The Product Experience

Melissa Perri is the product manager’s product manager – she’s able to do the job, explain it, and teach you how to do it better.  So when we got her on the line, we covered everything… including Japanese deployment strategies, Marmite and peanut butter, product leadership and team organisation, how companies scale, how to pick the right environment for you, and even her new book, Escaping the Build Trap. Quotes of the Episode I see a lot of product managers from an enterprise company go, ‘Hey, I’m gonna work at a startup, it’s gonna be awesome’. And then they get in there and they go ‘Holy crap, what happened? This place is a mess. There’s no structure, there’s nobody to do all these things.’ Great product leaders are in with the leadership team – they’re peers, they are very close to them, they’re a team.  They also shelter their team from all the swirl at the executive level… Listen if you’d like to learn more about * Escaping the build trap – how to focus on the right thing * Moving up the ladder to the CPO role * Why SAFe doesn’t work * Why good product people fail (sometimes) Links mentioned in this episode * Follow Melissa on Twitter, check out her work with PRODUX Labs, or get trained at the Product Institute, and catch up on her Product Kata * Read Melissa’s book, Escaping the Build Trap –  US / UK / DE * Read The Art of Action –  US / UK / DE * Insight Venture Partners * Stratechery * Curious what SAFe is?   Hosts The Product Experience is hosted by Lily Smith and Randy Silver. Lily enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. Lily has spent 13 years in the tech industry working mainly with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She has worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank in Bristol, the Product Managers’ meetup with regular events and talks on Product now with 800+ members and growing. This year Lily will be launching ProductCamp in Bristol and she joins the MTP team as co-host of The Product Experience podcast. A recovering music journalist and editor, Randy has been working as an interactive producer and product manager across the US and UK for nearly 20 years. After launching Amazon’s music stores in the US and UK, Randy has worked with museums and arts groups, online education, media & entertainment, retail and financial services. He’s held Head of Product roles at HSBC and Sainsbury’s, where he also directed their 100+-person product community. He’s spoken at Mind the Product Engage (Hamburg and Manchester), at a number of ProductTanks (London, Zurich, Manchester, Birmingham, Bristol, Oxford,  and Brighton… so far!) and at conferences across the US and Europe. Music Our theme music is from Hamburg-based Pau, featuring ProductTank Hamburg’s own Arne Kittler on bass.

Tell Better Stories – Donna Lichaw on The Product Experience

Over the course of her career, Donna Lichaw has moved from Design and UX to Product – consulting with teams, giving keynotes and working with leadership groups – but what she’s always focused on is storytelling.  Now a coach  – “I just won’t help people build products, I help them build themselves,” she says – Lichaw joined us to talk about her own journey, what to look for in a coach, and how to tell a better story. Quotes of the Episode Once I realised that the company was going to go out of business, I threw caution to the wind and decided I’m going to be an @ssh0!e, and just tell people that I don’t understand what our product is supposed to be doing. You bring your whole self to work, and the only way that you can properly move forward is if you have complete understanding of what’s going on. Anything you believe to be true is a hypothesis until you go test it. Listen if you’d like to learn more about * Coaching – what to look for and what to expect * Storytelling – when to use it and how to do it * How to treat your career as a product – testing things out in short increments Links mentioned in this episode * Want to get coached by Donna, or make use of her resources?  Everything is available on her site, including her storymapping toolkit. You can also watch out for anything new via her Twitter. * Read Donna’s book, The User’s Journey: Storymapping Products That People Love –  US / UK / DE * Read Gamestorming–  US / UK / DE * Read The Way of Nowhere: Eight Questions to Release Our Creative Potential –  US / UK / DE Hosts The Product Experience is hosted by Lily Smith and Randy Silver. Lily enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. Lily has spent 13 years in the tech industry working mainly with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She has worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank in Bristol, the Product Managers’ meetup with regular events and talks on Product now with 800+ members and growing. This year Lily will be launching ProductCamp in Bristol and she joins the MTP team as co-host of The Product Experience podcast. A recovering music journalist and editor, Randy has been working as an interactive produce...

Debbie Madden wants you to make better teams – but because she knows what she’s doing, she gave her book the attention-grabbing title Hire Women. The founder and CEO of NYC-based Stride Consulting, Debbie offers practical advice for hiring managers, anyone looking for a new job, or who wants to change the culture in their current organisation. And it’s not just that hiring for diversity is a lofty goal – since implementing these practices, Stride has seen some hard business benefits. It has won numerous awards for culture, maintains an enviable employee retention rate, and is more profitable than ever. Quotes of the Episode I was a huge sceptic… [but] I put a job post for a HR role through a gender-neutral wording tool, changed about 10 words, and went from 75% men applicants to 75% women applicants, with the same title, literally overnight. Listen if you’d like to learn more about * Why you should never reveal your current or previous salary * Building a great organisation – or improving the one that you’re in * Debbie’s Handshake deal * Why diversity matters * Skills matrices, career ladders, and how to apply equal pay in the real world Links mentioned in this episode * Want to work with Debbie?  Find her at Stride Consulting * Read Hire Women – it’s a short read, and immediately useful.  US / UK / DE * Make your job description more gender-neutral with Textio Hosts The Product Experience is hosted by Lily Smith and Randy Silver. Lily enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. Lily has spent 13 years in the tech industry working mainly with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She has worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank in Bristol, the Product Managers’ meetup with regular events and talks on Product now with 800+ members and growing. This year Lily will be launching ProductCamp in Bristol and she joins the MTP team as co-host of The Product Experience podcast. A recovering music journalist and editor, Randy has been working as an interactive producer and product manager across the US and UK for nearly 20 years. After launching Amazon’s music stores in the US and UK, Randy has worked with museums and arts groups, online education, media & entertainment, retail and financial services. He’s held Head of Product roles at HSBC and Sainsbury’s, where he also directed their 100+-person product community. He’s also spoken at Mind the Product Engage (Hamburg), at a number of ProductTanks (London, Zurich, Manchester, Birmingham, Bristol, Oxford,  & Brighton… so far!) and at conferences across the US and Europe. Music Our theme music is from Hamburg-based Pau, featuring ProductTank Hamburg’s own Arne Kittler on bass. Listen to more on their Facebook page Suggest a guest Have you seen someone give a great talk?

Hire Women! – Debbie Madden on The Product Experience

Few people have more experience in leading product teams than Joff Redfern. Now the VP of Product at Atlassian, he’s held similar roles at LinkedIn, Yahoo!, and Fidelity Investments. Joff’s team at Atlassian creates the products that many of us use to manage our own product and development processes; he’s got a unique viewpoint on the state of product management. He joined us to talk about keeping an open mind, and how he uses the metaphor for building a better shipyard to create great product teams. Quotes of the Episode I’ve been doing product management long enough that I remember when Waterfall was the best practice… when lean [and] the Agile Manifesto came out, that was a moment where I had to step back and say no, [Waterfall] has its downside; it’s disconnected with the customer… Another retooling was learning to work with a tremendous amount of data, cohort data, A/B testing. Throughout my career, I’ve had these periods where I’m trying to learn something new, essentially unlearn what I’d learned in the past, relearn this new methodology – it just makes it so much fun. The four attributes we look for [in hiring]: someone who leads and inspires, someone who is seeking out product mastery, drives outcomes, and is a great communicator. Listen if you’d like to learn more about * How to hire a great team * Setting up a growth architecture for your people * The history of Product * How to set up your team for success * Maintaining a continuous learning mindset * Loving – and hating – Jira and Confluence Links mentioned in this episode * Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, by Daniel Pink – US / UK / DE  * The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering, by Frederick P Brooks, Jr. – US / UK / DE * Follow Joff on Twitter Hosts The Product Experience is hosted by Lily Smith and Randy Silver. Lily enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. Lily has spent 13 years in the tech industry working mainly with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She has worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank in Bristol, the Product Managers’ meetup with regular events and talks on Product now with 800+ members and growing. This year Lily will be launching ProductCamp in Bristol and she joins the MTP team as co-host of The Product Experience podcast. A recovering music journalist and editor, Randy has been working as an interactive producer and product manager across the US and UK for nearly 20 years. After launching Amazon’s music stores in the US and UK, Randy has worked with museums and arts groups, online education, media & entertainment, retail and financial services. He’s held Head of Product roles at HSBC and Sainsbury’s, where he also directed their 100+-person product community.

