
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.

#107 From Design to Production: The Importance of Cross-Functional Collaboration
#107 From Design to Production: The Importance of Cross-Functional Collaboration
Product Bakery – The Product Management, UX & Design PodcastMar 27, 2023
00:00
15:12

#107 From Design to Production: The Importance of Cross-Functional Collaboration
#107 From Design to Production: The Importance of Cross-Functional Collaboration
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/
Mar 27, 202315:12

#106 Product-Led Growth with Analytics & Data - Adam Greco @Amplitude
#106 Product-Led Growth with Analytics & Data - Adam Greco @Amplitude
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/
Mar 20, 202343:33

#105 The Product Manager vs. Product Owner Discussion
#105 The Product Manager vs. Product Owner Discussion
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/
Mar 13, 202315:34

#104 Honest & Transparent Communication (Radical Honesty/Candor)
#104 Honest & Transparent Communication (Radical Honesty/Candor)
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/
Mar 06, 202322:52

#103 Managing Ideas & Stakeholder Feedback
#103 Managing Ideas & Stakeholder Feedback
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/
Feb 20, 202319:43

#102 The Importance of User-Centricty in Product Development - Panel Discussion @BerlinProduct Conference2023
#102 The Importance of User-Centricty in Product Development - Panel Discussion @BerlinProduct Conference2023
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/
Feb 15, 202355:54

#101 Get The Salary You Deserve!
#101 Get The Salary You Deserve!
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/
Feb 06, 202324:52

#100 The Best Strategy Comes With Transparency
#100 The Best Strategy Comes With Transparency
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/
Jan 30, 202327:58

#99 Time Management & Saying NO to Meetings
#99 Time Management & Saying NO to Meetings
"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/
Jan 23, 202317:47

#98 The Impact of The Markets on Your Job
#98 The Impact of The Markets on Your Job
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/
Jan 16, 202323:26

#97 Holiday Bonus
#97 Holiday Bonus
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/
Dec 27, 202203:53

#96 The World Gets Eaten AI-gen
#96 The World Gets Eaten AI-gen
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/
Dec 20, 202221:28

#95 Product & Design Backlog Leadership
#95 Product & Design Backlog Leadership
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/
Dec 06, 202227:18

#94 The new Arc Browser is coming!
#94 The new Arc Browser is coming!
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/
Nov 28, 202223:24

#93 Stop solutionizing & start problem-solving
#93 Stop solutionizing & start problem-solving
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/
Nov 01, 202221:09

#92 Design Thinking
#92 Design Thinking
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/
Oct 26, 202213:15

#91 The Company Compass
#91 The Company Compass
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/
Oct 18, 202217:10

#90 Managing performance issues
#90 Managing performance issues
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/
Sep 12, 202227:42

#89 Struggeling with your boss
#89 Struggeling with your boss
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/
Aug 29, 202227:09

#88 Instagram's failed update & rollback
#88 Instagram's failed update & rollback
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/
Aug 08, 202218:35

#87 What we've learned from our mentors (and what not)
#87 What we've learned from our mentors (and what not)
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/
Aug 02, 202220:17

#86 Why you shouldn't ignore accessibility
#86 Why you shouldn't ignore accessibility
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/
Jul 04, 202219:13

#85 Key responsibilities of a leader (and what not)
#85 Key responsibilities of a leader (and what not)
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/
Jun 27, 202214:15

#84 Web 3.0: Hype or future?
#84 Web 3.0: Hype or future?
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/
Jun 20, 202221:51

#83 Full-time vs. Freelancer: Why do what we do
#83 Full-time vs. Freelancer: Why do what we do
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/
Jun 13, 202216:20

#82 Product in the times of uncertainty (& layoffs)
#82 Product in the times of uncertainty (& layoffs)
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/
Jun 06, 202222:26

#81 Rather burn your money then paying for a bootcamp
#81 Rather burn your money then paying for a bootcamp
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/
May 30, 202217:26

#80 Leadership self care is needed
#80 Leadership self care is needed
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/
May 23, 202218:32

