Global Product Management Talk

Cindy F. Solomon of SUPA Product Academy chats with Malcolm Knapp of the Engineer Accelerator to implement the process that Malcolm teaches for creating the vision for a product prior to building it.

In this 6th discussion of the series, Cindy discusses several product management projects in light of applying the Lean Spec process. Malcolm introduces using it as a way to deconstruct the product even after the build to identify new features and potential product innovation.

Listeners are invited to join the discussion, ask questions and provide your own perspectives and approaches for what process and tools you currently employ to arrive at a cross functional and validated vision of the product prior to build.

Global Product Management Talk is pleased to bring you the next episode of...

The Everyday Innovator with host Chad McAllister, PhD.

The podcast is all about helping people involved in innovation and managing products become more successful, grow their careers, and STANDOUT from their peers.

About the Episode: I have a great guest for us to learn from – the author of a new book, The Agenda Mover: When Your Good Idea Is Not Enough. Doesn’t that sum up the challenge of being a product manager – when your good idea is not enough.

My guest, Professor Samuel B. Bacharach, argues that in order to implement any innovation — no matter how great your idea — that you must be an “agenda mover.”  He’s analyzed how leaders such as Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, and Martin Luther King, Jr. have been able to turn their ideas into action.  He has also spent years teaching the skills that enable people to move agendas. Today he helps leaders of Fortune 500 companies apply the steps to move their ideas forward. He is also an organizational behavior professor at Cornell University and the co-founder of the Bacharach Leadership Group.

Global Product Management Talk is pleased to bring you the next episode of...

The Everyday Innovator with host Chad McAllister, PhD.

The podcast is all about helping people involved in innovation and managing products become more successful, grow their careers, and STANDOUT from their peers.

About the Episode: The topic of this episode is another in a series of interviews I’m doing focused on the four skills that enable a 25% higher income for product managers and increasing their influence. The 4 skills were discussed back in episode 073 and include:

Pitch artist – the ability to present and sell your ideas and conclusions.Exec debater — being the president of the product and standing up for what is needed and challenging executive teams.Inspire others — great products are built by great teams but these aren’t necessarily teams that product managers personally manage. Instead, product managers need to inspire them and share the vision of the product.Truth to power – being good at raising inconvenient truths and not running away from an unpopular message.

This interview focuses on being a pitch artist and my guest, Chris Westfall, is a world-class pitch artist – having won the US National Elevator Pitch Championship. He’s coached clients onto Shark Tank, Shark Tank Australia and Dragon’s Den, and successfully re-branded products and services around the globe. His message is simple: use authentic persuasion that’s not pushy, “sales-y” or fake.

In this interview, you’ll learn about:

when pitches are important,why product managers must be good pitch artists, andhow to give a good pitch.

Cindy F. Solomon of SUPA Product Academy chats with Malcolm Knapp of the Engineer Accelerator to apply the process that Malcolm teaches for creating the vision for a product prior to building it.

In this 5th discussion of the series, Malcolm further zooms in on the block diagram and accordian text outline of features, behaviors, connections and granular details that define the product to be built.

Listeners are invited to join the discussion, ask questions and provide your own perspectives and approaches for what process and tools you currently employ to arrive at a cross functional and validated vision of the product prior to build.

Global Product Management Talk is pleased to bring you the next episode of...

The Everyday Innovator with host Chad McAllister, PhD.

The podcast is all about helping people involved in innovation and managing products become more successful, grow their careers, and STANDOUT from their peers.

About the Episode: This episode is about market research – what’s in your toolbox for conducting consumer and market research? Does it include Conjoint Analysis? Well, if not, it will after you listen to this episode. To explore the topic and walk through an example of using Conjoint Analysis, I tracked down a previous guest from way back in episode 008. In that episode we discussed quantitative and qualitative research tools but didn’t go into details about applying Conjoint.