A Better Shipyard – Joff Redfern on The Product Experience

Managing Change – Joe Leech on The Product Experience

Just call him Mr Joe. A UK-based consultant, Joe Leech has built a reputation for managing change (for both users and stakeholders) and as the guy to call when a product launch has gone wrong.  Joe gave one of the most entertaining and engaging talks at Mind the Product in London 2018, so we followed up with him to get to the stories that he didn’t get to share on stage – including the surprising difference between purchasing a fridge and a washing machine. Quotes of the Episode Often I see interesting ideas that come from user research failing A/B testing because they’re not given enough time to iterate and improve on those designs over six months before they’re on parity or better than the existing stuff. A/B testing can often kill big, existing ideas because [it] expects results quickly – and you can’t get results quickly from big, important idea changes. People will hate change, even if it’s infinitely better than it was before. The biggest challenge I face is people trying to do too much in one go… people trying to do a rebuild and a redesign at the same time. They're introducing too much risk, spending too much money and too much time. The biggest mistake I see – the thing most people do when something goes wrong, is they revert to the old thing they had before… They’ll turn it off and put the old one back on again. That’s the biggest mistake they can make, ’cause they will never turn that new thing on. They’ve wasted all that time and effort, and all that confidence will be lost.  Let’s take a stock a little bit here and not revert to the old thing. Listen if you’d like to learn more about * Troubleshooting a poor product launch * Managing change with users and stakeholders * Considered vs non-considered purchases Links mentioned in this episode * You can find Joe at his site and on the Twitters * Hotjar * The Kano model Hosts The Product Experience is hosted by Lily Smith and Randy Silver. Lily enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. Lily has spent 13 years in the tech industry working mainly with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She has worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank in Bristol, the Product Managers’ meetup with regular events and talks on Product now with 800+ members and growing. This year Lily will be launching ProductCamp in Bristol and she joins the MTP team as co-host of The Product Experience podcast. A recovering music journalist and editor, Randy has been working as an interactive producer and product manager across the US and UK for nearly 20 years. After launching Amazon’s music stores in the US and UK, Randy has worked with museums and arts groups, online education, media & entertainment, retail and financial services. He’s held Head of Product roles at HSBC and Sainsbury’s, where he also directed their 100+-person product community. He’s also spoken at Mind the Product Engage (Hamburg), at a number of ProductTanks (London, Zurich, Manchester, Birmingham, Bristol, Oxford,  & Brighton… so far!) and at conferences across the US and Europe. Music Our theme music is from Hamburg-based Pau, featuring ProductTank Hamburg’s own Arne Kittler on bass.

Mastering Design Sprints – Kai Haley on The Product Experience

Kai Haley is Google’s Lead of Design Relations, but in her spare time she also looks after the company’s internal Design Sprint Academy. Jake Knapp (late of Google Ventures/GV) may have written the book, but Kai has run the sprints, trained the trainers, and has spent the last few years in the trenches. We had a great talk about all the things you won’t find in the books – the tips and tricks you need to know before you jump in with your team. Quote of the Episode You have that moment when… sometimes it happens with the “how might we”s, or it’s right at the Crazy 8s stage, when [participants] are starting to put things down on paper and they’re starting to realise they have the ideas in their head. Listen if you’d like to learn more about * The different types of Design Sprints * When should you not use a Design Sprint? * Who do you need in the room? * Deconstructed Design Sprints – how to make use of the methods when you don’t have 5 days Links mentioned in this episode * Google has an open-source site with a lot of resources for people running Design Sprints * If you need to run a Design Sprint with a remote team, Kai recommends Mural.co; she also mentioned Luma Workplace and AJ&Smart * Kai also did a great talk at ProductTank SF on the Typology of Design Sprints with Burgan Shealy Hosts The Product Experience is hosted by Lily Smith and Randy Silver. Lily enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. Lily has spent 13 years in the tech industry working mainly with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She has worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank in Bristol, the Product Managers’ meetup with regular events and talks on Product now with 800+ members and growing. This year Lily will be launching ProductCamp in Bristol and she joins the MTP team as co-host of The Product Experience podcast. A recovering music journalist and editor, Randy has been working as an interactive producer and product manager across the US and UK for nearly 20 years. After launching Amazon’s music stores in the US and UK, Randy has worked with museums and arts groups, online education, media & entertainment, retail and financial services. He’s held Head of Product roles at HSBC and Sainsbury’s, where he also directed their 100+-person product community. He’s also spoken at Mind the Product Engage (Hamburg), at a number of ProductTanks (London, Zurich, Manchester, Birmingham, Bristol, Oxford,  & Brighton… so far!) and at conferences across the US and Europe. Music Our theme music is from Hamburg-based Pau, featuring ProductTank Hamburg’s own Arne Kittler on bass. Listen to more on their Facebook page Suggest a guest Have you seen someone give a great talk? Suggest a guest to us here Talk to us * Tweet at us! * Use the #podcast channel in the Mind the Product Sl...