#79 We are back!
#79 We are back!
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
May 16, 202209:60

#78 Intuition & product management - with Projjal Ghatak, CEO of OnLoop
#78 Intuition & product management - with Projjal Ghatak, CEO of OnLoop
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/
Dec 23, 202136:49

#77 The trap of building the first "solution"
#77 The trap of building the first "solution"
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/
Nov 26, 202114:22

#76 Follow up: Asking stupid questions & playing dumb
#76 Follow up: Asking stupid questions & playing dumb
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/
Nov 15, 202114:46

#75 Asking powerful stupid questions - with Paul Ortchanian, CEO @Bainpublic
#75 Asking powerful stupid questions - with Paul Ortchanian, CEO @Bainpublic
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/
Nov 07, 202136:21

#74 Sharing roadmaps with customers
#74 Sharing roadmaps with customers
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/
Oct 25, 202120:09

#73 One year Product Bakery! 🥳 Let's do a retrospective 🧐
#73 One year Product Bakery! 🥳 Let's do a retrospective 🧐
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/
Oct 04, 202111:27

#72 Defining a data-driven product strategy - with Konrad Heimpel, VP Product & Data @Getsafe
#72 Defining a data-driven product strategy - with Konrad Heimpel, VP Product & Data @Getsafe
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/
Sep 26, 202135:26

#71 Forming & working with task forces
#71 Forming & working with task forces
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/
Sep 16, 202119:50

#70 Remote product management & design
#70 Remote product management & design
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/
Sep 09, 202120:43

#69 Always talk to your stakeholders
#69 Always talk to your stakeholders
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/
Aug 30, 202118:02

#68 Work-life balance.
#68 Work-life balance.
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/
Aug 23, 202109:59

#67 Breaking user behavior patterns
#67 Breaking user behavior patterns
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/
Aug 23, 202116:58

#66 How smart can artificial intelligence be?
#66 How smart can artificial intelligence be?
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/
Aug 09, 202114:50

#65 How to self organize
#65 How to self organize
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/
Aug 03, 202115:13

#64 Prioritizing without strategy won't work - with Christian Idiodi, Partner @SVPG
#64 Prioritizing without strategy won't work - with Christian Idiodi, Partner @SVPG
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/
Jul 27, 202135:54

#63 Are tech products becoming unethical?
#63 Are tech products becoming unethical?
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/
Jul 19, 202116:56

#62 Book review - The One Thing
#62 Book review - The One Thing
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/
Jul 08, 202111:17

#61 Why case studies make you lose your best candidates
#61 Why case studies make you lose your best candidates
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/
Jul 01, 202116:11

#60 - Changing organizational models
#60 - Changing organizational models
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/
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
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/
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 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/
Jun 03, 202143:49

#56 Landing a job in product (PM & PD)
#56 Landing a job in product (PM & PD)
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/
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 ✩
👨💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery
📸 Instagram: @productbakery
🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20
🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/
May 20, 202140:48

#53 Scrum vs. Kanban
#53 Scrum vs. Kanban
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/
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
#47 What I've learned as a PM working with designers
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/
Apr 26, 202110:37

#46 Setting up a hiring strategy for scale - with Daniel & Robert @ready2order
#46 Setting up a hiring strategy for scale - with Daniel & Robert @ready2order
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/
Apr 22, 202144:14

#45 Coaching Product Managers & Designers Part II
#45 Coaching Product Managers & Designers Part II
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/
Apr 19, 202113:03

#44 The power of great product marketing - with Martina Lauchengco, Partner @Silicon Valley Group
#44 The power of great product marketing - with Martina Lauchengco, Partner @Silicon Valley Group
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/
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 ✩
👨💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery
📸 Instagram: @productbakery
🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20
🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/
Apr 12, 202118:06

#42 Starting a podcast as a Product Team 🥐
#42 Starting a podcast as a Product Team 🥐
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/
Apr 08, 202115:41

#41 Coaching Product Managers & Designers Part I
#41 Coaching Product Managers & Designers Part I
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/
Apr 05, 202113:30

