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Product Bakery – The Product Management, UX & Design Podcast

Product Bakery – The Product Management, UX & Design Podcast

By Alex Dapunt & Christian Strunk

Are you currently working in a Product Company or even considering starting your own? In this Show, Design Manager Alex Dapunt, and Product Coach Christian Strunk are bringing people from all product functions together to talk about the key to build successful products customers love. This involves everything from Product Management to Design as well as Development and Marketing, breaking down traditional silos around these functions and fostering an open dialogue between them. Tune in for weekly interviews, discussions, and best practices that help you understand the whole product process.
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#115 Panel Discussion: Running The Product Discovery @Product Conference Munich

Product Bakery – The Product Management, UX & Design PodcastJun 05, 2023

00:00
35:45
#115 Panel Discussion: Running The Product Discovery @Product Conference Munich
Jun 05, 202335:45
#114 AI PMs Will Take Over Your Job - Ofir Natan @PracticalAI
May 29, 202342:34
#113 Product Discovery Aha Moments - Esmar Mesic CPO @Trueprofile
May 11, 202334:23
#112 The Product Development 101
May 04, 202316:24
#111 The Product Discovery 101
Apr 24, 202321:42
#110 OKR Deep Dive: All About the Definition & Planning Process
Apr 17, 202315:53
#109 Panel Discussion: Product Led Growth @CPO Conference Berlin 2023
Apr 12, 202332:29
#108 The Product & UX Design Difference
Apr 06, 202314:55
#107 From Design to Production: The Importance of Cross-Functional Collaboration
Mar 27, 202315:12
#106 Product-Led Growth with Analytics & Data - Adam Greco @Amplitude
Mar 20, 202343:33
#105 The Product Manager vs. Product Owner Discussion
Mar 13, 202315:34
#104 Honest & Transparent Communication (Radical Honesty/Candor)
Mar 06, 202322:52
#103 Managing Ideas & Stakeholder Feedback
Feb 20, 202319:43
#102 The Importance of User-Centricty in Product Development - Panel Discussion @BerlinProduct Conference2023
Feb 15, 202355:54
#101 Get The Salary You Deserve!
Feb 06, 202324:52
#100 The Best Strategy Comes With Transparency
Jan 30, 202327:58
#99 Time Management & Saying NO to Meetings
Jan 23, 202317:47
#98 The Impact of The Markets on Your Job
Jan 16, 202323:26
#97 Holiday Bonus
Dec 27, 202203:53
#96 The World Gets Eaten AI-gen
Dec 20, 202221:28
#95 Product & Design Backlog Leadership
Dec 06, 202227:18
#94 The new Arc Browser is coming!
Nov 28, 202223:24
#93 Stop solutionizing & start problem-solving
Nov 01, 202221:09
#92 Design Thinking
Oct 26, 202213:15
#91 The Company Compass
Oct 18, 202217:10
#90 Managing performance issues
Sep 12, 202227:42
#89 Struggeling with your boss
Aug 29, 202227:09
#88 Instagram's failed update & rollback
Aug 08, 202218:35
#87 What we've learned from our mentors (and what not)
Aug 02, 202220:17
#86 Why you shouldn't ignore accessibility
Jul 04, 202219:13
#85 Key responsibilities of a leader (and what not)
Jun 27, 202214:15
#84 Web 3.0: Hype or future?
Jun 20, 202221:51
#83 Full-time vs. Freelancer: Why do what we do
Jun 13, 202216:20
#82 Product in the times of uncertainty (& layoffs)
Jun 06, 202222:26
#81 Rather burn your money then paying for a bootcamp
May 30, 202217:26
#80 Leadership self care is needed
May 23, 202218:32
#79 We are back!
May 16, 202209:60
#78 Intuition & product management - with Projjal Ghatak, CEO of OnLoop
Dec 23, 202136:49
#77 The trap of building the first "solution"
Nov 26, 202114:22
#76 Follow up: Asking stupid questions & playing dumb
Nov 15, 202114:46
#75 Asking powerful stupid questions - with Paul Ortchanian, CEO @Bainpublic

