Product Perspectives

My guest today is Henry Latham. After 10 years working with different product teams & start-ups to understand what makes products succeed - & others fail - he launched Prod MBA, an 8-week hands-on bootcamp to fast-track aspiring product leaders’ path to Head of Product. He’s coached over 280 Product Managers on product strategy over the last 3 years. In this episode, key take-aways include: 1. What product strategy is, and why it shouldn’t be so complicated 2. Using the Product Thinking Template and the Minimum Viable Offer Framework to ensure maximum impact and focus 3. How to communicate with stakeholders effectively Link to the frameworks mentioned in the episode: https://miro.com/miroverse/product-thinking-board/ Give your feedback on Product Perspectives: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeMvjCpi_PHp49O82iSyw8va9-A4VzPR-RR9s3Ndt222E3Q2Q/viewform?usp=sf_link

Tristan is formerly a senior data leader within a US $1BN+ global E-commerce business. He has over 15 years experience in data, financial analysis and strategy roles. He has data experience from startups, scale-ups and the high pressure world of banking where he worked for one of Wall Street's most well known banks: Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Tristan is deeply passionate about technology and startups and has been endorsed by the UK's Tech Nation as a Global Talent in Tech. He speaks frequently at tech events and has experience as a founder having started two marketplace businesses. In this episode, we talked about how PMs need to be data literate and how much they really need to know about data to be able to self-serve, but also how they can partner with their analytics team to run experiments that lead to better insights and products, and how AI/ML is changing analytics.

My guest today is Rachel Wilde, who is an leader with over 20 years of experience, specializing in SaaS adoption and growth for startups, with a deep understanding of SaaS technology and customer experience. She has worked at various early and late-stage startups, including Healthy Pet (acquired by VCA Antech), OSI, Next2Friends, and currently as Head of Global Implementation Enablement at Harri, an end-to-end talent acquisition and workforce management platform for the hospitality industry. At Harri, Rachel works closely with product managers to scale technology onboarding for new clients, leveraging her business acumen and technology expertise to drive the company’s success in the highly competitive SaaS industry. In this episode, we talk about how, to ensure successful onboarding and customer success, the product team needs to understand and prioritize customer needs of course but also consider compliance needs, user efficiency and scalability. We discuss how Harri leverages the latest technology to onboard its customers and how Rachel works with the product team to establish onboarding processes that are predictable, scalable, and provide a consistent experience.

Welcome to this new episode type, Product Q&A, a weekly bite-size episode, part of the Product Perspectives podcast, where I answer the most common questions that product managers encounter at job interviews and in their day-to-day work. Whether you're a seasoned product manager or just starting out in your career, this episode format is for you. Each week, I tackle a different question related to product management, from strategy and planning to user research and design. Not only is this podcast a great resource for product managers looking to expand their knowledge and skills, but it's also a valuable tool for interviewers who want to ask insightful questions and for product stakeholders who want to better understand what they can expect from a great product manager. So, tune in every Thursday for a new episode of Product Q&A, and join me as I explore the exciting world of product management and answer your burning questions. Give your feedback about Product Perspectives: Product Perspectives feedback form (google.com)

My guest today is Jasonda Desmond who is the Director of Operations at Leah Chang Learning, a women-led digital learning agency. She has spent the last 10 years building and delivering outcomes-focused, scalable customer education programs for B2B SaaS products. In this episode, we talk about how Customer education programs have become a key differentiator in the market, helping with sales, adoption and retention. We discuss how product and customer education teams can work together to develop strategies and provide resources for customers, as well as internal training and enablement. Whether you have a team in charge of customer education (or CE as Jasonda calls it) or you’re doing it yourself, this is a great episode to understand the value of those programs and think about them early on in the product lifecycle. Give your feedback about Product Perspectives: Product Perspectives feedback form (google.com)

Welcome to this new episode type, Product Q&A, a weekly bite-size episode, part of the Product Perspectives podcast, where I answer the most common questions that product managers encounter at job interviews and in their day-to-day work. Whether you're a seasoned product manager or just starting out in your career, this episode format is for you. Each week, I tackle a different question related to product management, from strategy and planning to user research and design. Not only is this podcast a great resource for product managers looking to expand their knowledge and skills, but it's also a valuable tool for interviewers who want to ask insightful questions and for product stakeholders who want to better understand what they can expect from a great product manager. So, tune in every Thursday for a new episode of Product Q&A, and join me as I explore the exciting world of product management and answer your burning questions.