My guest is Brian Ottum, a market research specialist with 30 years experience in new product development. He started as a chemical engineer and joined Procter & Gamble, contributing to Charmin, Pampers, and other products you know. He went on to earn a PhD in Market Research. Today, he helps companies with product development. He has also developed a new online course called “Tools for Early Innovation.” It’s a little over an hour of videos, case studies and downloadable materials. The usual price is $30, but he is making it available to listeners of this podcast for just $10 for a limited time – until the end of January, 2017. See the link section below to get the discount.

In this interview, you’ll learn about:

the types of information Conjoint Analysis can provide, such as pricing specifics,when to use Conjoint, andthe specific steps for using Conjoint.

Cindy F. Solomon of SUPA Product Academy chats with Malcolm Knapp of the Engineer Accelerator to apply the process that Malcolm teaches for creating the vision for a product prior to building it. In this 4th discussion of the series, they use a mobile application product idea to work through the probing questions necessary to identify what is known and what is unknown to flesh out the product concretely.

Listeners are invited to join the discussion, ask questions and provide your own perspectives and approaches for what process and tools you currently employ to arrive at a cross functional and validated vision of the product prior to build.

Global Product Management Talk is pleased to bring you the next episode of...

The Everyday Innovator with host Chad McAllister, PhD.

The podcast is all about helping people involved in innovation and managing products become more successful, grow their careers, and STANDOUT from their peers.

About the Episode: The last TEI episode was on the topic of product roadmaps and today we extend that topic by considering product line roadmaps – roadmaps for product lines and product families.

The person who has turned that topic into his professional career is Paul O’Connor. He is the founder and managing director of The Adept Group and he has had significant impact on the field of new product development over the past thirty years. During this time, he has developed and implemented a number of innovative approaches to creativity, innovation, and productivity in NPD. He is truly one of the savvy insiders that can go both broad and deep on many topics related to new product development.

In this interview, you’ll learn about:

What is a product line and a product line strategy,How are platforms related to product lines,How product line roadmaps differ from product roadmaps, andWhy product line roadmapping is important.

Malcolm Knapp of the Engineer Accelerator and Cindy F. Solomon of SUPA Product Academy delve into systems thinking and cross-functional collaboration to create the Lean Spec document to uncover what is known and unknown about the product before undertaking development. In this 3rd episode, we discuss where in the product lifecycle process the lean spec is created, and who is responsible for driving it forward to execution. Distinctions regarding project management, product management, product marketing management, UX, CX and QA focus are uncovered.

The "lean spec" is a product specfication requirements process that Malcolm has developed and implemented over many years of building hardware products and uses to arrive at the product definition prior to building.

About Malcolm Knapp

I help small companies and individual people with defining the product they are trying to make and implementation of the electronics component of that product. In all, I have over ten years of project experience ever since I designed and built a low cost rechargeable lantern from The Millennium Villages project in 2004.

My education includes a combined BA in Science, Engineering, and Society from Pitzer College, a BS in Electrical Engineer from Columbia University and a MS in Electrical Engineering from Columbia. I chose this type of degree because politics, economics, and culture, effect what is built just as much as what is technically possible and I wanted to understand how.

Global Product Management Talk is pleased to bring you the next episode of...

The Everyday Innovator with host Chad McAllister, PhD.

The podcast is all about helping people involved in innovation and managing products become more successful, grow their careers, and STANDOUT from their peers.

About the Episode:  I’ve had some requests from listeners to explore product roadmaps, so I had a discussion with Jim Semick. He is co-founder of ProductPlan, which creates roadmap software for product teams.

Jim has helped launch new products generating hundreds of millions in revenue, including being part of the founding team at AppFolio for property management, responsible for the requirements and launch of GoToMyPC and GoToMeeting (acquired by Citrix), as well as spending time at Microsoft.

In the interview we discuss:

The purpose of a product roadmap,Various ways roadmaps look,How roadmaps help product teams and organizations, andThe best practices for constructing product roadmaps.

Malcolm Knapp of the Engineer Accelerator and Cindy F. Solomon of SUPA Product Academy delve into systems thinking and cross-functional collaboration to create the Lean Spec document to uncover what is known and unknown about the product before undertaking development.