Behind The Product

In this episode, our guests are Chris Shinkle and Mike Cronin from SEP to discuss how the company approaches product strategy engagements with clients. They explain SEP's philosophy of clarifying the problem, defining a guiding policy, and outlining coherent actions - going beyond just creating a PowerPoint strategy deck. They share examples of helping clients align stakeholders, refine roadmaps to reflect the true strategy, and rapidly validate technical feasibility through prototyping. They emphasize the importance of a roadmap as a "prototype of strategy" and a starting point for productive strategy conversations. Some key points:

• Many clients come to SEP with a broad idea or goal for a product, but lack clarity on the specific challenge, approach, and steps needed to execute successfully
• A major differentiator for SEP is rapidly validating the technical feasibility of the roadmap through prototyping and proof-of-concepts, giving clients confidence in their ability to deliver the strategy
• Product strategy involves understanding the problem to be solved, having a guiding policy on how to approach it, and defining a coherent set of actions to take

We'd love to hear from you! Reach out to [email protected] to share your feedback on this show.

You can find more information about this podcast at sep.com/podcast and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening!

In this episode, we sit down with April Dunford, founder of Ambient Strategy and author of the books "Sales Pitch" and "Obviously Awesome". She is most known for her expertise in market positioning, having personally launched 16 products and influenced many others. Our conversation covers several key insights from Dunford's work:

• The disconnect between how marketing and sales teams communicate product value, with marketing focused on perfect messaging while sales reverts to feature-dumping demos.
• The importance of crafting a sales pitch that tells a compelling story about why a customer should choose your product over competitors, rather than just listing product capabilities.
• Her experience launching her own positioning-focused podcast, where she was able to dive deeper into niche positioning topics than is typically possible as a guest on other shows.

This episode offers valuable lessons for anyone involved in product marketing, sales, or positioning - whether at a tech company or any other type of business. Dunford's insights provide a framework for crafting more effective, customer-centric sales and marketing narratives.

A big thank you to our guest co-host, Josh Colter. Josh is the CEO of Cardboardit and has great experience in marketing and positioning.

We'd love to hear from you! Reach out to [email protected] to share your feedback on this show.

You can find more information about this podcast at sep.com/podcast and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening!

In this episode, Zac and Noelle Webster-Milam delve into the world of design, aiming to demystify its complexities and shed light on its significance in building great products. Noelle shares her thoughts on how design brings value to software product development as a key team member, alongside engineering and product management. She also shares how SEP thinks about design and has organized our practice to serve our clients.

Key Takeaways:

1. Software design sits at the crossroads of business and art, focusing on delivering user-centric solutions while meeting business objectives.
2. Design involves more than just visual aesthetics; it encompasses system design, user experience, and addressing user needs efficiently.
3. Balancing user goals with business needs is crucial to avoid misalignment and ensure product success in the marketplace.
4. Design roles at SEP include interaction designers and UX designers, each contributing unique skills to create cohesive and user-friendly products.
5. The value of design lies in its ability to enhance user experiences, solve business problems effectively, and contribute to de-risking strategies in product development.

We'd love to hear from you! Reach out to [email protected] to share your feedback on this show.

You can find more information about this podcast at sep.com/podcast and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening!

This episode features a dynamic conversation with Oji and Ezinne Udezue, both Chief Product Officers at Typeform and WP Engine, respectively. The Udezue’s draw from their extensive experience as product leaders to discuss the concept of customer listening and its role in full stack product management. They emphasize the shift from treating product releases as fixed-time projects to ongoing products that require continuous tracking, support, and market engagement. The discussion centers on the importance of balancing business demands with customer delight and the need to build a "listening machine" within organizations to continuously gather and integrate customer feedback into the product development process. Our conversation provides practical insights for product leaders on how to effectively listen to customers, drive product improvement, and enhance customer retention.

A few highlights:

1. Transition from Project to Product: The modern market expects products to be enduring concerns, rather than fixed-time projects. This shift necessitates continuous tracking, support, and market engagement for products, impacting the brand and its market approach.
2. Importance of Customer Listening: Oji and Ezinne emphasize the importance of listening to customers to refine products and achieve customer delight. They argue that delight leads to customer loyalty and retention, which are crucial for profitable growth. They also distinguish between listening (tuning into existing feedback channels) and discovery (finding new opportunities).
3. Building a Listening Machine: Product leaders should create systems within their organizations to continuously listen to customers and inform the product roadmap. This process involves collecting customer feedback, triaging it, and integrating it into the product development process. Our guests describe this as building a "listening machine" that operates continuously, much like a circulatory system in a body.

