. ✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩ 👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery 📸 Instagram: @productbakery 🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20 🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/

There is a tool... called the company compass or medicine wheel. It's used for strategic planning and defining clear roles within a company, project, or group. In this episode, we talk about the new framework we've discovered and how to apply it in product. ✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩ 👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery 📸 Instagram: @productbakery 🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20 🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/

This time, we talk about how to best approach when your team members are struggling with their performance. We looked at questions like: What best to do? What do the people need? How can you empower them? Tune in to learn more! ✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩ 👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery 📸 Instagram: @productbakery 🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20 🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/

What to do if you're in trouble with your leader(ship team)? Can individual contributors make a change? Is it even their job? Or, should you just move on and let it go? This time we talked about what product people can and may should do if they want to change the direction of their leaders. ✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩ 👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery 📸 Instagram: @productbakery 🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20 🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/

You may have noticed that Instagram updated its app and rolled it back to the previous version. We took a closer look at what has happened, especially on the product & engineering side.    ✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩ 👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery 📸 Instagram: @productbakery 🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20 🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/

In this episode, we talk about the importance of having and working with experienced people who coach or mentor you.  ✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩    👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery    📸 Instagram: @productbakery    🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20    🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/

Access granted! No, it's not about that kind of accessibility. We talk about what most product & design teams call edge cases or "we can ship that later."  We believe people with disabilities and restrictions need to be fully included in the product planning and development process, especially for products that are already live and be used by customers.  Tune in to hear our perspectives on understanding all customers and how to plan feature and product releases. ✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩    👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery    📸 Instagram: @productbakery    🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20    🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/

You can't help others if you can't help yourself. You can't manage others if you can't manage yourself.  We've touched on those quotes a couple of times in previous episodes. In this conversation, we dive into a leader's role and what a leader should expect from their employees. Clarity about the role of a leader is the key to defining their employees' role.  ✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩    👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery    📸 Instagram: @productbakery   🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20    🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/

Many people update their Linkedin profiles and add new positions in Web 3.0 startups. That raised the question for Alex whether he should quit his job to work on a Web 3.0 startup. We took a deeper look into that and discussed what Web 3.0 actually is and if it's a hype or trend you shouldn't miss. ✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩    👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery    📸 Instagram: @productbakery    🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20    🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/

There is one big question many people asking themselves currently: Should I work full-time or as a freelancer? In this conversation, we talk about why we're doing what we're doing. It's not about what is better! It's about what motivates us to work full-time or as a freelancer.  Tune in to get a different perspective on the two sides. ✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩    👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery    📸 Instagram: @productbakery    🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20    🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/

The world goes crazy... corona, war, inflation, and many more things are happing right now. The impact on the economy is huge. Due to the financial situation, many companies need to save budget and start firing people to save costs. At the same time, many business models and strategic plans start to break too.  In this episode, we talk about how you as an employee and a company can make the best out of the situation and convert it into a great opportunity! ✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩    👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery    📸 Instagram: @productbakery    🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20    🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/

There is so much to say and write about our opinion on boot camps. However, the best way is to tune in ;)  Enjoy and let us know what you think about boot camps! ✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩    👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery    📸 Instagram: @productbakery    🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20    🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/

We've talked about how important it is to take of yourself if you're a leader in this episode. How do you want to help people if you can't help yourself? What should you expect from your employees? What are your primary responsibilities as a leader? Tune in for a deep dive into the (product) leadership role and self care. ✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩    👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery    📸 Instagram: @productbakery    🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20    🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/

It has been a while since our last episode. We both were very busy with our jobs, side projects, and vacation recently. Nevertheless, we decided to regroup and continue with new episodes about great topics. Tune in to get the latest update and what's coming up next. Best, Alex & Christian

It's not always about data. Sometimes, you need to listen to your gut! This week the Product Bakers interviewed Projjal Ghatak talking about how to solve customers' problems and how to bring in the right people into a company.  Table of content:  00:30 - Episode Intro 02:00 - Intro Projjal Ghatak 04:20 - Starting a company based on a problem 06:55 - Dealing with intuition vs. data 12:30 - Networking to find the right people 17:10 - Understand and define good problems 25:00 - Company strategy: quality vs. growth 28:30 - Delivering value to customers 30:40 - Creating a great advisory board 34:45 - CEO advice: Fokus Connect with Projjal: Linkedin: @pgonloop Twitter: @gprojjal Website: www.onloop.com ✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩    👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery    📸 Instagram: @productbakery    🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20    🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/

In this episode, Alex and Christian discussed the danger of falling in love with your first idea or solution. Table of content: 00:30 - The importance of quality 03:30 - The of too much MVP thinking 06:30 - Not enough vs. too much data 09:00 -  8 sketches, 8 minutes 11:20 - Timeboxing research & prototyping ✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩    👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery    📸 Instagram: @productbakery    🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20    🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/

Doing product management isn't easy. Even though, with gazillions of books that people have read, they can sometimes not execute the knowledge. In this episode, Christian and Alex took a deeper look at why that's the case.  Table of content: 00:30 - Why is product management so hard? 02:40 - Chicken & egg problem 03:30 - Collaboration & soft skills are essential 06:50 - Regular reminders  08:15 - Making a change as an individual 10:55 - Making compromises ✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩    👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery    📸 Instagram: @productbakery    🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20    🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/

Asking great questions is a real-life superpower! Sometimes though, it's important to take a step back and ask (powerful) stupid questions, especially when you are new in a role as a product person.  In this episode, the Product Bakers talked to Paul about coaching CEOs to develop a product mindset. Despite that, they've talked about what product people can do to establish more product thinking. Table of content: 00:30 - Episode Intro 01:50 - Intro Paul 04:45 - The ego of founders 10:50 - What founders need to hear 16:10 - Influential product management 22:35 - Asking dumb questions 32:35 - What founders & PMs can do to make a change Follow Paul: Linkedin: @paulortchanian Bainpublic: https://www.bainpublic.com/ Reads: Why the Product Manager Should Also Play Dumb https://blog.bainpublic.com/post/why-the-product-manager-should-also-play-dumb Why Empathy Is the Key to Success for Your Next Product Objective https://blog.bainpublic.com/post/why-empathy-is-the-key-to-success-for-your-next-product-objective You accomplish everything through others https://blog.bainpublic.com/post/you-accomplish-everything-through-others Product Management: Saying No Without Shutting Them Down https://blog.bainpublic.com/post/product-management-saying-no-without-shutting-them-down ✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩    👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery    📸 Instagram: @productbakery    🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20    🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/

Public roadmaps became a hot topic in the past. Christian & Alex decided to speak about the benefits of sharing your roadmap with your customers and how to define it in a way that they will understand your future plans. Table of content: 00:30 - Intro & chit chat 02:35 - Transparency is key 03:20 - The idea of "open startup" 05:50 - Customers love knowing your plans 07:15 - Using good terminology 11:25 - Getting feedback from your customers 13:30 - What you should not share publicly 16:00 - Don't be afraid to share your plans ✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩    👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery    📸 Instagram: @productbakery    🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20    🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/

The Product Bakery podcast was started on the 10th of September 2020. After one year of podcasting and many interviews, Christian and Alex sat down to take a couple of looks back... ✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩    👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery    📸 Instagram: @productbakery    🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20    🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/

The whole insurance space is very slow. At least it used to be! Konrad Heipmel's mission @Getsafe is to disrupt the insurance market. As VP of Data & Product, he shared with the Product Bakers how they focus on data to build a product that fits the market needs and solves the customer pain points. Table of content: 00:30 - Episode Intro 02:20 - Intro of Konrad & the insurance space 07:00 - The biggest challenges of the industry 10:40 - Working with product principles 13:45 - How to scale up domains & teams 16:15 - The relevance of data 18:15 - Establishing a data mindset & culture 21:10 - Data-driven product strategy 25:15 - Data as a foundation to form teams & squads 29:25 - Entrepreneurial decision vs. data-based decisions Links & connect with Konrad:  Linkedin: @konradheimpel PMF Survey: https://review.firstround.com/how-superhuman-built-an-engine-to-find-product-market-fit Getsafe Jobs: https://www.hellogetsafe.com/career Getsafe tech blog: https://medium.com/hellogetsafe ✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩    👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery    📸 Instagram: @productbakery    🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20    🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/

Many companies and teams want to become faster and speed up projects. That's a topic Christian & Alex are regularly faced with. This time they spoke about the concept of project-specific teams (task forces) and how to form them as well as their pros & cons. Table of content: 00:30 - Example: Redesigning an app 02:45 - The concept of a task force 05:10 - How to form a task force 08:00 - Good project management is key 12:40 - Outsourcing projects to agencies 16:35 - Estimating scope and delivery ✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩    👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery    📸 Instagram: @productbakery    🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20    🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/