Product management is a dynamic and rapidly evolving field, driven by advances in technology, changes in consumer behavior, and shifting market trends. As we look to the future, it's clear that product managers will play a key role in shaping the products and services that will define our lives in the years to come. Here are my bold predictions for the future of product management, both in the near term (2023) and the longer term (2030). Give your feedback about Product Perspectives: Product Perspectives feedback form (google.com)

Welcome to this new episode type, Product Q&A, a weekly bite-size episode, part of the Product Perspectives podcast, where I answer the most common questions that product managers encounter at job interviews and in their day-to-day work. Whether you're a seasoned product manager or just starting out in your career, this episode format is for you. Each week, I tackle a different question related to product management, from strategy and planning to user research and design. Not only is this podcast a great resource for product managers looking to expand their knowledge and skills, but it's also a valuable tool for interviewers who want to ask insightful questions and for product stakeholders who want to better understand what they can expect from a great product manager. So, tune in every Thursday for a new episode of Product Q&A, and join me as I explore the exciting world of product management and answer your burning questions.

Give your feedback about Product Perspectives: Product Perspectives feedback form (google.com) My guest today is Tess Dixon. With 20 years in tech including a past life as Director of Support at Tumblr, Tess pivoted to design in 2019 and spent the last couple of years learning about and practicing DesignOps — most recently as Director of DesignOps at Condé Nast. She loves documentation, remote-first culture, getting things organized, and supporting an entire team with the best environment possible. I had a long conversation with Tess and for that reason, there are two episodes with her. In the first one, we focused on her background and role as Director of Support at Tumblr. Tess talks about how product managers can work closely with support teams to understand user reactions to new features, how she introduced self-service support solutions to reduce support tickets and how support teams can drive customer satisfaction and sales opportunities. If you missed it, it’s not too late to listen to it! In today’s episode, we talk her role as Director of DesignOps at Conde Nast. Whether you have an Ops team or not, every organisation needs operations to run so you or some of your colleagues are probably doing ops already. We’ve also diverged onto remote working, because Tess is a strong advocate and gives tips about how to make it work, as well as reasons why it’s more inclusive. Enjoy!

My guest today is Tess Dixon. With 20 years in tech including a past life as Director of Support at Tumblr, Tess pivoted to design in 2019 and spent the last couple of years learning about and practicing DesignOps — most recently as Director of DesignOps at Condé Nast. She loves documentation, remote-first culture, getting things organized, and supporting an entire team with the best environment possible. I had a long conversation with Tess and for that reason, there will be two episodes with her. The first one focuses on her background and role as Director of Support at Tumblr, whereas next week’s one will be about her role as Director of DesignOps at Conde Nast. In this first episode, Tess talks about how product managers can work closely with support teams to understand user reactions to new features, how she introduced self-service support solutions to reduce support tickets and how support teams can drive customer satisfaction and sales opportunities.

My guest today is Justin Zalewski, who is a people-centered design leader with 10+ years of experience in product design, product strategy, and service design. As Director of Product Design and Strategy at Studio Science, Justin leads a team of talented product designers and works with clients to solve business problems through design. He and his team are experts in rapid prototyping and running experiments to learn from customers.  He has led projects with clients ranging from market-leading tech companies to Fortune 500 brands. Clients include Angi, Genesys, Simon, Stack Overflow, and Cummins. In this episode, we talked about how new technologies and tools impact the role of a UX Designer, and what new responsibilities the people who create products hold as a result. Justin introduces the idea that products are actually digital services - as in software as a service, and gives examples on how he’s worked with customers and product managers to improve their metrics, promoting co-creation and designing for the real world. For UX Designers who want to find their place working with product managers and PMs who want to challenge their perspectives on building products, this is a great episode to get some inspiration and actionable tips

My guest today is Mirela Mus who has 12+ years of product management experience, a background in Computer Science, and an MBA. She is the Founder of Product People, a Product Management Consultancy with 40 in-house full-time PMs who help as Interims in Europe’s top Product companies. As an Interim PM, she has personally contributed to Tier, Zalando, Omio, WHO (World Health Organization), and continues to do so with her growing team.  In this episode, we talk about the need for temporary staff when there a gap due to a PM going on parental leave or leaving, how Mirela introduced blind interviews in her company to identify the best talents, how she sees her workforce as the product and the parallels she draws between being a founder and a product manager. Mirela has impressed me by her diverse experience and product cultures she’s encountered along her journey. For PMs who want to get exposure to lots of different companies, product management consultancies can be a great way to acquire experience quickly - and for companies to bring better product management practices in their organisations.

My guest today is Charlie Sharzer who is product operations lead at Palantir Technologies, where he created the operations function for the Gotham product organization. Previously, he worked in business development as a deployment strategist in Palantir's U.S. Government business, where he partnered with users, built product, and led client engagements. Before coming to Palantir, Charlie taught high school phyics and chemistry in Newark, New Jersey. In this episode, we talk about the role of Product Operations and how Palentir saw the need to build this function. Charlie talks about the specificites involved with working with the government, as well as how to de-risk releases and make customer’s lives easier when there’s an upgrade.