#75 Asking powerful stupid questions - with Paul Ortchanian, CEO @Bainpublic

Nov 07, 202136:21
#74 Sharing roadmaps with customers
Oct 25, 202120:09
#73 One year Product Bakery! 🥳 Let's do a retrospective 🧐
Oct 04, 202111:27
#72 Defining a data-driven product strategy - with Konrad Heimpel, VP Product & Data @Getsafe
Sep 26, 202135:26
#71 Forming & working with task forces
Sep 16, 202119:50
#70 Remote product management & design
Sep 09, 202120:43
#69 Always talk to your stakeholders
Aug 30, 202118:02
#68 Work-life balance.
Aug 23, 202109:59
#67 Breaking user behavior patterns
Aug 23, 202116:58
#66 How smart can artificial intelligence be?
Aug 09, 202114:50
#65 How to self organize
Aug 03, 202115:13
#64 Prioritizing without strategy won't work - with Christian Idiodi, Partner @SVPG
Jul 27, 202135:54
#63 Are tech products becoming unethical?
Jul 19, 202116:56
#62 Book review - The One Thing
Jul 08, 202111:17
#61 Why case studies make you lose your best candidates
Jul 01, 202116:11
#60 - Changing organizational models
Jun 24, 202117:33
#59 Why you need strategic design - with Jill Lin, Staff Product Designer @Bain & Company

#59 Why you need strategic design - with Jill Lin, Staff Product Designer @Bain & Company

Jun 17, 202138:53
#58 We are all biased

#58 We are all biased

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/

Jun 11, 202114:30
#57 The value of good content design - with Jonathon Colman, Senior Group Design Manager @Intercom

#57 The value of good content design - with Jonathon Colman, Senior Group Design Manager @Intercom

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 DesignStrategic 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/

Jun 03, 202143:49
#56 Landing a job in product (PM & PD)
May 31, 202120:57
#55 Starting a new PM position - with Shaun Russell, Product Coach

#55 Starting a new PM position - with Shaun Russell, Product Coach

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/

May 27, 202140:23
#54 Giving product direction with a product strategy - with Nacho Bassimo, Director of Product @Xing

#54 Giving product direction with a product strategy - with Nacho Bassimo, Director of Product @Xing

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 ✩

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   📸 Instagram: @productbakery

   🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20

   🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/

May 20, 202140:48
#53 Scrum vs. Kanban
May 17, 202114:01
#52 Kickstarting a business without technical background - with Richard & Ben, Founders @MOHARA

#52 Kickstarting a business without technical background - with Richard & Ben, Founders @MOHARA

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/

May 13, 202148:10
#51 Product review - JIRA and how to set it up for success

#51 Product review - JIRA and how to set it up for success

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/

May 10, 202121:09
#50 Collaborating as Product Manager & Designer - with Yoav & Tudor @ParkNow

#50 Collaborating as Product Manager & Designer - with Yoav & Tudor @ParkNow

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/

May 06, 202140:55
#49 Should you be using Personas?

#49 Should you be using Personas?

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/

May 03, 202115:52
#48 Managing design system projects - with Varya Stepanova

#48 Managing design system projects - with Varya Stepanova

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/

Apr 28, 202135:34
#47 What I've learned as a PM working with designers
Apr 26, 202110:37
#46 Setting up a hiring strategy for scale - with Daniel & Robert @ready2order
Apr 22, 202144:14
#45 Coaching Product Managers & Designers Part II
Apr 19, 202113:03
#44 The power of great product marketing - with Martina Lauchengco, Partner @Silicon Valley Group
Apr 15, 202145:36
#43 Podcast tooling & product review: Descript

#43 Podcast tooling & product review: Descript

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 ✩

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   📸 Instagram: @productbakery

   🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20

   🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/

Apr 12, 202118:06
#42 Starting a podcast as a Product Team 🥐
Apr 08, 202115:41
#41 Coaching Product Managers & Designers Part I
Apr 05, 202113:30
#40 Case study: Optimizing churn for a product at scale - with Mathias Kluge
Apr 01, 202143:12
#39 Starting a new leadership position
Mar 29, 202114:51
#38 Climbing the confidence ladder with Lean UX - with Josh Seiden, Consultant & Author
Mar 25, 202137:31
#37 Don’t prioritize… say NO!
Mar 22, 202113:14
#36 Working with data & metrics - with Ben Yoskovitz, Founding partner @Highline BETA
Mar 18, 202144:20
#35 Customer journey mapping to get the big picture
Mar 14, 202115:39
#34 In-house product management vs. external consulting
Mar 11, 202119:11
#33 Process & design thinking with double diamond
Mar 08, 202112:08
#32 Developing an agile leadership mindset - with Andrea Tomasini, CSO @agile42
Mar 04, 202152:22
#31 Researching customer problems - with Cindy Alvarez, Director Customer Research @Github

#31 Researching customer problems - with Cindy Alvarez, Director Customer Research @Github

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/

Feb 25, 202147:06
#30 Deep-diving into the Design Ops role - with Pete Fossick Design Director, Coach & Trainer

#30 Deep-diving into the Design Ops role - with Pete Fossick Design Director, Coach & Trainer

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/

Feb 18, 202101:04:33
#29 The evolvement of design communities - with Mindaugas Petrutis Program Director @On Deck

#29 The evolvement of design communities - with Mindaugas Petrutis Program Director @On Deck

