Bruce McCarthy is a renowned product leader at Product Culture, the organization he founded in 2018. He’s also the author of two books: Aligned (2024) and Product Roadmaps Relaunched (2018). Bruce sat down with the Product Momentum team for an in-person chat on the heels of his INDUSTRY Global keynote; our conversation focused on –

The bottom line is this: stakeholders are not just peripheral figures in the product development ecosystem, but are central customers whose needs must be meticulously considered in the product manager’s decision-making process.
 
Stakeholders as Customers
One of the refreshing perspectives Bruce brought to the conversation was the idea of viewing stakeholders as customers. As he explained, “A stakeholder is anybody in your organization whose help and support you need in order for your product…to be successful. [I]t has to be marketed and sold and supported. It has to be financed.”
 
Think of stakeholders as your extended team who have a stake in the success of your product. In that respect, he adds, “Stakeholders are actually your customers too.”
 
The Toughest Job in Product: Prioritizing Stakeholder Needs
Product managers learn quickly that they can’t balance stakeholder needs perfectly, ever. “It’s always an art,” Bruce explains. “It’s always a work in progress. It’s always saying ‘no’ to some things in order to say ‘yes’ to other things.”
 
And that’s why it’s the hardest job in Product. The success of your product hinges on the identification and prioritization of competing stakeholder incentives. To be successful, product managers need to recognize the diversity of interests and influences that various stakeholders bring to the table.
 
The Stakeholder Canvas
Using the company org chart is one way to help prioritize stakeholder needs, but sometimes (often?), Bruce explains, it can be misleading. It doesn’t always indicate who has the decisionmaker’s ear. You might think it’s the CEO or Head of Product…only to find out for this project, it’s actually the CFO or the Head of Engineering. “The question then becomes, ‘what do you use instead?’”
 
As Bruce explains, “We developed the stakeholder canvas to help you map out your stakeholders, make a list of who they are, and capture all the information that you have about them: what they care about and what they need from you – which is just as important as what you need from them.”
“The stakeholder canvas helps you bring clarity to stakeholder alignment and make prioritization more manageable,” Bruce concluded.

Be sure to catch the whole conversation with Bruce McCarthy to learn about all the other tools he applied to this challenge, including the DiSC® framework and the DACI and RACI decisionmaking tools.

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There was a time not long ago when a handful of Product Momentum guests (Rich Mironov and Marty Cagan to name just two) lamented the absence of any formalized university program dedicated solely to product managers. Lament no more, thanks to Brad Eiben and his colleagues at Carnegie Mellon University, where Brad is Executive Director of the Master of Science Program in Product Management. Launched in 2018, the program is a one-year experience that blends coursework in leadership and business strategy with such technical practices as UX design, development, and Agile methodology.

Our conversation with Brad actually began the night before we hit ‘record,’ following an action-packed day of conference keynotes at INDUSTRY Global back in September. In this episode, Sean and Sean reconnect with Brad as he explains how he applied the same product management principles he learned as a mechanical engineer at Toyota to his current role in Education.

“There are a lot of business degrees, and a lot of tech degrees,” Brad offers. “But none really bring that third element, which is the design thinking and practical application. So that’s what we strive to create – a truly hands-on program. I always describe the program itself as being a training program, not an academic program.”

In its own way, the program treats education as a proof of concept. Just as it is in real life, product management is a team sport, Brad says.

“In its ideal form, product management is a journey,” Brad says. “A student here is not a lone wolf; they’re part of the pack. When they approach product management correctly – working as collaborators, not as adversaries – and combine their skills to support one another, the effect is ten times more powerful.”

Be sure to catch the entire episode with Brad, where he explains why “the program is my product” — a marketplace in which the university is creating value for students, credentializing their work, and boosting their careers. And no doubt accelerating the maturation of product management as a profession.

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Dan Chuparkoff is a seasoned innovation leader with experience at Google, Atlassian, and McKinsey. The Product Momentum team caught up with him right after his keynote at INDUSTRY Global and talked about how product teams can get beyond the theoretical hype of AI and start zooming in on its immediate potential.

His message was clear: while AI has the capacity to deliver transformative possibilities, product teams need to balance their long-term ambition for AI with a dose of everyday practicality.

“It’s easy to think about the future-forward-looking thing when you talk about something new, like AI,” Dan says. “Maybe AGI [artificial general intelligence] works at some point in the future. Maybe it’s super helpful. But it’s not useful right now.”

Separating Hype from Practical Application

How do we separate the hype from the real-world application? Dan urges teams to embrace useful AI tools now rather than waiting for theoretical advances like artificial general intelligence (AGI).

You can’t go back to your office and use AGI to solve real problems, he adds, “but you can get hands-on now by using notetaking AI tools or translation AI tools to help overcome some everyday challenges. So here’s what I suggest: Create two buckets, one for what you can use next week and one for what might come years down the line.”

As an Umbrella Term, AI Has Leaks

One of Dan’s key points is that we should stop lumping everything under the AI umbrella. When we do that, he explains, we’re actually doing AI a disservice, obscuring its specific, actionable uses.

“Sometimes AI means machine learning from like 28 years ago, and sometimes it means a chatbot on your website. If you’re talking about machine learning a chatbot on your website, say that.” We all want to say we’re working with AI, “but that sort of hyperbole, that umbrella term, is going to confuse folks.” So, be as specific as you can as quickly as you can, he adds.

Think of AI As a Tool for ‘Accelerating Collaboration’

Dan pointed to studies showing that knowledge workers spend 68% of their time sharing information – not producing anything, but sharing it. 68%. So if we want AI tools to drive productivity, quality, and efficiency, they may be best suited (for now, at least) to reduce this resource commitment.

“If you make that even 1% better,” he said, “it’s like hiring four more people for your team.” When we automate product management-related tasks like analyzing customer feedback or summarizing meetings, our teams can focus on higher-value work. In other words, focus on the premium that your teams can offer when they’re freed from the burden of busy work that drives little value – and that AI can easily handle. “The real efficiency will come from people collaborating faster.”

If you prefer the video podcast experience, you can catch our conversation with Dan Chuparkoff on the Product Momentum YouTube channel!

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The Product Momentum team continues the series of conversations that we recorded at INDUSTRY Global; in today’s episode, Bukky Adebayo and Rye Castillo join Sean and Sean to talk about the challenges and opportunities that come with building products for technical audiences. Bukky is Chief of Staff, Digital Customer Experience at Autodesk, and Rye is a Design Lead at Render (a self-described “curious generalist.”).

The discussion revolves around challenges in product design, particularly in technical environments (where users are often tech-savvy developers), and emphasizes the importance of collaboration and empathy in the development process.

“The overarching theme of our talk is ‘collaboration,’” Rye says, “with special emphasis on including your engineers as part of the team and not people you have to fight against. In engineering-heavy organizations, sometimes it feels like you’re fighting an ‘us versus them’ uphill battle.”

This kind of environment reflects one of the challenges teams face, especially in larger organizations. Silos bubble up, and developers tend to retreat and narrow their focus on product specs. This hinders creativity and innovation. But good things happen when teams collaborate. Bukky suggests having developers sit in on usability tests and in conversations with customers; as much as developers want to be right, they want even more to be heard – to feel like they’re part of the solution.

Be sure to catch the entire episode with Bukky and Rye to learn about some of the tactics they’ve used to encourage collaboration, tear down functional silos, and build powerful products for their technical audiences.

In his blog, Maximizing Developer Value: The Intersection of Tech and Business Domains, ITX Senior Solutions Architect John Roets offers the following advice to his fellow developers:

“If you fail to see beyond technical skill as what makes developers and teams valuable, you’ve got it wrong. Developer and organizational attitudes, structures, and operational models continue to (mistakenly) reinforce the idea that developers are mere ‘order takers,’ fungible assets to be moved around from domain to domain where the work is.”

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In this episode of Product Momentum, we share our conversation with Matt LeMay, who had just delivered a keynote at INDUSTRY Global, entitled The Business is Your Business.

About Matt LeMay

Matt LeMay is an internationally recognized product leader, consultant, and author. His titles include Agile for Everybody, Product Management in Practice, and the soon-to-be-released Impact-First Product Teams. Today’s episode marks Matt’s second visit with Product Momentum; his first was in episode 113, Embracing Human Complexity in Product Management (June 2023).

High-Impact Work Is Hard…

For product managers and their teams, Matt explains, doing the high-impact work is super-hard. When dealing with the things that lie at the core of the product, he adds, “you have to coordinate; you have to have the tough conversations. Sometimes, you need to redo, or completely undo, work that’s been done by another team. That often draws lots of attention from people in the organization that product teams rarely hear from.”

