The Product Experience

Back in the dark ages of web design — back when the job title Webmaster was a thing — every team included someone who specialised in Information Architecture (IA). These days, that work is often considered to be part of UX, but that can mean that we're not doing the job well enough. Abby Covert joins us on the podcast to chat about why IA is important, how and when we should work with Informa...

We always encourage people to experiment with their product development techniques - but experimenting with your team can be a step too far.  We talked with Monzo Chief Product Officer Mike Hudack (ex-Facebook, Deliveroo) about how he approaches this: what's worked and what hasn't, avoiding cross-team dependencies, communication & collaboration, and much more. Featured Links: Follow...

We've all had the experience of presenting to the leadership team - but what do they say about you when you leave the room?  What's it like to work at that level? And how do you get promoted to the C-suite? We talked with experienced product & boardroom vet Tanya Cordrey about all of this - and much more - for this week's podcast. Featured Links: Follow Tanya on LinkedIn and Twi...

When we sat down with Roll20.net Product Director Kenton Hanson for this week's podcast, we were hoping to hear tales of how he and his  product team (or band of adventurers!) went on quests to conduct user research. We wanted to hear about dodging orcs and dragons (stakeholders) while collecting  treasure (insights). Instead, we learned that it's only Roll20's marketing team that c...

We all want more customers - but being able to understand who your best customer segments are, prioritise for them, and then land more of them?  That's a game-changer. We talked with Tamara Grominsky (Unbounce's VP of Strategy) about some easy-to-implement techniques that will help you do just that. Featured Links: Follow Tamara on LinkedIn and Twitter | Tamara's Website | Unbounce...

There's nothing more useless to a Product team than a big backlog.  Bringing backlogs to life - making them usable, relevant, and getting value from them - is something that transforms ordinary teams into extraordinary ones.  To guide us on how to do that, we asked Jeff Patton - creator of User Story Mapping - to join us on the podcast. Featured Links: Follow Jeff on LinkedIn and Twitter | Je...

There's no better training ground than working in Emergency Services for learning how to  deal with stress, uncertainty, prioritisaton with imperfect information, and challenging stakeholders - all skills that are key to working in Product.  Nathan Henry joins on the podcast this week to chat about how he levereges the skills he developed as a 911 Operator.  Featured Links: Follow Nathan on L...

As product people, it's important for us to love our products, our customers, and the problems we're trying to solve. (though not in that order!).  A lot of the time, though, we're not really working on something truly important. That's not the case for Randeep Sidhu—he got a call to help rescue the UK's Covid-19 app, dropped everything, and dove in. In this episode sponso...

Over the last 15 years, Merissa has gone from New York media to Australian finance to German fintechs - with a number of stops in between.  She joins us on the podcast to talk about what she's learned along the way, including:  from working in different cultures & industries,  influencing executives, knowing if you want to be a people manager, and more! Featured Links: Follow Merissa on L...

What holds most Product people back?  Hint: it's not ability. For this week's podcast, we talked with Martina Hodges-Schell and Teresa Leighty about how to make changes in your company's environment that actually work, for you, and your teams. Featured Links: Follow Martina on LinkedIn , Twitter & her Website ｜Follow Teresa on LinkedIn and Twitter | Heath & Sea | John Chamb...

Understanding your company's business model is a key skill for all product people - but understanding how that affects your company's valuation is what takes things to the next level.  What are you maximizing for - and how does your pricing model impact that? We talked with Giff Constable (ex-Chief Product Officer,  Meetup) about all this - and much more - for this week's podcast ep...

We all know that solving your customer's problem - in a way that's feasible, viable and usable - is the key to a product's success.  (Or one of them, anyway!) Inherent in that is clearly understanding your users, and their peoblems.  We talked with Peter Yang (Product Lead @ Reddit) about understanding the needs and mindsets of creators, and how to build products for them. Featured...