Creating a Product Culture – Nick Ramsay on The Product Experience

Prior to taking on the role of COO and CPO at Singapore-based financial portal MoneySmart, Nick Ramsay was a strategy consultant and product manager. In the last year, he’s grown the product team there from one to 10 product managers, and has been working on changing the culture and attracting the right kind of talent to his team. In celebration of the first #mtpcon in Singapore on 25-26 March 2019, we also talked to Nick about Singapore, the product scene in Asia, and why you might want to look for your next role in the area. Quotes of the Episode Tech people love to focus on solving the hardest problems rather than the most important ones. Marketing thinks in terms of a fixed budget – Product thinks in terms of a fixed outcome. Listen if you’d like to learn more about: * The challenges of scaling * Establishing a product culture * Working across strategic, operational, and product roles – and breaking down barriers between silos * The different personalities of PMs and teams: Optimisation vs Experimentation * The importance of coaching and mentoring Links mentioned in this episode * An overview of Hipsters, Hackers & Hustlers Hosts The Product Experience is hosted by Lily Smith and Randy Silver. Lily enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. Lily has spent 13 years in the tech industry working mainly with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She has worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank in Bristol, the Product Managers’ meetup with regular events and talks on Product now with 800+ members and growing. This year Lily will be launching ProductCamp in Bristol and she joins the MTP team as co-host of The Product Experience podcast. A recovering music journalist and editor, Randy has been working as an interactive producer and product manager across the US and UK for nearly 20 years. After launching Amazon’s music stores in the US and UK, Randy has worked with museums and arts groups, online education, media & entertainment, retail and financial services. He’s held Head of Product roles at HSBC and Sainsbury’s, where he also directed their 100+-person product community. He’s also spoken at Mind the Product Engage (Hamburg), at a number of ProductTanks (London, Zurich, Manchester, Birmingham, Bristol, Oxford,  & Brighton… so far!) and at conferences across the US and Europe. Music Our theme music is from Hamburg-based Pau, featuring ProductTank Hamburg’s own Arne Kittler on bass. Listen to more on their Facebook page Suggest a guest Have you seen someone give a great talk? Suggest a guest to us here Talk to us * Tweet at us! * Use the #podcast channel in the Mind the Product Slack community

Take Control of Prioritisation – Holly Donohue on The Product Experience

Before financial software provider Aquila Heywood transformed how it approaches prioritisation, it had a backlog that was more than 20 years long and its projects took about seven years to release.  Product Director Holly Donohue was part of the team that changed how the business approaches its work, so that it now sees value being realised in a few months.  As she says, there’s still some way to go – but in this conversation, she shares some of the lessons learned on the journey so far. Quotes of the Episode The challenge with the matrix is… the illusion of it being a science, when actually it still needs to be a bit of an art and still needs the human conversation. Technical debt is like your basement is flooding – but if you don’t turn that tap off, you’re wasting your time. Listen if you’d like to learn more about: * Saying no – and how to do it * The importance of communication and measurement * Transforming your processes * Balancing work on defects/debt and strategic work * Prioritisation strategies Hosts The Product Experience is hosted by Lily Smith and Randy Silver. Lily enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. Lily has spent 13 years in the tech industry working mainly with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She has worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank in Bristol, the Product Managers’ meetup with regular events and talks on Product now with 800+ members and growing. This year Lily will be launching ProductCamp in Bristol and she joins the MTP team as co-host of  The Product Experience podcast. A recovering music journalist and editor, Randy has been working as an interactive producer and product manager across the US and UK for nearly 20 years. After launching Amazon’s music stores in the US and UK, Randy has worked with museums and arts groups, online education, media & entertainment, retail and financial services. He’s held Head of Product roles at HSBC and Sainsbury’s, where he also directed their 100+-person product community. He’s also spoken at Mind the Product Engage (Hamburg), at a number of ProductTanks (London, Zurich, Manchester, Birmingham, Bristol, Oxford,  & Brighton… so far!) and at conferences across the US and Europe. Music Our theme music is from Hamburg-based Pau, featuring ProductTank Hamburg’s own Arne Kittler on bass. Listen to more on their Facebook page Suggest a guest Have you seen someone give a great talk? Suggest a guest to us here Talk to us * Tweet at us! * Use the #podcast channel in the Mind the Product Slack community