Are you keeping up with the latest trends in product management? Check out this bonus episode on the key trends and challenges that product organizations will face in 2023 and beyond. From the growing importance of education and soft skills to the rise of product-led strategies and the increasing role of data and low-code/no-code tools, this episode covers it all. Stay ahead of the curve in the dynamic world of product management! Transcript: Trends in Product That Are Gaining Momentum in 2023 – Product Perspectives (wordpress.com)

My guest today is Vishali Dialani who has been a strategy-driven customer experience professional for 6+ years. She’s recognized for creating human-centred design systems for complex digital products and leading marketing initiatives across diverse industries from advertising, education and fintech. With a collaborative mindset to make a difference, Vaishali loves to understand customer needs, map out across-the-board customer journeys, be the voice of customers and develop effective operational processes to drive customer adoption and business success. Recognized as CXPA’s emerging leader 2022, she believes in the power of making customer experiences simple and seamless. In this episode, we talked about her role as a CX executive, and how her approach both mirrors and complements the one of a product manager. We’ve touched on non-digital products like manufacturing and hardware, as well as the future of CX with immersive experiences. I hope you’ll enjoy this final episode of 2022 and wish you a wonderful festive season.

Rishabh Bhandari is the Founder & CEO at Content Beta, a video-design-audio studio that has helped over 80 B2B software companies create engaging product marketing content to successfully drive engagement with marketing, generate more MQLs and signups, improve win rates, and get faster production adoption using product videos and retain users with technical content. Rish has built Content Beta from scratch and turned it into a 600K dollar company during the covid lockdown. He has co-authored the popular ebook ‘Customer Training Maturity Report 2021’ with the renowned customer education expert, Brian Childs. With a wide range of career accomplishments, he has learned the ins and outs of the industry, can recognize the gaps that can stall a B2B company’s growth, and has counseled over 108 product marketers and customer success managers in order to better their approach. In this episode, we talk about his journey as a founder but obviously a lot about content and the role that product managers have in creating quality content for their customers as well as for their internal stakeholders: from sales enablement to marketing.

Andrew Forman founded Givz, the first Purpose Driven Performance marketing platform. Prior to Givz, Andrew spent six years in investment banking where he worked on mergers and acquisitions and he was also the treasurer of a nonprofit with the mission of enhancing literacy in Africa. Andrew received his MBA from Harvard Business School and his BA in mathematics and economics from Hamilton College. In this episode, we talk about his journey from finance and non-profit to founder. What I’ve loved about this conversation is the honesty that Andrew demonstrates and his openness to recognise what has worked well and what he could have done better. We discuss whether and when to bring your UX and a dedicated product manager in-house, and what as a founder Andrew expects from those first hires. If you’re a founder or a product manager looking to join a start-up, I hope you’ll get some insights into what it’s like.

My guest today is Chet Lamba who is a seasoned digital product & tech leader serving on the executive team at Smooth Commerce with previous roles at IBM and TheAppLabb. With over a decade of experience and the launch of 80+ digital products, his specialty is creating strategy and momentum for execution on the development of software products despite legacy systems, budgets, and operational hurdles. From consumer-facing native mobile apps to large scale back-end deployments, Chet, has drawn on his impressive experience to ensure execution is always possible.  Chet is passionate about innovation so we’ve talked about how AI, VR and Web3 will disrupt the product space. We also touched on managing a team, as well as what it takes to grow a career in product and become a product leader. Whether you’re a team manager looking to develop your team or a product manager who wants to get promoted, you’ll get some insights into what an executive like Chet expects from his team. You can contact Chet on Linkedin.

Welcome back to Product Perspectives to hear from Zuzana, Aldair and Jakub. In this third and last episode of the series with the product trio at Mews, we discussed measuring success as a product team and what a good product looks like. If you or your company are stuck with vanity metrics, you'll get some great tips on how to start looking at what matters and get your leadership onboard. You'll also learn how Engineers are onboarded by Jakub in their first weeks and how Heap changed the life of Zuzana as a UX Designer and Aldair as a Product Manager. If you missed the first 2 episodes about becoming product-led and communicating internally, I'd strongly recommending listening to them for understanding more about the context, the company and the product, and grabbing pieces of advice you might want to apply to your own organisation. Zuzana Hrušovská is a Senior Product Designer and has been with Mews for a little over 3 years and has worked in each of their B2B teams, sometimes even with all of them at once. She focuses on improving reservation journey for our users and their guest. Aldair Borges is a Product Manager who moved to the Czech Republic all the way from Zimbabwe. He helps Mews build products that manage the operation and distribution of inventory for the hospitality industry. Jakub Tkadleček is Engineering Manager and joined Mews when someone's apartment was considered 'The Office'. While his work life stirred him towards the role of technical manager, he stills considers code just a more structured offshoot of poetry.

