The Product Experience

We’ve heard it again and again – these are odd times; we’re not working remotely, we’re working during a crisis; this is not the new normal. You’re not working the same way, and your customers have different needs than they did a month ago. We turned to Teresa Torres – our first repeat guest! – [...] Read more » The post Remote Discovery – Teresa Torres on The Product Experience appeared first on...

For obvious reasons, most of us are currently working from home, along with teams that are also all remote. Even if you’ve worked from home before, even if you’ve done it under tough conditions, this is different. Amir Salihefendić should know. As the founder and CEO of Doist (makers of Todoist and Twist), his company [...] Read more » The post Remote Working For Product Organisations – Amir Salih...

Throughout their careers, whatever question either Lily or Randy has had, Roman Pichler’s probably had some great advice on the topic! A longtime consultant, author and teacher, we grabbed him for a chat focusing on some of the lessons contained in his fourth book, How to Lead in Product Management. Quote of the Episode A [...] Read more » The post Conversations, Conflict and Leadership – Roman Pi...

When you want to learn about the state of product management across Asia, there are two people who come to mind: Adrienne Tan (CEO and co-founder of Brianmates in Sydney) and Colin Pal (Chief Product Officer, Caterspot in Kuala Lumpur). With more than 25 years of experience between them, they’ve been there since the beginning, [...] Read more » The post Building Products in AsiaPac – Colin Pal and...

A couple of things we’re hearing people talk about a lot this week are how they’re adjusting to working in a different way, and how they are adjusting their strategies to deal with the current situation. These are situations that are fraught with the possibility for unintended consequences – something Roisi Proven covered in her [...] Read more » The post The Black Mirror Test – Roisi Proven on Th...

Nobody rants quite like Laura Klein. Others have tried, but we’ve yet to find anyone else with her depth of experience (spanning stints as a developer, designer, researcher and product manager), her empathy for both users and stakeholders, her experience as a teacher, and her sense of humour. She’s author of Build Better Products: a [...] Read more » The post Build Better Products – Laura Klein on...

One of the things we’ve learned from doing this podcast is that it’s important to schedule in time to reflect and to revisit some of the lessons you’ve learned along the way.  It’s been a recurring theme, actually – something that’s been mentioned by Barry O’Reilly, Rian van der Merwe, and John Cutler – and [...] Read more » The post Outcomes Over Outputs – Josh Seiden on The Product Experience [R...

The best product people are the ones that are insatiably curious, who want to learn more, who want to get better at all aspects of the job.  In many businesses this can be hard – there’s not always an established culture, or people around who have done the job before and can help upskill the [...] Read more » The post Building Better Product People – Sebastian Sabouné on The Product Experience app...

At MTP Engage Manchester (February 2020), Rakhi Rajani (Associate Partner at QuantumBlack) joined us for our first-ever live podcast recording. Talking to Rakhi we learned why Engage organiser Adam Warburton called her the smartest person he’s ever worked with as we discussed building teams, hiring at scale, when you need troublemakers, and why she had [...] Read more » The post Cognitively Divers...

If you listen to the end credits of the podcast every week, then you already know Marc Abraham’s voice – he’s ProductTank’s Global Coordinator, a co-curator of the Mind the Product conference, an author (of My Product Management Toolkit), and he’s got a day job as a Head of Product at ASOS.  What you might [...] Read more » The post I Got 99 Problems – Learning From Jay-Z – Marc Abraham on The Pro...

We’ve all had that one manager that we’ll do anything to avoid for the rest of our careers – but have you ever stopped to think if you’re that person for someone else? That’s the question that prompted Claire Lew to start Know Your Team and here she joins us on the podcast to give [...] Read more » The post How To Be A Great Manager – Claire Lew on The Product Experience appeared first on Mind the...

If you’ve ever had to fill a role in your team, then you already know how broken most hiring processes are.  It’s even harder if you’re competing for top talent but are only able to pay at NGO/charity scales.  That’s the situation that Simprints found itself in when they decided to treat their hiring process [...] Read more » The post Hacking The Hiring Process – Alex Yang & Max Bevan on The P...

W. Edwards Deming wrote, “In God we trust, all others must bring data.”  Product people hold on to this as a mantra – how else can we defend ourselves from random requests? – but we’re not always taught how best to use data.  In this week’s episode, Lens.ai founder Mike Bugembe joins us on the [...] Read more » The post Cracking The Data Code – Mike Bugembe on The Product Experience appeared first...