We'd love to hear from you! Reach out to [email protected] to share your feedback on this show.

You can find more information about this podcast at sep.com/podcast and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening!

SEP's Director of Engineering, Jon Fuller, explains his starting points for helping customers make intentional choices before they build applications in cloud environments. Whether you're building a brand new application or need to migrate from something deployed on-prem, these areas will help you make a more thoughtful choice. Jon lays out 3 areas you should think through:

1. Risk
2. Cost
3. Existing infrastructure/talent

We'd love to hear from you! Reach out to [email protected] to share your feedback on this show.

You can find more information about this podcast at sep.com/podcast and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening!

This episode’s guest is Josh Haines, he is the Global DevSecOps Capability Manager & Software Factory Founder at Rolls-Royce. In this episode Josh shares his journey over the past few years focusing on Digital Transformation within the Defense organization at Rolls-Royce. His mission has been to empower the development of modern applications to both serve his business partners within the organization and their customers. Josh hasn’t done this alone and he shared many of the things he’s learned and the resources that have helped he and his team to reach many milestones. 

We talk about many things but a few to point out:

• Don’t just rely on your technical skills, lean into the people side
• Learn from resources from outside your organization, books are your friend
• Start small and build the value flywheel over time
• Give yourself time, this is a marathon 

We'd love to hear from you! Reach out to [email protected] to share your feedback on this show.

You can find more information about this podcast at sep.com/podcast and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening!

Our guest is Christine Itwaru, she is the head of Product at Vitality.io. Christine recently gave a talk at Industry: A Product Conference on utilizing AI in the Product Management Lifecycle and we dove into this subject a little deeper. Our conversation took a few turns into:

• Considerations of AI in products
• The importance of leaning into data-driven decision making as a Product Leader
• Cognitive bias
• Getting comfortable not being right and the importance of making bets

Christine has a wealth of experience and her road to Product and organizational strategy was really interesting to me. Anyone heading in either of those directions would benefit from hearing her thoughts. 

We'd love to hear from you! Reach out to [email protected] to share your feedback on this show.

You can find more information about this podcast at sep.com/podcast and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening!

Our guest is Jeron Peoples, he’s responsible for strategy at ARI and Sports Tech HQ. Wearing multiple hats within two organizations is fun and challenging. Our conversation focused on a few areas:

• Context setting on what ARI and Sports Tech HQ are and where they focus
• A deep dive on the Indy Tech Ecosystem
• Jeron’s lens on some recent news in Indy and where he sees things headed

The most interesting part of conversation to me was his view on strategy. As someone who loves to learn and challenge my own thinking in this area, I really appreciated his candor and perspective. This conversation left me thinking a little differently for one of the hats I wear here at SEP.  

We'd love to hear from you! Reach out to [email protected] to share your feedback on this show.

You can find more information about this podcast at sep.com/podcast and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening!

A new format for Behind The Product, this episode features Jordan Thayer and Raman Ohri with SEP. Jordan is the AI Practice Lead at SEP, with a PhD in artificial intelligence. Raman is SEP’s CEO and has been at SEP for over 30 years. We asked each of them to share their perspective on the recent executive order on AI, including the effect on our industry, who may or may not be impacted, and some things you may want to consider for yourself or your business. 

A quick disclaimer: this is only our opinion as product development leaders. We are not legal experts, so please seek proper counsel when making decisions for yourself or your company.

We'd love to hear from you! Reach out to [email protected] to share your feedback on this show.

You can find more information about this podcast at sep.com/podcast and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening!

Our guest is Kirsten Moorfield, she’s the cofounder and COO at Cloverleaf. We got to hear Kirsten on a panel at a conference here in Indy and really resonated with a lot of what she shared. Our conversation went a few directions but a few things stood out to us. 

• How Kirsten made a massive pivot to start a tech company
• Why she finds the work at Cloverleaf so encouraging
• Kirsten’s ‘Ah Ha’ moments in building this product. 

The most surprising thing we talked about was how she discovered that less time for users on their platform was a good thing. Cloverleaf is an automated and scalable coaching platform for companies who want to help their employees be the best versions of themselves. You can find out more information about them and even try them out for free at Cloverleaf.me. 

We'd love to hear from you! Reach out to [email protected] to share your feedback on this show.

You can find more information about this podcast at sep.com/podcast and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening!