Product Bakery – The Product Management, UX & Design Podcast

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 - Th...

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...

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,...

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...

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 feed...

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 ou...

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 t...

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 pr...

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 - V...

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 th...

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 succe...

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 ✍️ &nbs...

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...

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...

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    ✩...

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...

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 - D...

In this episode, Christian and Alex dive deep into the world of product market fit and the pivotal role that product marketing plays in its success. Joined by special guest Martina, an experienced product marketer, they explore the complexities of finding the right market for a product, the importance of trust and customer feedback, and the distinct roles of product management and product marketin...

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...

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 - Podcas...

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...

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 -...

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 &amp...

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 hypot...

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 operati...