Alex and Christian did manage for a long time to meet and record in person again. Therefore, they picked up the topic of working remove vs. being onsite. How can and should teams decide what's best in terms of tooling and location? Tune in to learn more! Table of content: 00:30 - Meeting in person 05:05 - What's best to be creative? 08:40 - 1:1s vs team meetings 12:25 - Industry and professions are relevant 17:25 - Cross-functional teams onsite vs. remote   ✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩    👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery    📸 Instagram: @productbakery    🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20    🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/

Communication can be the hardest work sometimes. Due to the fact that a lot of companies moved to remote work, it's not getting easier. This time Christian and Alex picked up the whole topic of stakeholder management and what product people can do to bond and keep up alignment.  Table of content: 00:30 - Is communicating getting harder? 02:45 - Different people with different agendas 06:35 - Stakeholder awareness 09:40 - The first step to good stakeholder management 11:45 - Being proactive instead of passive 13:45 - Planning and preparing communication ✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩    👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery    📸 Instagram: @productbakery    🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20    🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/

Alex is close to going on vacation. Therefore, he and Christian caught up on the whole topic of work-life balance.   Table of content: 00:30 - Alex going on vacation 02:50 - The importance of work-life balance 05:25 - Working on vacation 07:00 - Taking care of your employees   ✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩    👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery    📸 Instagram: @productbakery    🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20    🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/

Sometimes, the products we use seem to become more complex than easier. The product bakers discussed why that happens and the reasons.   Table of content: 00:30 - iOS 15 and the safari URL bar 07:20 - Strategy & big picture vs. UX 09:30 - Designing against the customer 13:00 - The danger of copying trends   ✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩    👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery    📸 Instagram: @productbakery    🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20    🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/

This time, Christian and Alex talked about the development of artificial intelligence (AI) and its advantages and potential downsides.   Table of content: 00:30 - Turn of your notification 01:55 - What AIs do already these days 04:50 - Strong vs. weak AI 08:00 - Losing human interactions 11:50 - Good data & diverse teams   Book recommendation: Competing in the Age of AI   ✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩    👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery    📸 Instagram: @productbakery    🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20    🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/

In this episode, Christian and Alex talked about how they organize their time and todos.   Table of content: 00:30 - Episode Intro 02:30 - Using spare time to be productive 04:10 - Color coding the calendar 05:10 - Blocking time in the calendar 07:45 - Declining meetings 09:45 - Manage the stakeholders 12:10 - Documentation & tooling    Christian's Meeting Course: https://www.christianstrunk.com/courses/meeting-facilitation    ✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩    👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery    📸 Instagram: @productbakery    🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20    🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/

Christian Idiodi is a partner at the Silicon Valley Product Group. With his experience, he helps product and leadership teams across the globe to solve their customer problems. In this episode, he shares the biggest challenges that product teams have and how especially leaders can help and empower product people to solve those.    Table of content: 00:30 - Episode Intro 02:10 - Intro Christian Idiodi 03:50 - The biggest challenges product people have 08:25 - Missing empowerment from leadership teams 13:35 - Prioritizing doesn't work without strategic alignment 19:25 - Supporting the leadership team as a product manager 25:45 - Keeping the strategy updated as a leader 27:35 - The #1 tip every PM should follow 30:10 - The #1 tip every product lead should follow 32:15 - Micromanaging CEOs   Follow Christian Idiodi: Linkedin: @cidiodi Twitter: @CIdiodi Website: https://svpg.com/   ✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩    👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery    📸 Instagram: @productbakery    🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20    🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/

This time Alex and Christian focused on a topic that they haven't talked about at all. Ethics! Both discuss how current products tempt to become more unethical and what to do about it.  Table of content:  00:30 - Episode intro 02:10 - Dominated by white people 06:40 - Ignoring minorities  08:55 - Balancing ethics in your organization 09:50 - Are product principles a solution? 11:30 - No regulations in tech 14:25 - Discrimination on Twitter Books links:  Technically Wrong Ruined by Design   ✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩    👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery    📸 Instagram: @productbakery    🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20    🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/

Christian recently read the book "The One Thing" which reminded him how important it is to focus only on one thing. Together with Alex, they've discussed the key learning of the book and how to apply it to your day-to-day product life.   Table of content: 00:30 - Intro 01:15 - Multi-tasking & context switching 05:50 - Identifying your own one thing 08:05 - Focusing on only one thing 09:30 - Tips to get started   Book link: The One Thing   ✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩   👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery   📸 Instagram: @productbakery   🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20   🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/

The Product Bakers touched a couple of times on the topic of case studies as part of the hiring process. Alex has a very strong opinion when it comes to overall candidate experience. Therefore, they've decided to dedicate this episode to talk about the downsides of case studies and why it makes good candidates not start working for your company. Table of content: 00:30 - Small talk 01:30 - The downsides of case studies  05:40 - Understanding how candidates think  07:50 - Why companies need to rethink their hiring process 12:30 - Respect peoples' time ✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩    👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery    📸 Instagram: @productbakery    🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20    🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/

In this episode, the Product Bakers discussed their experiences around structuring organizations in hyper-growth and what mistakes leadership teams should avoid doing.    Table of content: 00:30 - Intro episode 02:40 - Basics to structure an organization 04:40 - The Spotify model 06:45 - Why copying models don't work 08:35 - Taking a look at the company culture 10:25 - Mistakes to avoid 11:15 - Autonomy vs. anarchy 16:05 - Summary Article & book recommendations: https://www.christianstrunk.com/blog/organic-organizations Exponential Organizations Scale Up   ✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩    👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery    📸 Instagram: @productbakery    🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20    🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/

Jill is a strategic and visionary ex-Experience Director with over 12 years of experience. She currently works for Bain & Company as one of their most senior Designers in EMEA. Throughout her career, she has led and helped international companies and start-ups to innovate, to instill a human-centric design approach, and to grow. She designs interactions at the intersection of people, products, and environments, and brings out incremental and revolutionary changes for the people she designs for. She's worked in London, New York, Abu Dhabi, and Taipei. Her clients include Sony, Tiffany & Co., Kellogg's, BP, BT, Jaguar Land Rover, HSBC, Macquarie, and more.   Table of content: 00:30 - Episode summary 03:00 - Intro Jill 05:00 - The definition of strategy 08:30 - Enabling innovation with strategy 10:20 - In-house agency vs. embedded teams 12:30 - Strategic design vs. service design 16:00 - Design & product strategy 19:30 - The biggest strategic challenges companies face 26:20 - Combining design & product strategy 30:00 - Ensuring a holistic design in cross-functional teams 35:40 - 3 Tips if you work on/with a design strategy   Follow Jill: Linkedin: @cyjilllin Twitter: @jillybeanlin   ✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩    👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery    📸 Instagram: @productbakery    🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20    🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/

Biases are part of human nature. In this episode, Alex discussed with Christian the importance of understanding and identifying your own bias.   👉 Episode feedback survey ✍️   Table of content: 00:30 - Intro & small talk 02:10 - Asking biased question during interviews 04:10 - Common "biased" mistakes  05:50 - Stereotypes 07:05 - Being over-excited  09:25 - Disproving your biased opinion 11:50 - Understanding the most relevant biases    Article about biases: https://xd.adobe.com/ideas/process/user-research/how-to-overcome-cognitive-bias-in-ux-research/   ✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩    👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery    📸 Instagram: @productbakery    🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20    🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/

I don't care who does the work; I do care that we solve the problem! That was one of the great quotes from Jonathon talking about what content design is and why it's so important to think about it.  In this episode, the Product Bakers and Jonathon discussed how to establish content design in a company and what positive impact it has on the UX and success of a product/business. 👉 Episode feedback survey ✍️   Table of content: 00:30 - Episode Summary 01:40 - Intro Jonathon 02:55 - The definition of content design 08:25 - Collaborating with product people 11:05 - Adding content designers to teams 13:10 - Measuring the impact of content design 16:00 - The role & responsibilities of a CD 19:15 - Desing principles 25:25 - When and how to hire a CD (team) 33:15 - Dealing with languages & internationalization 35:10 - Branding & Marketing 41:05 - The future of content design   Follow Jonathon:  Linkedin: @jcolman Twitter: @jcolman Intercom product & design principles: https://www.intercom.com/blog/intercom-product-principles How Jonathon maximized the impact of content design at Intercom Intercom's design team site and job levels for product and content designers Are you being clear or clever? A guide to narrative design Kristina Halvorson, Erika Hall, and Mike Monteiro talking about content Books on content design: Content Design, Strategic Writing for UX, Writing is Designing Events for content design: Design & Content, Button, Information Architecture Conference   ✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩    👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery    📸 Instagram: @productbakery    🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/