For the 50th episode of The Product Experience, we’re proud to have Chris Adams join us to talk about making your products more sustainable. One of the rare people who’s seen our world from all sides – Chris has been a developer, designer, researcher and product manager – he came on the show to share [...] Read more » The post Carbon Neutral Roadmaps – Chris Adams on The Product Experience appeare...

There’s a lot of debate in the product and research communities about quantitative vs qualitative approaches to metrics, so we sat down with Tomer Sharon (MD/Head of User Research and Metrics at Goldman Sachs) to talk about how he uses Google’s HEART approach to track what matters. Formerly of Google and WeWork, Tomer talks about [...] Read more » The post Keeping Track Of Your HEART – Tomer Sharo...

One of the hardest skills for product people to acquire is that of saying no. After all, when everyone comes at you with ideas, prioritisation can be a massive challenge. So it’s refreshing when we get a chance to come at it from the opposite direction in order to generate good ideas. Gal Josefsberg, VP [...] Read more » The post Where Do Good Ideas Come From? – Gal Josefsberg on The Product Exper...

We’re taking a short break from releasing new episodes over the holidays. We’ll be back with new interviews in early January. But don’t despair! In the meantime, we’re re-running two episodes that fit the theme of the season: reflection and planning for 2020. Randy’s Pick ‘Tis the season to make a list of resolutions for [...] Read more » The post Crazy Busy Product People – Rian van der Merwe on...

We’re taking a short break from releasing new episodes over the holidays. We’ll be back with fresh interviews in early January. But don’t despair! In the meantime, we’re re-running two episodes that fit the theme of the season: reflection and planning for 2020. Lily’s Pick I think, by now, we all know that product management [...] Read more » The post Moving Up the Career Ladder with Thor Mitchell...

Taking a break from the always entertaining/sometimes informative podcast Jake & Jonathan (formerly known as The Product Breakfast club, which he co-hosts with Jake Knapp), AJ&Smart CEO Jonathan Courtney joined us to chat about Design Sprints, workshops, and how to get groups of people collaborating. Quote of the Episode One of the best things about [...] Read more » The post How To Rock Y...

Todd Green knows a few things about creating and managing things that attract a lot of attention – before he joined King (makers of Candy Crush etc), he helped to define the digital experience for The X Factor, and the [Your Country] Idol and [Your Country]’s Got Talent franchises.  We talked to him about how [...] Read more » The post Let’s Play a Game – Todd Green on The Product Experience appea...

Jimena Almendares has held senior product roles and leadership positions at Zynga and Meetup, and now runs the Global Expansion efforts for Intuit. She has plenty of great stories to tell from those roles, but it’s her time as Chief Product Officer at OKCupid that we wanted to talk about. Jimena’s team completely revamped the [...] Read more » The post The Truth Behind the Data – Jimena Almendares...

If you’ve got a background in waterfall processes, it can seem as if agile techniques are just about making it up as you go along. (MTP’s own James Mayes once commented that waterfall, on the other hand, “is making it up before you even begin”.) What happens if we embrace this, and bring improv techniques [...] Read more » The post Don’t Call it Improv – David Farkas on The Product Experience appe...

Mixcloud CTO and co-founder Mat Clayton helped bootstrap his company from humble beginnings in an empty warehouse with no internet connection to more than 15 million active users over a 10-year period, all before they took their first round of funding.  He joined us to talk about startup life, scaling, making hard decisions, and more. [...] Read more » The post Beats, Bootstrapping and Life – Mat...

Author, advisor, professor, and podcaster Barry O’Reilly joined us on The Product Experience where we learned that he has a lot of sympathy for senior executives. These are people, he points out, whose entire career has led them to a position of responsibility and reward – so it naturally follows that the behaviours that got [...] Read more » The post Learning to Unlearn – Barry O’Reilly on The Pr...

If you – or your kids – have ever controlled a Lego creation from an app, then you’re familiar with Melissa Pickering’s work.  Now Lego’s Head of Interactive Play, blending digital and physical play, she got her start as an Imagineer at Disney (designing rollercoasters!) before founding a STEM startup.  She joined us on the [...] Read more » The post Designing for Play – Melissa Pickering on The P...