Zuzana Hrušovská is a Senior Product Designer and has been with Mews for a little over 3 years and has worked in each of their B2B teams, sometimes even with all of them at once. She focuses on improving reservation journey for our users and their guest. Aldair Borges is a Product Manager who moved to the Czech Republic all the way from Zimbabwe. He helps Mews build products that manage the operation and distribution of inventory for the hospitality industry. Jakub Tkadleček is Engineering Manager and joined Mews when someone's apartment was considered 'The Office'. While his work life stirred him towards the role of technical manager, he stills considers code just a more structured offshoot of poetry. In this second episode, we talk about communication within a product trio, with the rest of the product team but also the larger organisation. From how to position technical debt to focusing outcomes, this product trio reminds us that PMs aren't the boss and that they should listen to and involve their team.

Zuzana Hrušovská is a Senior Product Designer and has been with Mews for a little over 3 years and has worked in each of their B2B teams, sometimes even with all of them at once. She focuses on improving reservation journey for our users and their guest. Aldair Borges is a Product Manager who moved to the Czech Republic all the way from Zimbabwe. He helps Mews build products that manage the operation and distribution of inventory for the hospitality industry. Jakub Tkadleček is Engineering Manager and joined Mews when someone's apartment was considered 'The Office'. While his work life stirred him towards the role of technical manager, he stills considers code just a more structured offshoot of poetry. In the first episode, we talk about how Mews realised they were sales and engineering driven and how this product trio overturned the situation to become a successful product-led team. If you recognise yourself or your company in the situation they describe, there’s hope and I wish that you’re going to gather key take-aways from this episode.

My guest today is a UX designer I’ve known for years and who has inspired me to get into product management. Philippe Clairet has been working in what we know today as "digital products" for 15 years. He’s worked across multiple domains such as finance, travel, online marketplaces, online planning, supply chain and web3. His roles have also varied a little along the way, including managing a UX team, but he’s a UX designer at heart. Heart is actually a good work to describe this interview, as Phil talks about kindness and shares personal stories of people who have supported him in his journey. We also touch on the role of UX and UX researchers, and how giving feedback to coworkers can still be difficult in a product world in which feedback from customers is so valued.

In this bonus episode, I’ve invited Brenden Kumarasamy who is the founder of MasterTalk, he coaches ambitious executives & entrepreneurs to become top 1% communicators in their industry. He also has a popular YouTube channel called MasterTalk, with the goal of providing free access to communication tools for everyone in the world. He talks me through his journey and the challenges he’s faced along the way, but more important gives product managers like you and me some practical tips on how to improve out networking and public speaking skills. This is one of the episodes that gets you thinking about your career and how to go to the next level, and what you might want to practice during your shower. If you want to understand the joke, listen to this episode! Reach out to Brenden on Linkedin: Brenden 🎤 Kumarasamy | LinkedIn or watch his Youtube channel.

My guest today is Faris Aranki, Founder and Chief Effectiveness Officer at Shiageto Consulting. Faris has spent over 20 years delivering strategic change for the corporate and non-corporate worlds, including 12 years working as a strategy consultant, 4 years working in the strategy team of Centrica (the UK’s largest utility firm), 4 years working in education and development, Non-exec director and trustee of several charities. He came to realise that often what hinders institutions from achieving their goals goes beyond the quality of their strategy; it is their ability to engage effectively with others at all levels and remove barriers in their way. This has led to his passion for improving strategic effectiveness within all businesses and individuals and the foundation of Shiageto Consulting. On top of leading our business, Faris is now an accomplished speaker and contributor for a variety of outlets.  In this episode, we talk about Emotional Intelligence and Focus, to design strategies that actually work. These skills are critical for product managers and I hope you’ll get the tips you’re looking for to develop your career. You can contact Faris via Linkedin and his website.

My guest today is Jareer Ali. Jareer is looking after the Product Marketing of AssetSonar, which is an IT Asset Management Solution. Before joining this team, Jareer got an MBA in one of the Top Business schools in Asia. Jareer is a truly international professional; not only he's working in a diverse and multicultural team - but he also did a exchange in France and works with an American company). I’ve found him to be passionate about Tech & Strategy and how to make a positive impact on the world. In his current role, he interacts with the product manager on a daily basis - and that's the reason we have invited him to our podcast. We talked about product marketing of course, including sales enablement and content creation like running campaigns and webinars. He shares his view on MBAs and what makes a product stand out from competition. I had a lot of fun talking to Jareed and I’ve been delighted by his responses, they surprised me and I hope they’ll surprise you too.

Welcome back to Product Perspectives for this episode about growth, one of the hot topics in products. I’ve talked to Ken Rudin who is the SVP of user growth at ThoughtSpot, a modern BI solution which I use as part of my current role. Ken is the SVP of User Growth at ThoughtSpot, leading Product Led Growth initiatives across the company, increasing user acquisition and engagement. Previously, he led the global User Growth and Analysis team at Google, where he focused on driving user acquisition, engagement and monetization across all Google products and services. His team provided analysis, best practices, tools, and services to optimize Google’s products as well as marketing campaigns, resulting in accelerated growth in users and revenue. Prior to Google, Ken built the Analytics organization at Facebook, which included both the data science teams and the data engineering teams. He led the organization to deliver high impact analyses across all Facebook products. and before that, Ken was the VP of Analytics and Platform Technologies at Zynga, helping Zynga to become known for excellence in analytics, and helping to build the foundation for one of the world’s largest social gaming platforms. In this episode, Ken explains how he’s helped companies transition the company from a traditional sales-led model to product-led growth, with some real-world examples. I’ve enjoyed learning about his journey into product and the data world as well as his clear explanation of how core PMs, growth PMs and product marketing can work together to make great successful products. This episode is a bit longer than usual but it’s worth it, so I hope you enjoy the listen!

Dear listeners, it’s been 4 weeks without an episode of Product Perspectives and this is because I was first on holidays and then off sick – I’m sorry that you can still hear this is my voice. I do have episodes in the pipeline though and I’ve got some great announcements to make. The first one is Product Perspectives is growing, with more listeners at each episodes, and that’s thanks to you. If you enjoy the podcast, please share it with your friends and colleagues. There’s a Product Perspectives page on Linkedin to stay up-to-date with episode releases and product-management related topics. Our Linkedin page is getting more and more clicks so make sure you follow it. On another note, I’ve been looking for a co-producer and co-host for a few months, since I initially launched Product Perspectives on my own. Following a few rounds of interviews, I think I’ve found the right person and we’ll start working together on the strategy, marketing and of course the episodes. I’ll introduce you when it’s the right time. About the future, as a good product manager, we’ll be running experiments with new podcast formats. So far, the format is short with a maximum of 40 minutes, and there are two types of episodes: interview-style with one guest, and roundtable with 3 guests. In order to ensure the format brings you the most value and best content as a listener, we’ll be doing tests with new formats. So if you’ve got some feedback, please share it with me via my social media or on the website. There are exciting times ahead for Product Perspectives and I’m looking forward to sharing those with you. Thank you for your patience and see you next week for a new episode.

My guest today is Sophie Heller. Sophie leads the CX Services team at Outschool, a marketplace of live-online classes for kids. She joined the company as employee #2 as its first customer support agent and has since seen the company grow to 200; the support inbox now contains 100+ people, spread over several internal teams and an outsourcer. Sophie's team works to equip the inbox, including 50+ outsourced agents, for any changes to Outschool's website or policies, providing services including documentation, training, and quality assurance. Sophie explains how she helped to scale the business and how they support 10,000 teachers and respond to 5,000 tickets per week. She has mastered the art of knowledge sharing within her company, with a mix of different training material, good release preparation processes and also a feedback loop with the product team. I've enjoyed learning about how Outschool measures quality of the replies to customers, as opposed to usual metrics like CSAT, volume and time to resolve queries. I hope you'll love hearing her real-life stories and you'll better understand how support teams operate after this episode. You can contact Sophie on Linkedin.

My guest today is Romain Fleury who is Release Readiness Consultant at Cornerstone, a Learning and Employee Growth platform provider. He works on communicating releases to HR and IT administrators, making sure they adopt the latest functionality and get the most of their platform through releases. Romain’s role isn’t common and would more often than not be covered by product marketing teams. We talk about the best ways to create useful documentation for customers and partners, as well as everything that happens behind the scenes from webinar preparation to translation. People in Romain’s role are often outnumbered by product managers, so you can get some tips on how to make their life easier by collaborating better. You can contact Romain on Linkedin: Romain Fleury | LinkedIn Thank you to Apeksha and Simone for their questions.

I welcome today Jesse DeRose who is a technologist and a storyteller. He helps engineering teams make cost-conscious decisions and believes the biggest challenges facing companies aren’t technical, but human. His mission in life is to transform technology organizations by creating company cultures in which diverse, collaborative teams can thrive. What I loved about this episode is all the practical tips given by Jesse to be better at storytelling and collaborating with stakeholders, from how to align your goals to how to keep your audience engaged. You can contact Jesse on Linkedin: Jesse DeRose | LinkedIn and on Twitter Jesse DeRose 🏳️‍🌈 #BlackLivesMatter (@jesse_derose) / Twitter.

My guest today is Ines Beatrix. Ines is a professional certified career and leadership coach. She coaches people who want to make a positive impact on the world and want to play a bigger game in their careers. With over 8 years of experience in design thinking, communications, mindfulness and coaching, she encourages people to dream big and cultivate a sense of inner calm and deep confidence. Before becoming a coach, she worked as the Design Thinking Lead at a US bank, led projects as an innovation consultant for Fortune 500 companies, and taught design thinking courses in Paris. Ines is the first coach I receive in the podcast, she works with product managers but also with companies who want to introduce design thinking into their organisation. We talked about creative problem solving and human-centered approach, topics that are close to the heart of product people. If you want to understand the link between design thinking and farmers in China using washing machines to wash potatoes, as well as hear examples of applying design thinking in the corporate world, but also to your mental health, listen out to this episode and get tips about how to convince your leadership team to change the way your company identifies problems and goes about solving them.

My guest today is Orian Roturier, Head of Growth & Demand Generation at GitGuardian. As an engineer turned marketer, he’s passionate about building the right data pipelines and processes that will make products grow. He used to work in consulting to advise all kinds of companies on their acquisition strategy. Then he chose to focus his efforts on GitGuardian, a cybersecurity SaaS company, as he reckoned that cybersecurity is both a complex and important topic given most of our lives are now online. Growing GitGuardian from Series A to Series B, he focused on inbound tactics targeting cybersecurity teams, and a product-led-growth funnel for developers. In this episode, we start by understanding the cybersecurity topics that a product manager should know about and prioritise to reduce the risk of reputational damage and potential fines for their product and company. Orian explain his role compared to traditional product marketing and product management functions, and how his company is implementing product-led growth by focusing on some specific personas, as well as how the Pirate framework helps him to measure success. This is a great listen for practical tips on security, GitHub optimisation, starting a product-led strategy and working with growth teams to deliver it. You can contact Orian on Twitter or Linkedin. Thank you to Enzo, Product Manager at Teale, for his question.

My guest today is Katie Keate Johnson. Katie has spent the last decade working in B2B sales, that includes 7 years with Linkedin talent solutions where she was a sales rep but also a sales leader. After Linkedin, she was the first sales hire at an early stage company called ROOM, where she built the sales team up to 15 members. Then, she was the Head of Sales at Betterment, selling their product to small businesses. At the start of 2022, Katie decided she wanted to take the leap to be a founder and is currently working on a new venture that is focused on a community solution for B2B onboarding. With Katie, in person from New York City where she's based, we talked about the difference between the buyer and the product personas, and how to align sales strategy with the product strategy so that the Sales Teams attract the right types of customers. She gives her opinion about the famous dilemma of sharing the roadmap with sales people, but also tells us she does want to have an input on the roadmap. If you want to learn some sales skills that are also useful for PMs as well as get some efficient tips, stay tuned and enjoy this episode.

Welcome to this roundtable between product management and UX Design. On the UX Design team, I’m please to welcome two of my previous guests – Pamela Sanchez and Hayden Chambers. In team product management, I’m please to welcome for the first time Iryna Struk, a Product Manager at HandsHQ. In this third and final round, we talk about KPIs. Should companies have success metrics for their UX Design function? How do you measure improvement in UX and why? As product managers are asked to be more and more data-driven, what's the impact on their prioritisation of UX improvements which are harder to measure. Who's going to win this round, but more importantly the entire roundtable: UX Design or Product Management?

Welcome to this roundtable between product management and UX Design. On the UX Design team, I’m please to welcome two of my previous guests – Pamela Sanchez and Hayden Chambers. In team product management, I’m please to welcome for the first time Iryna Struk, a Product Manager at HandsHQ. In this second round, we talk about A/B Testing. Does your company do A/B testing or have you ever done it at all? We debunk some myths about this well-known and trendy user testing methodology. The key take-away? Don't worry if you don't do it, you're not the only one and it may be that your company isn't ready yet or that there are better methods that work best for you. Who's going to win: UX Design or Product Management? You may be interested in reading this article: Proceedings Template - WORD (exp-platform.com)

Welcome to this roundtable between product management and UX Design. On the UX Design team, I’m please to welcome two of my previous guests – Pamela Sanchez and Hayden Chambers. In episode 6, my first UX Designer representative in this podcast, Pamela Sanchez, a product designer from Colombia at Torre, talked to me about being UX designer in a start-up. She's been a product designer for over a year and a UX researcher for 2 years before that. In addition to being a creative soul, i was impressed by how she’s hands on on user research and strategic activities including roadmapping. I discussed with Hayden Chambers in the 12th episode about his role as a Product Designer at EcoOnline, who’s worked across a broad range of design disciplines, starting in design and advertising, but also interactive and web design for agencies. Through my interview, he’s demonstrated a lot of empathy towards product manager, which he gains in various roles including as a front-end developer and mentor. In team product management, I’m please to welcome for the first time Iryna Struk, a Product Manager at HandsHQ where she is leading 2 SAAS products that empower companies to keep their high risk teams safe. Being a true believer in the power of sharing ideas and building communities, Iryna organises monthly ProductTank meetups in London where professionals working in product come together to discuss the most interesting topics. In this first round, we talk about UX Design and what it means to us, through the lenses of our roles. We identify different profiles of UX Designers based on their skills and aspirations and the needs of a company at different stages of its life. Product Managers can get tips about how to help UX Designers in their roles and how to think more long terms on the design side. Who's going to win: UX Design or Product Management?