Based on questions from the community and general observations the Product Bakers decided to talk about how to land a job in product. They focused on topics such as searching for a job, preparing for an interview, as well as some dos and don'ts for the CV.   Table of content:  00:30 - Small talk & intro 03:30 - Applying as junior vs. senior  04:15 - What makes a good CV stand out (and why) 09:25 - 1 to 5 ratings in CVs (spoiler: NO GO!) 13:20 - Mocked interviews & alternative ways to prepare 15:40 - Applying for the right companies  18:15 - Portfolios for product jobs   ✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩    👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery    📸 Instagram: @productbakery    🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20    🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/

Starting a new job as a Product Manager can be very challenging. Especially, if you don't have a mentor a someone who guides you through the process of becoming a PM. Shaun Russell made it to his mission to support people on that journey as a product coach. In this episode, the Product Bakers and Shaun discussed the challenges people are facing when starting a new PM position and how to overcome them. 👉 Episode feedback survey ✍️    Table of content:  00:30 - Episode Intro 02:30 - Intro Shaun 05:30 - Starting a new PM position 08:15 - Common challenges PMs have 10:20 - Understanding the organizational structure 13:00 - Crucial methodologies to learn 17:30 - Managing stakeholders 19:10 - Being stuck in a position 25:10 - Product Management is like learning a new language 32:15 - Why Bootcamps suck! 34:46 - Passion > Theory   Follow Shaun & his links: Website: https://www.shaunrussell.me/ Linkedin: @shaun-russell-coach Twitter: @_ShaunRussell Book recommendation: Continuous Discovery Habits https://www.producttalk.org/opportunity-solution-tree/ https://andrewskotzko.com/how-to-know-if-youre-interviewing-at-a-product-led-company/ Continuous Discovery Habits   ✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩    👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery    📸 Instagram: @productbakery    🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20    🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/

Nacho works for more than 12 years in Product Management. One of his key takeaways after more than a decade was, that the product strategy is the most undervalued tool to make a product company successful. He decided to structure and share all his knowledge in his recently launched book: Product Direction.  In this episode, the Product Bakers and Nacho make a deep dive into how to define a product strategy and how to communicate and share it with the whole company to get full buy-in. 👉 Episode feedback survey ✍️   Table of content: 00:30 - Episode summary 02:00 - Intro Nacho 04:50 - The importance of a product strategy 07:20 - Product Leads drive product strategy 10:55 - How to start creating a strategy 18:10 - The timeframe 20:20 - Roadmapping based on strategy 22:55 - Roadmapping vs. OKRs 28:50 - Communication is key 31:20 - Mistakes to avoid 34:55 - Measuring strategy & its impact 39:30 - The most important things to take care of Nacho online: Linkedin: @juanbassino Medium: https://nachobassino.medium.com/ Podcast: Conversaciones de Producto Nacho's book: Product Direction ✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩    👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery    📸 Instagram: @productbakery    🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20    🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/

This time the Product Bakers picked up a frequently asked question from the community and talked about the agile frameworks Scrum and Kanban. Christian highlighted the differences and gave some tips on what framework you can get started with.   Table of content: 00:30 - Episode intro 02:10 - Agile frameworks 03:35 - Scrum vs. Kanban 04:35 - Agile = not changing the plan all the time 07:25 - Velocity vs. throughput 09:00 - Planning & estimating  10:45 - Getting started with scrum 12:30 - Kanban for experts?   ✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩    👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery    📸 Instagram: @productbakery    🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20    🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/

Richard and Ben both love working with people and startups. It became their mission to help people with great ideas and minor to no technical knowledge to make their dreams come true. However, not every business idea is necessarily a good idea. Therefore they support founder teams with everything they need from product discovery, building the product to shipping it to their future customers. In this episode they've talked about the importance and the process of validating business ideas, setting up teams for success, and what it needs to build a trust relationship between external agencies and founder teams. 👉 Episode feedback survey ✍️    Table of content: 00:30 - Episode summary 03:00 - The story of Rich & Ben 07:35 - When founders should work with an agency 11:10 - What founders make fail 14:05 - The benefits of no technical knowledge 17:25 - MOHARA's SCUBA framework 20:30 - Validating business ideas 22:35 - The challenges of working with founder teams 30:05 - Fundraising  35:11 - Building trust as the foundation for collaboration 37:15 - When to stop working with an agency 40:20 - What founders can expect from agencies 43:35 - Rich & Ben's biggest learnings working with startups   Follow Richard & Ben:  Website: http://mohara.co Linkedin Richard: @samsrichard Linkedin Ben: @ben-blomerley Article: Doing the product due diligence right ✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩    👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery    📸 Instagram: @productbakery    🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20    🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/

After another dinner, the Product Bakers decided to do another product review. This they took a deeper look at Atlassian's product JIRA and how to set it up in the right way. 👉 Episode feedback survey ✍️ Table of content: 00:30 - Small talk 03:25 - Love it or hate it 06:10 - JIRA & working agile 07:00 - JIRA classic & its terrible UX  11:00 - Defining workflows and projects for success & scale 14:15 - Who should manage & own JIRA? 16:00 - Cross-team collaboration & reporting 19:30 - Two tips to better use JIRA ✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩    👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery    📸 Instagram: @productbakery    🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20    🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/

The Product Bakers talked the first time to another Product Manager & Design "couple." Yoav (PM) and Tudor (PD) share their experience about working together on projects and how they split responsibilities and maintaining a trustful relationship. In this episode, they've caught up on topics such as design review, prioritization, and design sprints.  👉 Episode feedback survey ✍️     Table of content: 00:30 - Episode summary 02:35 - Intro Yoav & Tudor 05:00 - Their day-to-day business 06:50 - Team setup & collaboration 08:50 - The key for good collaboration 11:45 - Data for better decision making  15:50 - What design needs from product for discovery 21:40 - Prioritizing solutions 27:25 - Team workshops (design review & design sprints) 39:20 - Yoav's & Tudor's tips for good collaboration    Yoav & Tudor online: Yoav Linkedin: @yoavfarbey Yoav on medium: https://farbey.medium.com/ Tudor Linkedin: @tudor-teisanu-7b08a4b2 Tudor on medium: https://teisanutudor.medium.com/   ✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩    👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery    📸 Instagram: @productbakery    🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20    🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/

During dinner, Alex and Christian had a discussion about personas and the common mistakes people do while working with them. They decided to continue this conversation in this episode and dive a bit deeper into the whole world of personas. 👉 Episode feedback survey ✍️   Table of content: 00:30 - Are personas the right way? 04:00 - Slicing personas instead of working with one 06:00 - Jobs to be done 07:30 - Understanding customer problems instead of assuming 13:10 - User vs. persona   ✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩ 👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery 📸 Instagram: @productbakery 🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20 🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/

Varya started her career as a Frontend Developer and was always passionate and engaged in working with design & frontend components before design systems were invented. At some point, she decided to use her knowledge and focusing on helping companies and the community on building design systems in the right way and understand the value. In this episode, Varya talks about how to manage a design project in the most structured way and how to convince senior leadership teams of its value based on data. 👉 Episode feedback survey ✍️   Table of content: 00:30 - Episode intro 01:50 - Intro Varya 04:10 - Engineering vs. design mindset 06:30 - Best timing to build a design system 08:50 - How to allocate resources & focus 11:05 - Kicking off the project  17:30 - Communicating & aligning across the organization 21:55 - Convincing Senior Leadership Teams 26:35 - Design systems vs. creativity 28:30 - Biggest mistakes companies do with design systems 32:45 - Varya's design system course   Follow Varya: Design system course: https://hands-on-workshop.varya.me/ Website: https://varya.me/ Linkedin: @varyastepanova Twitter @varya_en ✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩    👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery    📸 Instagram: @productbakery    🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20    🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/

Alex talked to Christian about his past experiences working with Designers. Christian shared his story about how he developed a good eye and understanding of UI and UX.  Table of content: 00:30 - Small talk 01:45 - Christian's design history 06:20 - Working together with a Designer 07:50 - How design skills help Product Managers 08:20 - Keeping an open & honest relationship    ✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩    👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery    📸 Instagram: @productbakery    🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20    🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/

Daniel & Robert working at ready2order as Director of Product and Talent Acquisition Lead. They both have the mission to build an amazing product with great people. Daniel is on board for more than 5 years and Robert joined 7 months ago to streamline hiring processes for all departments and especially Product Management & Design. In this episode, they share how they defined and implemented a new hiring strategy to find the right people at the right time. Table of content:  00:30 - Episode summary 01:40 - Intro Daniel Ibrahim & Robert O'Donoghue 03:35 - How hiring has changed @ready2order 08:05 - Product vision & strategy as a blueprint for hiring 10:55 - Setting up the hiring process 14:30 - Case studies to identify the core strengths of candidates 17:50 - How to measure case studies 21:00 - Filtering out candidates 25:50 - Pros and cons of case studies 30:10 - Hiring decisions made as a team 35:30 - Salaries & benefits 40:00 - How to hire and collaborate remotely Daniel & Robert online: Linkedin Daniel: @daniel-ibrahim Linkedin Robert: @rodonoghue1 Jobs @ready2order:  https://ready2order.com/en/career/ ✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩    👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery    📸 Instagram: @productbakery    🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20    🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/