Feb 11, 202149:08
#28 Understanding customers to find product/market fit - with Jim Semick Founder @ProductPlan

#28 Understanding customers to find product/market fit - with Jim Semick Founder @ProductPlan

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/

Feb 04, 202134:58
#27 Backlog management from a different point of view
Feb 01, 202126:05
#26 Combining business & product mindsets - with Rich Mironov @Product Management Consultant & Author

#26 Combining business & product mindsets - with Rich Mironov @Product Management Consultant & Author

Jan 28, 202154:25
#25 Clubhouse: Top or flop?
Jan 25, 202121:33
#24 What Product Managers need to succeed in 2021 - with Luca Criscuolo Head of Product @eBay

#24 What Product Managers need to succeed in 2021 - with Luca Criscuolo Head of Product @eBay

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/

Jan 21, 202101:03:17
#23 Empowering teams to be innovative - with Ryan Sousa CDO @Seattle Children's Hospital

#23 Empowering teams to be innovative - with Ryan Sousa CDO @Seattle Children's Hospital

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

 
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Jan 14, 202101:03:24
#22 Developing a conference & community product - with Rory Madden Founder @UXDX

#22 Developing a conference & community product - with Rory Madden Founder @UXDX

Jan 07, 202156:18
#21 Wrapping up a remote year with tips for a better working routine
Dec 31, 202025:06
#20 🎄Xmas special: Self organizing & planning 2021 as a Product Person
Dec 24, 202025:14
#19 Accelerating product development with an integrated Design Team - with Shruti Ramiah @N26

#19 Accelerating product development with an integrated Design Team - with Shruti Ramiah @N26

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

 
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Dec 17, 202054:36
#18 Brand & product building don't compete with each other! - with Laura Busche @Author of Lean Branding

#18 Brand & product building don't compete with each other! - with Laura Busche @Author of Lean Branding

Dec 10, 202053:26
#17 Communities as a foundation to kick-starting your product & brand - with Monica Lent @Bloggingfordevs

#17 Communities as a foundation to kick-starting your product & brand - with Monica Lent @Bloggingfordevs

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/

 
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Dec 03, 202001:00:53
#16 Creating a product strategy in times of uncertainty

#16 Creating a product strategy in times of uncertainty

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

 
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Nov 30, 202023:42
#15 The role of UX in the most played computer game League of Legends - with Alex Wheeler @Riot Games

#15 The role of UX in the most played computer game League of Legends - with Alex Wheeler @Riot Games

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

 

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Nov 26, 202054:56
#14 Defining the right pricing for SaaS products - with Markus Hafellner @Bitmovin

#14 Defining the right pricing for SaaS products - with Markus Hafellner @Bitmovin

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

 
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Nov 19, 202055:49
#13 Designing experiences not screens
Nov 16, 202025:20
#12 Building the first product teams in early-stage startups - with Sebastian Sabouné @Founders Factory

#12 Building the first product teams in early-stage startups - with Sebastian Sabouné @Founders Factory

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


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Nov 12, 202051:40
#11 Establishing a product & engineering mindset in a hypergrowth startup - with Urbi @Trade Republic
Nov 05, 202053:39
#10 Building relationships & keeping stakeholders involved - with Emilie Lindström @Outfittery

#10 Building relationships & keeping stakeholders involved - with Emilie Lindström @Outfittery

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

 
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Oct 29, 202053:55
#9 User research can be fast & easy - with Nikki Anderson @Zalando

#9 User research can be fast & easy - with Nikki Anderson @Zalando

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

 
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Oct 22, 202059:03
#8 Death through research
Oct 19, 202022:22
#7 Designing crypto products for investors & communities - with Liam Murphy
Oct 15, 202047:59
#6 User Experience in B2B: Building a product in the retail industry for today’s consumers - with Henning Witzel @NewStore

#6 User Experience in B2B: Building a product in the retail industry for today’s consumers - with Henning Witzel @NewStore

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/

 
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Oct 08, 202001:01:49
#5 The product vision definition guide
Oct 05, 202027:58
#4 Bootsrapping a startup with user story mapping - Interview with Avion.io

#4 Bootsrapping a startup with user story mapping - Interview with Avion.io

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

 
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Oct 01, 202052:31
#3 Managing hyper growth with the help of a design system

#3 Managing hyper growth with the help of a design system

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

 
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Sep 24, 202033:56
#2 How to get started with user story mapping

#2 How to get started with user story mapping

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

 
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Sep 17, 202038:33
#1 Welcome to the Product Bakery

#1 Welcome to the Product Bakery

Meet your hosts Christian Strunk and Alex Dapunt as they introduce you to their new Podcast Format 'The Product Bakery Podcast'. 


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Sep 10, 202006:20