Scott Baldwin is currently at Productboard where he works as the Community Lead & Product Evangelist. He's a product management leader and a long-time member of the Vancouver product community with a deep interest in helping others find their opportunity in product management. Prior to Productboard Scott led product teams at Thinkific, Finning Digital, Central 1 Credit Union, Inovera Solutions, and Blue Zone Entertainment and held various roles in user experience. In this episode, Scott shares his diverse background, including what working in UX has taught him about product management. He explains the different types of communities (users for feedback, community of practice, community for support) and the value (bringing your users closer to you, cocreating with your user base). He talks about the 5 aspects of introducing new technologies (why, collaboration with people, priorities, processes, talking about the change transparently and getting feedback) and how bringing new technology alone doesn't solve an organisation's problems but helps to bring up new conversations. Join the conversation on Productboard’s Community "Product Makers", or reach out to him on Twitter or Linkedin (Benry). Thanks to Stefan Sabev, Director of Product here at Productboard, for the question.

My guest today is Shipra Nirola who is VP Product Ops & Delivery at FitXR, a company that offers virtual-reality fitness classes and has been operating remote even before the pandemic. Shipra has been establishing product ops as a main stream function to accelerate ProductLed culture and scaling from 2 to 6 cross-functional teams over the last year and a half. Shipra is a seasoned leader with over 16 years of core experience in digital transformation, business agility & operational excellence. She has implemented best industry standard processes driven from Agile/Lean/SixSigma/Prince 2 and ISO quality assurance principles for continuous improvement. During the interview, I liked her approach to questioning her mission and the different functions in the company: what do we mean by quality? What’s the role of product operations? She has a very methodical approach when talking about the 4 pillars of product operations, and shares with honesty her journey: what worked well and what she had to adjust to better fit the company’s culture and her stakeholders. She also explains how PMs can learn to see operational KPIs as a story and a tool to improve. You can contact Shipra on Linkedin.

My guest today is Hayden Chambers. Hayden is a Product Designer, who was born in New Zealand but has been working from Spain for the last 17 years. He’s worked across a broad range of design disciplines, starting in design and advertising, but also interactive and web design for agencies. Became a front-end developer for small startups filling the gap between development and user experience. His latest role is Senior Product Designer for EcoOnline, a Norwegian Health & Safety and Chemical Management platform. In this episode, Hayden explains how he sees the product trio as a water molecule rather than a triangle. He opens up about how he feel when PMs cut corners on MVP (or minimum Lovable Product, or Minimum Viable Valuable Validating Product), and challenges me about including UX improvements in the roadmap. You'll also learn how to navigate "design politics" and how to share your ideas with him if you're not a designer. Hayden also explains why he's a mentor and what this experience has taught him. You can contact Hayden on Linkedin.

In this first roundtable, I welcome Charlie Penwarden, Marketing Director at Ranrobin.com (featured in episode 3) and Lauren Macpherson, CCO at Eli5 and Noco (episode 4) in the Product Marketing team. Daryl Edwards, Director of Product at Rhythm Software, joins me in the Product Management team. For this third episode, we start from the word "roadmap" and talk how it means different things depending on the audience, whether its a good idea to share it publicly and under which conditions. We also discuss about the value of user-driven features through idea boards, and how involving product marketing in the roadmap can help to avoid falling in the trap of a feature-based roadmap and focus more on outcome instead. Who's going to win: product marketing or product management?

In this first roundtable, I welcome Charlie Penwarden, Marketing Director at Ranrobin.com (featured in episode 3) and Lauren Macpherson, CCO at Eli5 and Noco (episode 4) in the Product Marketing team. Daryl Edwards, Director of Product at Rhythm Software, joins me in the Product Management team. This is the second round and we start from the word "product-led growth" and talk about adopting a flywheel approach. Calls to action for product managers include involving product marketing early in the development process and overcommunicate, but in the way that works best for the individuals involved. Daryl shares how he collaborates with the product marketing team as he admits that product managers are sometimes guilty of thinking that just having a documentation is enough to convey information, whereas there's so much value from hearing questions from product marketers. Who's going to win: product marketing or product management?

In this first roundtable, I welcome Charlie Penwarden, Marketing Director at Ranrobin.com (featured in episode 3) and Lauren Macpherson, CCO at Eli5 and Noco (episode 4) in the Product Marketing team. Daryl Edwards, Director of Product at Rhythm Software, joins me in the Product Management team. This is the first round and we start from the word "product marketing" and talk about communication both between product managers and product marketers, and with the customers, identifying the root causes of not nailing the value proposition for a product or feature. The Product Marketing team explains what they call "persona hate" and how reconciling people with personas helps to get the messaging right and bring back to discussion to the user. Who's going to win: product marketing or product management?