In the second part of the coaching vs. managing series, Alex interview Christian about coaching practices as an external and unbiased coach. Christian talks about how to identify and define goals together with his coachees as well as deep-diving into asking good and the right questions. Table of content: 00:30 - Intro Alex 01:20 - Unbiased coaching 03:45 - Why product people call a coach 04:40 - Defining and working towards goals 07:15 - Asking the W's (who, what, by when) 08:55 - What are good questions? 11:40 - Therapy vs. coaching    ✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩    👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery    📸 Instagram: @productbakery    🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20    🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/

Martina Lauchengco started her career in product management for Microsoft Office and has worked in and taught product and product marketing since. One of the big things she's seen in the last couple of years is that modern product marketing demands a more iterative approach. In this episode, Martina talks about the power of product marketing, the role of a Product Marketing Manager, and how companies can improve their processes to be more "product-marketing-driven."   Table of content: 00:30 - Episode summary  02:05 - Intro Martina Lauchengco 05:00 - How product marketing changed over the past 25 years 10:10 - Product Manager vs. Product Marketing Manager 17:10 - Finding product-market fit 21:30 - Everyone does product marketing differently 24:45 - The 4 elements of product marketing 27:50 - Communication as a Product Marketing Manager 34:10 - Hiring the first Product Marketing Manager 40:00 - Marketing = planting seeds 44:50 - Martina's upcoming book!   Martina on the internet: Linkedin: @martinalauchengco Twitter: @mavinmartina   ✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩    👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery    📸 Instagram: @productbakery    🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20    🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/

Following up on the previous episode, Christian and Alex share what podcasting tools they use and how the process of creating an episode works. Next to that they followed up on their product review format and took a deeper look into the tool Descript.com.   Table of content: 00:30 - Intro podcast tooling 01:55 - Anchor.fm for podcast distribution 02:00 - Zencastr.com for recording 03:35 - Adobe Audition for the raw cut 04:45 - Descript to finalize the episode 06:20 - Squarespace for our website 08:00 - Deep-dive into Descript functionality 16:45 - Rating Descript from 1 to 5 Descript   ✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩    👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery    📸 Instagram: @productbakery    🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20    🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/

A while ago the Product Bakers have promised to talk about how they started the Product Bakery. In this episode, Alex and Christian share how they started this project and the processes they set up to manage themselves.  Next to that, they talk about how they interate on the podcast format based on the feedback they get from their community. Table of content: 00:30 - Small talk 02:25 - Podcast Alex & Christian are listening to 05:50 - Product Bakery's problem statement  06:50 - From the idea to execution 09:20 - 2 team members with different skills 10:30 - Bias to action 11:55 - New formats & validating ideas 14:00 - Community feedback to improve the show ✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩    👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery    📸 Instagram: @productbakery    🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20    🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/

The product bakers decided to talk about coaching product managers & designers as a leader over two episodes. In this episode, Christian interviews Alex to talk about his experience of being a manager and coach at the same time. Alex shares his point of view of the thin line between managing people and working toward business goals vs. coaching, leading, and empowering people. Table of content: 00:30 - Intro Christian 01:15 - Coaching & managing people 04:00 - Different types of employees (designers) 05:35 - Coaching vs. managing  08:30 - Radical candor to help people improving 11:45 - Asking the right (non-leading) questions ✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩    👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery    📸 Instagram: @productbakery    🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20    🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/

This is the first case study where the Product Bakers made a deep-dive into a real-world project with Product Lead Mathias Kluge. Mathias shared how he and his team identified churn reasons and the process of finding solutions.  Besides reducing churn by over 40%, Mathias faced also many challenges and made a lot of learnings which are shares in this episode.   Table of content: 00:30 - Intro Mathias Kluge (Matze) 03:05 - From Product Design to Product Management 03:55 - When to start looking at churn 06:35 - Defining, gathering, and analyzing data 11:25 - Creating hypothesis with your team 15:15 - Best practices to analyze churn 17:50 - Defining success metrics & KPIs 23:30 - Preparing the backlog & the solution 24:45 - Prioritizing & negotiating 30:05 - Collaborating with Designers 37:35 - Explaining problems not solutions 38:55 - Mathias’ key learnings 41:30 - Debrief Alex & Christian   Mathias online: Linkedin: @matkluge    ✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩    👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery    📸 Instagram: @productbakery    🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20    🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/

Christian was curious and asked Alex what the key things are he takes care of in his first days as a fresh leader joining a new company. They touched upon the topic of strategy, tooling, and getting to know the leadership team and staff.   Table of content: 00:30 - Intro Christian 01:40 - What to look at when you apply for a new leadership role 04:30 - Getting to know the leadership team & your staff 07:00 - Reviewing the strategy & understanding decisions 10:05 - Alining on tools   ✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩    👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery    📸 Instagram: @productbakery    🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20    🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/

Josh Seiden is a designer, strategy consultant, coach, and author. He started his career in the early 90s. Since then a lot of things have changed. That's why Josh decided to write and share his experience, and latest observations in amazing books such as "Lean UX" or "Outcomes over Output." In this episode, Josh discusses with the Product Bakers everything about Lean UX and how to work with hypotheses and problem statements. They've also touched upon the topic of lean experimentation to validate ideas as quickly as possible.   Table of content:  00:30 - Intro Josh Seiden 03:30 - The change of Lean UX 04:30 - Making product & design teams work 06:25 - The notion of design thinking 08:25 - Defining good problem statements 11:40 - Defining good hypotheses 16:05 - Finding problems & defining success criteria 19:10 - Josh's definition of an MVP 25:20 - Perfectionism kills success 28:35 - Experimenting instead of solutionizing 30:35 - Josh's biggest learning with Lean UX 33:30 - Debrief Christian & Alex   Follow Josh: Josh's Masterclass: Online masterclass outcomes for product teams Josh's books: Lean UX, Outcomes over Output Medium: @jseiden  Linkedin: @jseiden Twitter: @jseiden   ✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩    👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery    📸 Instagram: @productbakery    🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20    🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/

This week Alex picked up the topic of prioritizing and saying no to stakeholders and customers. Christian explains in this episode where to start before you make a decision (saying no) and how to say no in the right way.   Table of content: 00:30 - Intro by Alex 03:10 - Self-awareness and doing your homework first 05:20 - Prioritizing against OKRs & company goals 07:15 - Balancing operational and research work 12:00 - Explain why you say no to people   ✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩    👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery    📸 Instagram: @productbakery    🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20    🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/

With many years of experience in product management, data, and analytics Ben Yoskovitz joined the Product Bakery to have a conversation about these topics. As a founding partner of Highline BETA a venture studio and venture capital firm, he looks a lot into data and analytics of companies to support business ideas and startups.  In this episode, the product bakers discussed the basics of defining good metrics & KPIs as well as the history and future trends of data-driven work and mindsets.      Table of content:  00:30 - Intro Ben  03:50 - The rise of data awareness 05:20 - Working with & defining data 06:55 - Leading vs. lagging KPIs 11:25 - Defining one metric that matters (North Star) 16:30 - Measuring wrong data 19:45 - Complexity of quantitative data & vanity metrics 27:10 - Establishing a data mindset in startups & teams 30:20 - Understand the big picture as a Leadership Team 32:30 - Defining assumptions & hypothesis 37:30 - Dealing with legacy data infrastructure  38:30 - Ben's outlook for the future of working with data 41:20 - Debrief Alex & Christian   Follow Ben's work: Twitter: @byosko Linkedin: @byosko Book: Lean Analytics Website: https://highlinebeta.com/   ✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩    👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery    📸 Instagram: @productbakery    🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20    🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/

The topic of user story mapping has been discussed many times recently. In this episode, the product bakers focused on the counterpart: customer journey mapping. Alex shares his experience and discussed with Christian when and how you should start working with a customer journey map. As always, Christian also tried to better understand how you can combine customer journey and user story mapping.   Table of content: 00:30 - Intro by Christian 01:10 - What is customer journey mapping about? 04:00 - Structuring a journey map 05:45 - When to map out a customers journey 07:20 - Customer journey map vs. user story map 09:45 - Speeding up the product discovery  13:40 - Death through perfectionism   ✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩    👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery    📸 Instagram: @productbakery    🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20    🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/

This time Alex came up with "the top of mind topic" of in-house vs. consulting and agency product management. Together with Christian, they've discussed the different focus areas different parties have and what product people need to become for example a good consultant or coach.    Table of content:  00:30 - Intro Alex 02:25 - Differences between in-house, coaching, and agencies 05:30 - When should I choose and do what? 07:55 - Training and educating people (coaching) 09:10 - Deep-dive into working as agency/project team 12:05 - Interims VP jobs 13:45 - Freelancing with no experience 16:30 - Why Alex moved from consulting back to in-house   ✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩    👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery    📸 Instagram: @productbakery    🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20    🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/

In this episode, Christian and Alex are discussing on top of their minds the topic of "double diamond." They quickly fall into topics of design thinking and process definition and shared some insights and refreshers on how to validate and deliver product ideas.     Table of content: 00:30 - Podcast intro 01:35 - Double diamond and design thinking 04:20 - Setting up a double diamond process 06:05 - Research & delivery aren't linear processes 08:10 - Adjusting the process 09:25 - Iterating, iterating, iterating 10:40 - Don't be too religious about it    ✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩    👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery    📸 Instagram: @productbakery    🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20    🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/

Empirical process control and understanding people were and are Andrea Tomasini's biggest passions. After starting his career as Engineer and leveling up to VP Engineering, Product, and CTO, he reached the point where he wanted to build his own agile organization.  These days Andrea's agile consultancy agile42 operates in more than 13 countries across the globe, helping companies of all sizes to establish an agile mindset. Even the Product Bakers have been trained and coached by Andrea already. In this episode, Andrea shares his wide and deep experience and best practices on where to start with an Agile transition and what pitfalls to avoid.    Table of content: 0:30 - Intro Andrea 08:40 - People over processes & tools 14:45 - Organic agility & understanding people/culture 24:25 - Becoming more agile as a Leader 28:31 - Experimenting in safe to fail environments 33:25 - Trust as the basis for change & transformation 42:15 - The 3 focus areas to introduce agility 45:05 - 3 biggest mistakes leaders do 48:25 - Debrief Alex & Christian   Get in touch with Andrea: Linkedin: @andreat Twitter: @tumma72 Website: https://www.agile42.com   ✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩    👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery    📸 Instagram: @productbakery    🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20    🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/

After studying psychology in the late '90s, Cindy started her product, research, and design career. She has lead many Product, Design, and Research Teams over the last decades. Next to that she wrote and published the book Lean Customer Development.  Cindy speaks in this episode, about how to best do customer research. She shares very practical examples of how to understand customer problems without interviews, and best practices to understand what customers really want and need. One of her key messages is that asking questions is not only important for customers, it also helps inside companies to better understand each other.    Table of content: 0:30 - Intro Cindy Alvarez 3:20 - Day to day business as Customer Researcher 5:05 - Doing research on Twitter, Reddit, and co. 10:25 - Building stakeholder relationships to push research 13:25 - How to get started with research in your company 16:15 - Reducing and avoiding bias 19:15 - Talking and negotiating with customers 21:50 - Understanding customer problems 24:20 - Customer research vs. user research 27:40 - Handling design critiques with founders and managers 31:15 - Stock questions to understand the “why” 36:15 - Documenting research outcomes (TL;DR) 39:25 - The biggest mistakes leaders do about research 42:25 - Debrief Christan & Alex   Cindy on the internet: Linkedin: @cindyalvarez Website: https://www.cindyalvarez.com Cindy's book: Lean Customer Development   ✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩    👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery    📸 Instagram: @productbakery    🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20    🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/

As a follow-up on the previous discussion about Design Operations, the Product Bakers invited Pete Fossick, who is a seasoned Design Director, Coach, Trainer, and co-founder of the DesignOps Network & conference to diving deeper into the topic. The whole conversation was around the history of design ops, how the role developed and evolved as well as its specific responsibilities.  At the end of the conversation, they've discussed how to accelerate innovation with an operations team as well as how to hire for such positions.     Table of content:  0:30 - Intro Pete Fossick and how got into Design 9:00 - Fixing problems vs. symptoms 11:50 - Responsibilities of Design Ops people 18:25 - Design Ops is a matter of company size 22:05 - The evolvement and mitosis of Design Ops 27:25 - How the role developing in the market 30:50 - Skills needed to be a good Design Operations Manager 35:35 - How Pete helps the Design Community to level up 38:20 - Design Ops collaboration with Product Managers 44:30 - Biggest mistake companies make in projects 46:50 - Driving innovation with Innovation Ops 50:35 - How to hire Design Ops as a company 53:20 - Where to find skilled people 56:25 - How agile governments work 58:40 - Pete’s gift to the audience (you) 60:00 - Debrief Christian & Alex    Pete on the internet: Linkedin: @peterfossick Website: https://www.factotum-design.co.uk/ Design Ops Conference: https://designops-conference.com/    ✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩    👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery    📸 Instagram: @productbakery    🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20    🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/

From working in hospitality to building a Design community is a rare transition that Mindaugas Petruitis made. These days Mindaugas is focused on his design fellowship at On Deck (space between On and Deck) as Program Director for the Designer Fellowship. Endless conversations and networking with Product & Design People across the globe motivated and inspired him to come up with this fellowship. In this episode, the product bakers and Mindaugas look at the evolvement of design communities as well as the challenges they are facing.     Table of content: 00:30 - Intro Mindaugas Petrutis 05:45 - The biggest challenges the Design Space is facing 11:00 - Bringing different functions together 14:30 - The On Deck Design Leadership Fellowship 16:55 - From IC to becoming a Leader 18:45 - The importance of mentoring 24:30 - When networking starts to pay-off 27:05 - The Importance of community building 30:40 - Different types of communities 34:20 - Communities aren’t sales channels 37:40 - Mindaugas’ research for On Deck 41:15 - The biggest trends in the Design Space 44:00 - Debrief Alex & Christian   Mindaugas on the internet: Linkedin: @mindaugaspetrutis Twitter: @MindaugasLT On Deck: https://www.beondeck.com/designers  ✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩    👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery    📸 Instagram: @productbakery    🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20    🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/

Jim Semick works for more than 20 years in Product Management. About 8 years ago he was looking for the next big challenge in his life. He quit his full-time job with two kids and no clear business idea. What he had back then was a great and motivated co-founder as well as the vision to make Product Managers' lives easier.  In this episode, Jim talks about the importance of having a clear vision of how to build a company with your co-founder before you even have a business idea. Next to that, Jim shared what he did to identify a problem that was worth solving which later translated into his company ProductPlan.    Table of content: 0:30 - Intro Jim Semick 3:40 - From Product Manager to founder 6:20 - Evaluating & entering markets 13:45 - Dealing with uncertainty as a founder & former PM 15:30 - 30 in-depth customer interviews 17:20 - Bootstrapping instead of raising money? 19:50 - Reducing uncertainty the lean way 25:50 - Making the first hire to build a new product 28:05 - Why you don’t need to raise money 33:00 - Two things you should know when you’re working on an idea    Jim on the internet: Website: https://www.jimsemick.com/  Jim's books & articles: https://www.jimsemick.com/writing/ ProductPlan: https://www.productplan.com/ Linkedin: @jimsemick Twitter: @jimsemick   ✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩    👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery    📸 Instagram: @productbakery    🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20    🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/

This time Christian and Alex sat together to take a deeper look at backlog management. The goal was to clarify common misunderstandings such as who owns the backlog, who is supposed to create tickets, what ticket types are the "right" ones, etc.    Table of content: 2:25 - Frequently asked backlog questions 3:15 - Leonardo Davinci & backlog management 6:00 - Basics of epics & user stories 12:40 - Who should write tickets? 14:25 - Empowering teams to work on the backlog 19:00 - The role of the definition of ready 20:30 - How to take over an existing backlog 23:10 - Keeping the backlog clean   Christian's article & course: Article: https://www.christianstrunk.com/blog/user-stories-and-epics-for-the-win Email course: https://www.christianstrunk.com/courses/backlog-management    ✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩    👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery    📸 Instagram: @productbakery    🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20    🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/

Rich Mironov works for more than +30 years in Product Management. Based on his experience as an Independent Product Consultant & Coach with more than 150 clients he shares his thoughts and observations of Product Teams in B2B enterprise.  In this episode, he talked to the Product Bakers about how to work as a Product Leader with executives, as well as the topic of negotiating and managing stakeholders and incoming requests.    Table of content:  0:28 - Intro 5:45 - Organisational misalignment 6:45 - Product vs project management 7:45 - Product management becoming the bottleneck 10:15 - Working with a founder CEO 13:00 - PMs are anthropologists 17:05 - State of Product Management vs. Product Design 22:15 - Prioritizing & negotiating with stakeholders (e.g. Sales Team) 30:05 - Working with stakeholders who have no product background 33:40 - Working as a PM with a boss who has no product background 39:20 - What keeps Rich awake at night 42:45 - Deeply understanding customers & values 48:30 - Three tips for everyone who recently started a Product Lead role    Rich on the internet: Linkedin: @richmironov Blog: https://www.mironov.com/moneystories/ Rich's recommendation to read: https://www.mironov.com/moneystories/ Rich's book: The Art of Product Management    ✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩    👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery    📸 Instagram: @productbakery    🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20    🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/