…But Low-Impact Work Can Be Dangerous

It’s almost always easier to do the low-impact work, Matt says. Add a feature here, a new button there. It’s the sort of work that helps us feel good about ourselves, like we’re making progress. But the buzz is usually short-lived. Eventually, the absence of high-impact output catches up with product teams – usually, Matt adds, after the CFO takes a closer look at a spreadsheet.

Danger lurks when there’s a disconnect between company goals and product team goals, Matt explains. “When teams don’t know how their work is affecting the commercial realities of the business, they tend to reprioritize efforts to low-impact work.”

Product Teams Can Control Their Situation

Regardless of who’s responsible for the disconnect, product managers and teams can take control of the situation to give themselves a fighting chance.

“Even if no one’s asking us to, we can take ownership by saying, ‘here’s why and how the work we’re doing is going to help the business achieve those goals,’” Matt advises. “If we can proactively take control of that conversation, we put ourselves in a much stronger position with company leadership. On the other hand, if all we do is walk in and say, ‘tell us what success looks like,’ we might not get the answer we’re looking for.”

During our conversation with Matt, he mentions two important books on product management, respectively authored by earlier guests of Product Momentum: Evidence Guided, by Itamar Gilad, and Radical Focus, by Christina Wodtke. Be sure to catch our conversations with Itamar and Christina:

Episode 143, ‘Useful Models’ That Boost Product Launch Success, with Itamar Gilad.

Episode 18, Simple Steps To Achieve High Performance, with Christina Wodtke.

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If you’re a product manager who’s making the transition from individual contributor (IC) to people manager, you not only need to be nailing your job, Melika Hope advises. “You have to be showing up as a leader.” Opportunities for practicing leadership aren’t confined to managerial roles, she adds. ICs can exhibit leader-like traits every day by taking on a challenging strategic task, coming up with a creative solution, and solving complex problems that impact the business.

Melika Hope is Director of Product Management at Spotify; after delivering her keynote and INDUSTRY Global, she sat down with Sean Flaherty and Sean Murray for a lively discussion about what it takes to make the transition from individual contributor to people manager. Turns out there’s plenty to consider.

Showcasing Leadership Abilities

Melika advised ICs not to wait for formal opportunities to present themselves before showcasing their leadership abilities. Instead, she adds, “ICs should look for ways to contribute meaningfully to their teams and organizations. Solve problems proactively to demonstrate your value and potential for higher roles.”

Melika uses impactful anecdotes to encourage organizations to consider new career paths for individual contributors who excel in their roles but may not wish to manage people. “I find more folks actually aren’t as interested in becoming [people] managers anymore,” she says.

Taking Control of Your Future

What’s more, with widespread layoffs making it difficult for ICs to find new opportunities, “there’s a sense that if I am an IC, I have control over the work that I’m doing and the results I’m delivering. People are feeling more comfortable with that.”

Are we witnessing a culture shift beginning to take hold? The notion that leadership is better defined by actions and impact rather than titles. Be sure to catch the entire episode with Melika Hope, recorded live at INDUSTRY Global.

Looking for related content? Check out Product Momentum’s episode 90 with Liz Li: Amid the Great Resignation, It’s Time to Productize Your Career

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We didn’t realize it when we started recording this episode with Bob Moesta. But the moment our conversation ended, we knew his would serve as Product Momentum’s milestone 150th podcast! And what better topic to explore – and who better to explore it with – than a product manager’s job to be done with the champion of JTBD theory. As Bob explains, people don’t buy products at random; we hire them to solve specific problems or fulfill specific needs. Understanding the user’s struggling moments is our primary job to be done.

Product Momentum co-hosts Sean Flaherty and Sean Murray caught up with Bob live and in person at INDUSTRY: The Product Conference. In their lively conversation, Bob touched on three main themes, each embracing our users’ struggling moments as the key to a product manager’s  success.

Understanding User Context – The Path to Better Products

As product managers, we have to grow to appreciate the context surrounding our end users’ struggling moments. When users realize “the anxieties or habits that prevent them from making changes easily,” product managers are enabled to actually see better ways to develop the products that fulfill users’ needs.”

Focus on Cause, Not Probability

Sales and Marketing often rely on probability-based approaches, Bob adds, “because they don’t fully understand customer behavior.” As product managers, though, we are better positioned to identify the causes behind a customer’s need for a product; when we do that, our teams can focus on helping them make real progress, rather than just pushing unnecessary features that fail to address their specific challenges.