This is an interview  I was really looking forward to: our first legal stakeholder talking openly about what it's like to be a lawyer in a tech company. Gabi is honest about what her peers can do better to partner with product managers and ease the tensions that occur when the legal teams are seen as "deal breakers". She shares her concerns about AI and how she works with Product and Engineering teams to address those. Overall, this episode will help product managers and legal teams to understand each other better, and collaborate earlier in the development cycle to design better products. Gabi is a Brazilian lawyer, based in Amsterdam, and specialized in healthcare and life sciences. She is currently the head of compliance at Flo health, a women's health app, which helps people from all over the world navigate through their periods and pregnancy journeys. Before that, Gabi worked for another digital health startup as a Compliance Manager, when she was introduced to (and fell in love with) the tech world. You can contact her via Linkedin (Gabriela Porto). Thank you to Thomas for his question.

Rachel Spurrier is a Product Education & Operations Lead at Pico and a Content Writer at Merit. Throughout her nine years in tech, she’s worked as a data architect, research analyst, implementation manager, program manager, and product manager.  We talk about the role of Product Operations and how to get buy-in from Product Managers when introducing new processes. Rachel also touches on her love for writing and her contribution to the marketing content at Merit. You can contact her on LinkedIn or Twitter (@rkspurrier). 

My first UX Designer representative in this podcast is Pamela, a product designer from Colombia at a company called Torre, whose mission is to be the matching network for work. She's been a product designer for over a year and a UX researcher for 2 years before that. A creative soul, she's passionate about people, understanding problems and entrepreneurship. Despite working in a start-up, the process for running product experiments at Torre is quite structured, although flexible. Pamela talks about prioritising outcomes and solving user problems over solutions, involving many stakeholders along the way. She highlights how, as a UX Designer, she’s hands on on user research and strategic activities including roadmapping. Note on the terminology: Pamela’s company calls project managers the individuals working in partnership wth UX Designers, and who report to the product manager (who's also the CEO). When listening to the description of their role, they act very much like product managers.

In this first bonus episode, I invite a leader in product management, but with a twist: Moshe Mikanovsky started his career on the engineering side, specifically within the enterprise real-time B2B software space. He fell in love with product management after seeing the gap that existed between what customers wanted and what engineering produced. Moshe talks about how his engineering experience has shaped his role as a product manager, and how he started a podcast and published a book by taking a product approach. To contact Moshe, reach out on Linkedin or via his personal website. Read his blog post "Top 5 Product Manager Technical Skills in 2021" mentioned in the podcast episode. Thank you to Michel Mitri, BI Product Manager, for his question.

Lauren leads the commercial effort at two Dutch studios - Eli5, which builds custom digital products and Noco, which covers no-code design and development. Day-to-day she is responsible for planning and executing the business development, sales and marketing strategies for both companies. She also works on the validation and launch of the in-house products Eli5 creates. Lauren talks to me about self-organising teams, planning commercial activities in sprint, getting support from the developers and designers to inform her marketing campaigns, and how Eli5 is establishing subsidiary companies to support their expansion. To contact Lauren, reach out to her by email lauren@eli5.io or on Twitter. Thank you to Jorrit Keijzer, Founder of the Papyr app, for his question.

When I first saw Charlie's profile, I was curious: someone working in marketing and UX together, quite an unusual combination for two functions which are usually rather siloed. Charlie has showed me how marketers can learn from the user research practices, and how a new product trio (Marketing/UX/Product) could benefit an organisation. Listen and be immerged in a world of data, communication and user empathy! You can contact Charlie via his marketing agency rankrobin.com, his UX consultancy practice usercharlie.com or social media like LinkedIn. All his links are available here. Thank you Elaine, product manager at FutureLearn, for her question.

In this second episode, I interview Patrícia who is Product Operations Manager at OutSystems, where she is leading an internal product management academy as well as the external product evangelism programme, helping to grow the next generation of product leaders. Patrícia is the product manager’s best friend and I haven’t see many companies who have put that much thinking and effort into helping product managers being their best self. You’ll see that despite not having a product management background, she’s very tuned to the needs of PMs and aligned to the product approach. You can contact her on all social media via direct message (in particular Linkedin). Thank you to Angela Dinis, Lead Product Manager at OutSystems, for her question. If you have feedback, comments or questions, please reach out to me directly: magalipelissier@hotmail.fr

In this first episode, I interview Eddie who is Senior Engineering Manager at Anaplan, a business planning software company. Eddie talks me through how he builds efficient engineering teams that deliver quality code, with a focus on people over processes and tools. Despite having worked with Eddie for 2 years, I have still learnt a lot about his personality and understood about what it's like to be an engineer in a tech company. He shares with authenticity how he works with product managers to delight customers and solve real problems (maybe not going to Mars but making a real impact on planet Earth!). You can find Eddie on Linkedin under his full name Edvard Dvorak. Thank you to Joanna Maskens, Product Manager at Anaplan, for her question. If you have feedback, comments or questions, please reach out to me directly: magalipelissier@hotmail.fr

Introduction of the host and what the podcast is about

What you'll learn in this podcast