In this episode, Alex and Christian discuss the new beta social media clubhouse and its future.   Table of content: 1:53 - The clubhouse trend coming to Germany 3:19 - FOMO 4:51 - MVP Mindset 7:50 - The roadmap & snowball effects 10:05 - Clubhouse the next big social network? 12:15 - The trend of broadcasting 13:50 - What’s the problem statement? 17:50 - Clubhouse downsides & future   Find clubhouse online: Website: https://www.joinclubhouse.com/  iOS App Store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/clubhouse-drop-in-audio-chat/id1503133294    ✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩    👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery    📸 Instagram: @productbakery    🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20    🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/

Luca Criscuolo studied initially environmental science and holds a Ph.D. in climate science. Next to all his work and research, he decided at some point to be closer connected to the real world and people building products. From that point on he started working in Product Management and moved his way up to several product leadership roles. With more than 14 years of Product Management experience, he's currently working at eBay as Head of Regional Product Europe. In this episode, Luca and the Product Bakers discuss the different dimensions that are important to hire a great Product Team vs. the skills a Product Team needs to succeed based on modern best practices and the current times of uncertainty.    Table of content: 0:28 - Intro Luca Criscuolo 5:10 - Product Managers with different Backgrounds 7:44 - Dimensions of Product Management 11:05 - Growth Hacking and Marketing 14:30 - Hiring for the right mindset 20:00 - Leadership and Product Understanding 23:42 - Leadership mindset 32:46 - Coaching for the right mindset 35:33 - Biggest mistakes Product Managers make 39:14 - Corporate vs. Startup 44:04 - Career development 55:17 - The future of Product Management 57:40 - Closing thoughts from Alex and Christian    Luca on the internet: Linkedin: @lucacriscuolo Twitter: @loloabe Website: https://www.lucacriscuolo.com   ✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩ 👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery 📸 Instagram: @productbakery 🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20 🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/

Ryan Sousa leads data innovation for Research, Hospital, and Foundation at Seattle Children’s. He is a senior leader, entrepreneur, and practitioner and brings more than 25 years of leadership experience in some of the biggest companies such as Amazon, Starbucks, Expedia, and Nokia as well as several successful startups. Next to all the companies that Ryan has seen, he clearly noticed one key factor that drives success and innovation in companies which is empowering people! Many companies focus too much on deadlines, pressure from investors, and other things, and lose track of the main thing which is people. To be product and not project-driven, it's crucial to share a problem instead of solutions.  In this episode, Ryan talked about the key points a leader needs to understand to empower teams instead of micromanaging them to be successful.    Table of content: 0:28 - Intro Ryan Sousa 5:20 - Paradigm shift: User centricity 7:38 - Evolvement of the health care industry 9:20 - Processes vs. company maturity 17:15 - Restructuring organizations with the right mindset 22:35 - Organizational structure to empower (product) people 28:30 - Establishing open & direct communication as a Leader 30:00 - Enabling people to be innovative 42:50 - Planning frameworks on steroids 47:55 - The value of Hackathons 49:00 - 3 things that Ryan would have done differently 10 years ago Ryan's book recommendations: No Rules Rules The Art of Action Think Like a Rocket Scientist Connect with Ryan: Email: ryan.sousa@seattlechildrens.org   ✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩    👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery    📸 Instagram: @productbakery    🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20    🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/

"You learn the most from your mistakes, not your success.", is a quote that Rory Madden would immediately sign! With more than 16 years of experience as a Consultant, Entrepreneur, and Business Analyst he has a lot of experiences to share.  Rory founded two start-ups that failed, and one of the biggest learnings he made was to talk to customers as early as possible. Based on that learning, he founded the UXDC (User Experience & Developer Experience) Conference. The mission of the conference is to help people to learn about customer and data-driven agile methodologies to not make the same mistakes as he did.  In this episode, we talked to Ryan about how he "developed" the conference and how the way they interact with his community is shifting in the current health crisis. Table of content: 0:28 - Intro Rory Madden 6:05 - Moving from a project to a product mindset 8:10 - Definition of ”developer experience” 10:50 - Birth of the UXDX idea & community 16:00 - Finding the right speakers & supporters 22:30 - Health crisis as a big challenge 29:15 - Online vs. offline events 41:26 - Building the UXDX platform product 48:00 - 3 key learnings Rory made   Rory on the internet: Linkedin: @Rorymadden Website: https://uxdx.com/   ✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩    👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery    📸 Instagram: @productbakery    🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20    🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/

A long and exhausting year is over! Alex and Christian sat down together one last time in 2020 to wrap up a year of remote work and sharing some morning routine tips in times of home office to not only be productive but also to take care of your physical and mental health. The Product Bakers wish you all a happy new year's eve. Stay healthy, stay conscious. Happy new year! 🎉🥳🎊   PS: The next interview will be published on the 7th of January.    Check out our website update: https://www.product-bakery.com/episodes Want to learn to meditate? The Headspace app: https://www.headspace.com/ ✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩    👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery    📸 Instagram: @productbakery    🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20    🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/

Could it be a better time to launch the 20th episode on Christmas?! 🎄 We want to thank all our listeners for the amazing support we've got, and wish everyone MERRY CHRISTMAS and happy holidays! In this episode, we're doing a little recap on what has happened this year as well as sharing the first outlook for 2021.  Since the year is coming to an end we also talk about how we prioritize & set goals for the next year. This includes a deep-dive into self-organization, tooling, and a couple of book recommendations. #planning Tools we love to use for self-organization: Pen & Paper Google Calendar Evernote Workflowy Our book recommendations: 7 Habits of Highly Effective People Lean UX The Bullet Journal Method Hooked The Future of Capitalism High Output Management Pitch Anything The Prosperous Coach Atomic Habits Live hack: Listen to podcasts & educational videos at 1.5x/2x speed 🤶🎄 Follow The Product Bakery Podcast 🎄🎅    👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery    📸 Instagram: @productbakery    🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20    🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/

Shruti is a design researcher and interaction designer. She leads the talented team of The Studio at Zalando in Berlin. At the time of recording this episode, she led the product design & user research team at N26. She has also worked in strategic design consulting with IDEO, user experience at Nokia, and with a few other places. Shruti’s goal has been to nurture effective collaboration between design, research, product management and engineering to deliver customer-focussed solutions – building the capabilities and processes that enable all disciplines to do their best work. In this episode, she talks with Christian and Alex about the role of Design & Research Ops, amongst other things, that help build an effective integrated design team.   Table of content: 0:28 - Intro Shruti Ramiah 1:45 - How Product Design functions @N26 5:05 - Design collectives & Design Ops 7:05 - Collecting customer & stakeholder feedback 10:10 - The role & mission of Design Ops 21:40 - Solving symptoms or problems with Design Ops? 24:00 - How to hire the right people for a Research Team 28:00 - Collaboration between Product Managers, Designers, & Researchers 39:40 - Integrating Design in cross-functional teams 43:20 - Things Shruti would love to have known at the beginning of her career 47:31 - Debrief Alex & Christian   Find Shruti on the internet:  Website: https://shrutiramiah.com/  Linkedin: @shrutiramiah  Twitter: @itursh   ✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩        👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery     📸 Instagram: @productbakery     🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20     🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/

Branding plays a key role in every kind of business. Laura Busche's passion for marketing and brand strategy started in 2008. Since then she focused a lot on working and learning everything about brands until 2013 when she published her amazing book "Lean Branding" as part of the Lean Series from O'Reilly.  Laura consulted Alex and Christian for almost one hour about building up the Product Bakery brand and community. She shared how to use a storyboard to define the brand values and target audience.   Table of content: 0:28 - Episode summary 0:59 - Intro Laura Busche & her book launch 6:35 - How to brand a product podcast (live coaching by Laura) 8:55 - Lean branding strategies 10:30- The brand storyboard 17:15 - How to identify organic growth channels & strategies 23:25 - Driving branding & storytelling in organizations 28:25 - Value proposition vs. brand recognition (brand messaging) 35:25 - Laura’s brand strategy for her own book 39:25 - Thoughts on Google’s rebranding (icon redesign) 44:35 - 3 Tips from Laura if you launch a new brand/brand heavy product 48:50 - Debrief Christan & Alex   Follow & Connect with Laura:  Website: https://laurabusche.com/  Linkedin: @laurabusche  Twitter: @laurabusche  Her book: Lean Branding    ✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩    👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery    📸 Instagram: @productbakery    🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20    🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/