#40 Case study: Optimizing churn for a product at scale - with Mathias Kluge
#40 Case study: Optimizing churn for a product at scale - with Mathias Kluge
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/
Apr 01, 202143:12

#39 Starting a new leadership position
#39 Starting a new leadership position
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/
Mar 29, 202114:51

#38 Climbing the confidence ladder with Lean UX - with Josh Seiden, Consultant & Author
#38 Climbing the confidence ladder with Lean UX - with Josh Seiden, Consultant & Author
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/
Mar 25, 202137:31

#37 Don’t prioritize… say NO!
#37 Don’t prioritize… say NO!
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/
Mar 22, 202113:14

#36 Working with data & metrics - with Ben Yoskovitz, Founding partner @Highline BETA
#36 Working with data & metrics - with Ben Yoskovitz, Founding partner @Highline BETA
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/
Mar 18, 202144:20

#35 Customer journey mapping to get the big picture
#35 Customer journey mapping to get the big picture
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/
Mar 14, 202115:39

#34 In-house product management vs. external consulting
#34 In-house product management vs. external consulting
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/
Mar 11, 202119:11

#33 Process & design thinking with double diamond
#33 Process & design thinking with double diamond
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/
Mar 08, 202112:08

#32 Developing an agile leadership mindset - with Andrea Tomasini, CSO @agile42
#32 Developing an agile leadership mindset - with Andrea Tomasini, CSO @agile42
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/
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
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/
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
#27 Backlog management from a different point of view
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/
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
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/
Jan 28, 202154:25

#25 Clubhouse: Top or flop?
#25 Clubhouse: Top or flop?
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/
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
✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩
👨💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery
📸 Instagram: @productbakery
🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20
🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/
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
"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/
Jan 07, 202156:18

#21 Wrapping up a remote year with tips for a better working routine
#21 Wrapping up a remote year with tips for a better working routine
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/
Dec 31, 202025:06

#20 🎄Xmas special: Self organizing & planning 2021 as a Product Person
#20 🎄Xmas special: Self organizing & planning 2021 as a Product Person
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/
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
✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩
👨💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery
📸 Instagram: @productbakery
🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20
🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/
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
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/
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/
✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩
👨💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery
📸 Instagram: @productbakery
🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20
🌍Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/
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
✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩
👨💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery
📸 Instagram: @productbakery
🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20
🌍Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/
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
✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩
👨💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery
📸 Instagram: @productbakery
🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20
🌍Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/
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
✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩
👨💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery
📸 Instagram: @productbakery
🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20
🌍Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/
Nov 19, 202055:49

#13 Designing experiences not screens
#13 Designing experiences not screens
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/
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
✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩
👨💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery
📸 Instagram: @productbakery
🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20
🌍Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/
Nov 12, 202051:40

#11 Establishing a product & engineering mindset in a hypergrowth startup - with Urbi @Trade Republic
#11 Establishing a product & engineering mindset in a hypergrowth startup - with Urbi @Trade Republic
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/
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
✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩
👨💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery
📸 Instagram: @productbakery
🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20
🌍Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/
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
✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩
👨💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery
📸 Instagram: @productbakery
🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20
🌍Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/
Oct 22, 202059:03

#8 Death through research
#8 Death through research
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/
Oct 19, 202022:22

#7 Designing crypto products for investors & communities - with Liam Murphy
#7 Designing crypto products for investors & communities - with Liam Murphy
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/
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/
✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩
👨💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery
📸 Instagram: @productbakery
🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20
🌍Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/
Oct 08, 202001:01:49

#5 The product vision definition guide
#5 The product vision definition guide
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/
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
✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩
👨💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery
📸 Instagram: @productbakery
🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20
🌍Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/
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
✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩
👨💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery
📸 Instagram: @productbakery
🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20
🌍Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/
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
✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩
👨💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery
📸 Instagram: @productbakery
🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20
🌍Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/
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'.
✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩
👨💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery
📸 Instagram: @productbakery
🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20
🌍Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/
Sep 10, 202006:20