Want to make a veteran product person sad? Just ask them how they've used MVPs in the past.  Once you get past the sobbing, you're likely to get stories of  the myriad ways that a perfectly good experiment got turned into a v1 release.  It doesn't have to be like that!  Dan Olsen joins us on the podcast to teach Lily & Randy how to actually control the scope of an MVP, guide us...

You've optimised your product to solve a problem for your users. You've refined the sales funnel, built for scale, and made sure that accessability is baked in from the start. Great job! But what about ensuring that your customers can trust it?  We talked with Nathan Kinch, an Entrepreneur & Digital Trust Expert, about the big picture - and how you can get started on it, today. Featu...

You may have heard about Project Aristotle — an effort by Google that revealed Psychological Safety as the common element in their highest-performing teams. Understanding what that is — and how we can create a culture of safety in our teams — isn’t quite as easy. We spoke with Alla Weinberg, author of A Culture of Safety , about the elements of safety, how to recognise teams that have it, and how...

We all know that discovery is important — but how it’s done is just as critical. Randy had the chance to collaborate with service design consultant Simon Wilson on a project recently, where mapping formed the basis for much of the discovery work. We invited Simon onto the podcast to talk about this approach. Featured [...] Read more » The post Using maps as part of discovery – Simon Wilson appeare...

Debbie Madden wants you to make better teams because she knows what she’s doing. 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 [...] Read more » The post Hire Women! – Debbie Madden [Rebroadc...

Egyptian-born Abdelrahman (Abdo) Wahba co-founded popular Arabic audiobook site Iqraaly—but it wouldn’t have seen its current success unless Abdo had taken the time to analyse deeply what made customers stay loyal. To do that, he had to get to his “Aha moment”. Now based in Berlin as the Chief Product Officer for the Offerista Group, [...] Read more » The post The “Aha moment” – Abdelrahman Wahba...

The job of a Product person is hard to define. We’re a little of everything, depending on the day and what’s needed. The one thing we can all agree on is that it’s never really done. Christian Idiodi—partner at Silicon Valley Product Group—joins us on the podcast to break down what’s expected of us, what [...] Read more » The post Product Management: What is the job, really? – Christian Idiodi app...

In 2008, Columbia University sociologist Sudhir Venkatesh published his first book, Gang Leader for a Day: A Rogue Sociologist Takes To The Streets. A few years later, that got the attention of  Mark Zuckerberg, which led to a role working in Integrity for Facebook, and later, as Director of Social Science Research and Health Research [...] Read more » The post Breaking the internet – Sudhir Venka...

In his new book, Product Direction: How to Build Successful Products at Scale with Strategy, Roadmaps, and Objectives and Key Results (OKRs), Xing Product Director Nacho Bassino details the parts of the job that any senior product person needs to master – but which are really difficult to learn before you’re responsible for them.  We chatted [...] Read more » The post How to create a product strat...

Building and managing products is hard. Building an organisation that manages existing products, and is optimised to build new ones is exponentially harder — which is why we spoke with Cait O’Riordan, Chief Product and Information Officer at the Financial Times, for this week’s podcast. A veteran of the BBC and Shazam, she’s now working [...] Read more » The post Building for success at every stag...

Monika Turska defines the job of a Product Manager as someone who helps make better decisions, faster. But making the right decisions—whether it’s the ones that we’re actively making, or the ones we’re empowering our algorithms to make—requires a real understanding of the environment they’re being made in. We asked Design for Cognitive Bias author, [...] Read more » The post Designing for Cognitiv...

For many product people, it’s a dream to get in early at a startup — or to start their own. Unless you have the ability to bootstrap, that means you’ll need access to money, which often means working with venture capital. That can be a mysterious and scary world, so we asked Dharmesh Raithatha, CPO [...] Read more » The post Product and VC: What You Need to Know – Dharmesh Raithatha appeared first...

When we talk about product strategy, we often go back to the double diamond approach: identify the problem that you need to solve, then work on creating & optimising a solution for it. There’s a similar approach to Product careers — first, we need to get the job, then we need to excel in it.  [...] Read more » The post Cracking the PM Career – Jackie Bavaro on The Product Experience appeared f...