Monica Lent is a passionate Software Engineer & Entrepreneur with more than 10 years of experience. Next to her first startup affilimate.com, she regularly launches new products, services, and communities such as blogginfordevs.com.  Monica shares in this episode many practical tips and examples on how to build up your own community and the need for companies to move beyond acquiring customers and connecting closer to their audiences.   Table of content: 0:30 - Intro Monica Lent 3:50 - 12 Startups in 12 months 6:25 - How she got started with her first paid community 8:50 - Community vs. customer base 13:30 - Importance of communities for businesses 18:35 - Launching fast vs. researching too long 20:10 - Learnings on starting with SaaS product 33:30 - Mistakes to avoid when starting with a SaaS product 39:30 - Bootstrapping vs. funding 42:50 - Monica’s top 5 tips to successfully build a community   Wanna connect with Monica? https://monicalent.com/ https://twitter.com/monicalent https://bloggingfordevs.com/   Monica's reads & recommendations:  https://rosie.land/ https://nathanbarry.com/wealth-creation/ https://robwalling.com/2015/03/26/the-stairstep-approach-to-bootstrapping/ https://stackingthebricks.com/why-you-should-do-a-tiny-product-first/   ✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩    👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery    📸 Instagram: @productbakery    🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20    🌍Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/

Both Christian and Alex work on many strategic topics as consultants in their day to day business. What they've observed is that many companies need to rethink their current strategies and adapt to the current situation/crisis. In this episode, Christian talks about how to get started with a product strategy definition based on Alex's business idea about selling Italian premium ties. He focuses on the basic skeleton of information & agenda points a product strategy should consist of as well as how to specify them.   Table of content: 0:30 - Product Vision vs. company vision 4:35 - Product vision statements (GoPro) 8:40 - Defining one “catchy” sentence 9:15 - Getting buy-in from Founders & Senior Management 12:00 - Revisiting the vision statement regularly 17:20 - Vision definition workshop example (how to define a vision) 23:15 - Iterating on the product vision statement 27:05 - Who should drive the creation of the product vision   Christian's free product strategy slide deck template: Slide deck: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1mLNt7f6CPPa3FzNxnHZAS7pxgp-QDOLL2UtsBe7fcKI/edit?usp=sharing Related article: https://www.christianstrunk.com/blog/product-strategy   Connect with Christian: Website: www.christianstrunk.com Linkedin: @christianstrunk Twitter: @strunkchristian   ✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩    👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery    📸 Instagram: @productbakery    🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20    🌍Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/

Humans love to play games! So does Alex Wheeler, Senior UX Designer at Riot Game. Alex spent many years developing the UX for champions of the most played online game League of Legends.  Alex shares great insights about the whole process of developing e.g. a new champion or changes on the client-side for more than 120 Million active users. He touched all the parts from the discovery and wireframing to the development and rollout.  Next to that, he shared why friction in UX and games is so important. Table of content: 0:30 - Intro Alex Wheeler 4:35 - The addicting nature of computer games 6:45 - Intentional friction the UX 9:45 - Developing champions in League of Legends as UX Designer 15:00 - Persona-based product development 18:00 - Product discovery in gaming & LoL 20:50 - Role & collaboration with Product Managers & Owners 25:15 - When employees are users of your product 30:00 - Using data to design experiences 36:15 - Rolling out updates & new features 39:30 - Designing for 26 countries with different languages & cultures 43:50 - It’s all about documentation 46:10 - Alex 3 key values of designing user experiences 49:00 - Debrief Alex & Christian   Want to learn more about Alex? https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexwhlr/ https://medium.com/riot-games-ux-design/ux-design-in-the-games-industry-50b0572631c3   ✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩    👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery    📸 Instagram: @productbakery    🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20    🌍Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/

SaaS products are Markus Hafellner passion. Next to his experience as a Product Manager, he worked many years in the tech industry as a developer & CTO.  In his current challenge at Bitmovin, he focuses a lot on defining and developing a good pricing strategy. Markus shares how the company introduced a big pricing change and the thoughts, planning, and approach behind it as well as great tips how to align with stakeholders and getting the buy-in from the C-Level/Top Management. Table of content: 0:30 - Intro Markus Haffelner & Bitmovin 4:50 - The challenges of defining prices in B2B 8:55 - Measuring & analyzing data + customer funnels 16:10 - A product-led approach as the foundation for a pricing change 19:05 - Interpreting data & defining 25:20 - Influencing Senior Management & Founders (how to negotiate) 27:35 - Rolling out & communicating price changes 33:35 - Driving pricing topics as a Product Manager and stakeholders 37:00 - Impact of the pricing change at Bitmovin 40:20 - Markus tips to evaluate pricing in a structured way 43:20 - Comparing pricing with competition/market 49:43 - Debrief Christian & Alex   Connect with Markus: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mhafellner/ https://stratelight.substack.com/   Link from John Cutler: Beat the Feature Factory: Run Pre-cap Design Studios   ✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩    👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery    📸 Instagram: @productbakery    🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20    🌍Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/

After a week-long road trip in Portugal Alex is looking back at all the small invisible experiences he encountered while sitting in the car. It’s things like anticipating and designing for the user's intentions that make an experience really great.   Table of content: 0:30 - Alex road trip in Portugal 2:30 - Air conditioning experience with Volkswagen 4:45 - User experience in cars 6:35 - Understanding & learning from user intentions 10:55 - Jobs to be done 15:55 - UX on purpose or luck? 17:55 - Autonomous driving 22:25 - Ethnographical studies to better understand users   Connect with Alex: Website: www.alexdapunt.com Linkedin: @alexdapunt  Twitter: @alexdapunt   ✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩    👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery    📸 Instagram: @productbakery    🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20    🌍Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/

Sebastian's role as head of product at the Founders Factory is quite different from most of the jobs. He and the product coaching team help founders and teams build the right product in the right way using their expertise and product coaching framework.  His and the team's thesis is that by both executing on the product as well as coaching founders on what good best practices look like, Founders Factory won't only build great products but also great teams and businesses. In this episode, he shares great stories and best practices on what to consider as a fresh startup and how to hire the right people. Table of content: 0:30 - Intro Sebastian Abdy Sabouné & The Founder’s Factory 5:35 - Coaching founders & product people 7:10 - Product development processes in startups 14:25 - 0 to 1, hiring the right people 18:30 - Which roles to hire first in an early-stage startup 21:00 - Recognizing red flags during the hiring process 24:20 - Setting up early product management processes 29:25 - Data-based decision making with no/few clients 32:50 - Experimenting & defining hypothesis 35:00 - First roles & skills needed when you kick-off a project 37:00 - Tips from Sebastian for aspiring CEOs and Product Managers 44:05 - Debrief Alex & Christian   Sebastian's book recommendations: Escaping the build trap Thinking fast and slow Never split the difference Sebastian's articles: Product thinking Product coaching framework ✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩    👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery    📸 Instagram: @productbakery    🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20    🌍Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/

Urbi realized pretty "fast" that studying business administration isn't the right thing for him. After he moved to computer science he started his career as a QA Engineer and worked his way up. Currently, he works as an Engineering Manager at Trade Republic.  Urbi's mission is to establish a Product and Engineering mindset in the fast-growing Berlin fintech. He shares insights on onboarding processes, the collaboration between product & engineering as well as establishing a culture of open communication.   Table of content 0:30 - Intro Andreas Urban aka Urbi 6:15 - Urbi’s mission at Trade Republic 8:00 - What Engineering needs from Product Managers 10:00 - Transitioning to a scaling Product & Engineering organization 15:25 - Writing documentation to speed up onboarding of new Engineers 17:40 - Early Engineering involvement for better product planning 27:35 - Helping teams to stay focused 30:15 - Company culture vs. processes 33:45 - Collaborating with Product Leads as Engineering Manager 39:22 - Engineering a Product & Engineering organization 44:45 - What Urbi motivated to pick up the hyper-growth challenge 48:40 - Debrief Alex & Christian    ✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩    👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery    📸 Instagram: @productbakery    🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20    🌍Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/

People were always a passion for Emilie Lindström.  With a background in HR & recruiting, she moved into Product Management 3,5 years ago and is now building internal tools and processes for Outfittery. As Product Manager, Emilie spends a big part of her day working with Stakeholders to get them involved and manage their expectations along the journey. In this episode, she shares insightful stories as well as tips for everyone working with challenging stakeholders.    Table of content 0:30 - Intro Emilie Lindström 5:55 - What product newbies need to know 9:30 - Getting started with stakeholder management 13:15 - Identifying your stakeholders 18:55 - Treating stakeholders as domain experts & customers 20:25 - Dealing with “tricky” stakeholders 28:05 - Managing people vs. managing stakeholders 33:00 - How to work with customers 36:55 - Negotiating with stakeholders 41:00 - Christian’s stakeholder horror story 46:45 - Emilie’s key takeaways about stakeholder management 49:10 - Debrief Alex & Christian   ✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩    👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery    📸 Instagram: @productbakery    🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20    🌍Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/

With a master's degree in psychology and many years of experience as a User Researcher, Nikki Anderson moved in 2018 from New York to Berlin. She works currently as User Research Lead at Zalando as well as her own startup the user research academy.   Nikki shares the basics of qualitative user research to be able to get started with it in a fast and effective fashion. Next to that, she talks about when a company should start doing user research and at which point it's worth thinking of hiring a researcher.    Table of content 0:30 - Intro Nikki Anderson 2:46 - Researching the perfect croissant 6:55 - The basics of qualitative research 14:10 - Choosing the right segments to research 15:55 - Kicking off a research project 23:00 - The TEDW framework for user interviews 29:00 - Validating qualitative interview data 35:25 - Hypothesis-driven research (how might we statements) 37:35 - Evaluative research vs. generative research 41:55 - Parallelizing market research & user research 44:30 - When to start doing and hiring for research as a company 51:25 - Nikki’s key takeaways about getting started with research 54:00 - Debrief Christian & Alex   Connect with Nikki: Website: https://www.userresearchacademy.com/ Linkedin: @Nikkianderson-ux Twitter: @productherapist Link to Nikki's research template:  https://docs.google.com/document/d/19_2S5c-LWhwEk86oMxemgwsYHcm6CG_rwut5TLz0byY/edit   ✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩    👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery    📸 Instagram: @productbakery    🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20    🌍Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/

Alex and Christian were brainstorming during brunch about "what makes the perfect croissant so delicious." They came to the conclusion, that they could do research to find the answer. But how much research would they need to do, and would they really find the answer? In this episode, Alex talks about defining good questions and hypotheses to be able to do good research. Besides that, he touches on why many companies are hesitant to do research and how to apply it as a way to not lose speed.    Table of content 0:30 - Can “taste” be researched? 4:00 - Copying ideas doesn’t replace research 5:25 - Acceptance of research on C-Level 10:00 - Getting answers after deploying to production 13:10 - Dual track research 21:05 - Death through research summary   Connect with Alex: Website: www.alexdapunt.com Linkedin: @alexdapunt  Twitter: @alexdapunt   ✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩    👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery    📸 Instagram: @productbakery    🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20    🌍Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/

Liam Murphy is a crypto enthusiast for more than 8 years as an investor and a Product Designer. He shares insights into how to build crypto products that are "more usable" for crypto investment app consumers. These days he's focused on working for crypto communities and talks about how the community decides and builds new features & products.    Table of content 0:30 - Intro Liam Murphy 3:10 - Basics around crypto & decentralized finance (DeFi) 8:00 - Designing crypto products 13:40 - Changing user behaviors about investing 15:24 - Kicking off crypto projects 19:25 - Emerging crypto trends 22:50 - Designing for the crypto community 25:30 - The value of cryptocurrencies vs. fiat currencies 29:25 - Best practices to start developing a crypto project 32:10 - Community-driven development 36:35 - Will crypto become mainstream? 38:50 - Liams biggest challenge as a Designer in the crypto space 42:30 - How to get started in the crypto space 44:15 - Debrief Alex & Christian   Connect with Liam:  Twitter: @lemurf Linkedin:  @liammurphydesign   ✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩    👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery    📸 Instagram: @productbakery    🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20    🌍Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/

Being a computer scientist was too boring for Henning. Once he saw Photoshop the first time he fell in love not only with the tool. He quickly started expressing his ideas on the screen and started working as a freelancer until one of his clients got acquired by the entrepreneur Stephan Schambach.   The omnichannel retail platform NewStore was born and he started as a Product Designer. These days Henning is leading the Design Team and everything related to user research, experience, and product planning. He shares deep and detailed insights about projects with NewStore's clients and how they build a B2B retail product that has touchpoints to end customers.    Table of content: 0:30 - Intro Henning 3:55 - Definition of Omni-Channel & NewStore 9:20 - Product development in B2B (real-world project examples) 14:45 - Developing modern point of sale & checkout features 18:25 - Translating customer feedback into design & user experience 20:55 - Challenges with quantitative feedback in B2B (e.g. Google Analytics) 22:40 - Organizational customer feedback funnel 24:55 - Design as a service 30:55 - Early design involvement for the win 38:20 - Design collaboration with Product Managers 43:55 - When & how to say “no” to customer requests 52:55 - Henning’s key takeaways about design thinking in B2B enterprise 55:31 - Debrief Christian & Alex   Connect with Henning:  Linkedin: @henning-witzel Twitter: @Henning_Witzel Website: https://www.henning-witzel.de/   ✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩    👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery    📸 Instagram: @productbakery    🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20    🌍Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/

What's the difference between a product vision and a company vision? Christian talks about the definition of a product vision and the key information it should and shouldn't contain.  He describes the definition process based on examples and best practices. Next to the "theoretical" part, he talks about how to create a product vision based on two workshop methodologies that you can easily apply for your own vision.   Table of content 0:30 - Product vision basics 7:05 - The one catchy product vision sentence 7:50 - Benefits of having a product vision 11:30 - Iterating on the product vision 17:00 - Defining a product vision (workshop formats) 24:55 - Christian’s summary about creating a product vision   Connect with Christian: Website: www.christianstrunk.com Linkedin: @christianstrunk Twitter: @strunkchristian   Read more here: https://www.christianstrunk.com/blog/product-vision   ✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩    👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery    📸 Instagram: @productbakery    🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20    🌍Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/

James & Tim are both founders of Avion.io, a user story mapping tool that helps Product Teams to better collaborate and plan features, products, and services.  When Tim came back from his Product Owner course 5 years ago, learning about user story mapping, he quickly realized together with James that this methodology makes planning much easier and efficient. Unfortunately, they were missing a tool to digitalize and remotely collaborate on a user story map. They sat together after work and started designing and developing Avion.io which they've launched in 2019.  In this episode, they talk about the advantages of user story mapping as well as advanced techniques on release planning, MVP definitions, and some more cool story mapping life hacks.   Table of content 0:30 - How Tim & James got into user story mapping 5:25 - User story mapping vs. customer journey mapping 8:30 - Story mapping during the product development cycle 13:30 - Product discovery with story mapping 19:00 - Defining MVPs and preparing the backlog 25:40 - Story mapping as a product documentation tool 26:15 - Advanced release planning with story mapping 32:15 - Downside of story mapping 35:25 - Bootstrapping Avion with story mapping 43:40 - Key takeaways from Tim & James 46:30 - Debrief Alex & Christian   ✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩    👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery    📸 Instagram: @productbakery    🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20    🌍Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/

This time, Christian interviews Alex Dapunt about his career path and work experience. He initially wanted to become an architect but then landed in the Digital Design Space.  Alex started his career in an Italian agency and then moved to Munich and finally to Berlin where he started working for SumUp where he became the Head of Design. Over 4 years Alex scaled up the Design team from 4 to 40 people before he left the hyper-growth startup.  Besides a lot of hiring and building up a Brand & Product Design Team, he shares the importance of introducing a design system to scale in hypergrowth.  If you're interested in his work check out the design system Circuit UI on Github.    Episode Minutes: 0:28 - Introduction of Alex Dapunt 6:00 - Key design challenges in companies 8:00 - Cross-functional design collaboration 12:20 - Leading a Design Team to build a customer-focused design system 15:50 - Decision-making process to build a design system 18:55 - Potential downsides of a design system 21:50 - Design system & branding 27:00 - Establishing a design system in cross-functional teams & multi-products 30:00 - Alex’s key takeaways & summary    Connect with Alex: Website: www.alexdapunt.com Linkedin: @alexdapunt  Twitter: @alexdapunt   ✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩    👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery    📸 Instagram: @productbakery    🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20    🌍Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/

In this episode, Alex interviews co-host Christian Strunk to get some background on how he transitioned into Product Management.  Christian started working as a baker before he studied business administration. While studying he founded his first start-up "Pocketrobe" which opened the doors into the world of Product Management... Besides his career path, Christian talks about his most favorite product planning methodology "user story mapping" and how to get started with it.  If you're interested, listen in! For more information about story mapping  & Product Management check out his blog.     Episode minutes: 0:28 - Introduction Christian Strunk 8:00 - Product challenges in companies 8:45 - Get started with product planning 11:35 - Product planning with user story mapping 15:00 - Estabishing story mapping in the product development process 18:40 - When to not do user story mapping 21:25 - From planning to delivery (backlog preparation) 25:15 - Start planning from the end/back 30:30 - User story mapping or customer journey mapping? 35:05 - Christian’s key takeaways & summary    Connect with Christian: Website: www.christianstrunk.com Linkedin: @christianstrunk Twitter: @strunkchristian   ✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩    👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery    📸 Instagram: @productbakery    🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20    🌍Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/

Meet your hosts Christian Strunk and Alex Dapunt as they introduce you to their new Podcast Format 'The Product Bakery Podcast'.  ✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩    👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery    📸 Instagram: @productbakery    🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20    🌍Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/