Customer Choice Is Based on Elimination, Not Selection

Customers won’t even notice a product unless they are already frustrated, Bob explains. So we should be targeting these precise moments of frustration to effectively capture their attention. Then, as they evaluate the range of possible product solutions, customers eliminate the ones they know won’t meet their needs. The process is reminiscent of the standardized tests of our school-age years; oftentimes, we didn’t choose the best answer as much as we eliminated the ones we knew to be wrong.

Be sure to catch the entire episode with Bob Moesta; as you do, be on the lookout for his list of 5 skills that every successful product team should possess.

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Shikha Kapoor’s journey to Silicon Valley began in a small town in India, where she had only limited access to technology. She didn’t have access to the internet – or even to a computer. Now she’s a trailblazer in AI product management at Meta. Shikha credits a passion for learning, staying hungry, and maintaining a healthy curiosity as pillars in “a student mindset” that has served as her North star. Shikha currently serves as Meta’s Head of Product, Gen AI for Recommendations. Before then, she was a Product Leader AI for Consumer Productivity, at Google Assistant.

In this episode of Product Momentum, she joins hosts Sean Flaherty and Sean Murray to discuss how she became a leading light in the rapidly evolving field of AI – specifically, embracing firsthand the connection between business needs and technology solutions and using that mindset to break from convention to foster creativity and innovation.

“Early in my career, I always looked for a role that connected the dots from business problems to technology solutions,” Shikha says. “And when I came across product management, it was clear to me that PMs are at the intersection of engineering, business, and design. They get to participate from end to end in solving user needs, anticipating market trends, and building the solutions we must deploy to get there.”

Now, as Meta’s Head of Product, Gen AI for Recommendations, Shikha Kapoor applies this product management mindset to balance long-term vision with agile execution. Her team often works in six-month planning cycles to develop big-picture AI-driven tools and then works backward from that distant horizon to maintain nimble and adaptable to emerging technologies and market shifts.

Shikha highlights emerging trends in AI across various industries, such as legal and healthcare. She points out the potential for automation to drive dramatic increases in productivity and business value. As AI continues to disrupt traditional workflows, she says, product managers must remain open-minded and proactive in adapting to these changes.

Catch the entire conversation with Shikha Kapoor to gain insights into the strategies she employs to stay ahead of the AI curve, including the importance of grounding your assumptions and embracing a culture of experimentation. Shikha also shares valuable advice for new and seasoned product managers alike on how to leverage AI to enhance user experiences and drive innovation.

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The success rate of new software products varies, depending on the criteria we used to define success. But a common statistic is unflattering: about 70% of new software releases fails to meet their initial expectations or goals. In this episode of Product Momentum – and in his new book, LAUNCH Code – James Whitman explains this phenomenon, describes the factors that contribute to such high failure rates, and presents research-based remedies we can deploy to reverse the trend.

Too often in product development, we become so focused on heads-down requirements building that the act of launching the product feels like an afterthought. And to many, it’s become a lost art. James says that success requires a companywide, comprehensive plan for managing internal handoffs and bringing clients deeply into product development and launch.

The development-to-sale process offers “many rakes to step on,” James says. And even the most well-intended teams make mistakes, often manifested in these critical areas:

Client Listening. We tend to sample only our most favored clients; we limit discovery efforts to a specific segment of our market; and too often we wrongly assume that internal team members possess the domain knowledge to speak on behalf of the client.

James underscores the critical role of continuous client listening and says that that every sales interaction is an opportunity for market research. “Maintaining a dialogue with clients both before and after the market launch is crucial for refining the product and addressing client needs effectively.”

The Product-to-Sales Handoff. Software launches start with innovation and product design, followed by value-added activities within the product function, James says. But then there’s this completely separate activity that happens over here in Sales. The gap between those functions is where many products fail to launch.

The best organizations integrate these activities into a holistic approach where sales and product teams work closely together rather than operating in silos.

The Sales Cabinet. There’s a solid collective understanding that we should listen to our clients and that we should work collaboratively with our colleagues. But why don’t these things happen in the real world?

James introduces the concept of a “sales cabinet,” a group of trusted senior sales representatives who provide early feedback on product ideas and help profile new offerings.

Be sure to catch the entire episode with James Whitman to deepen your understanding of the LAUNCH process: Listen, Assess, Unify, Navigate, Control, and Hone.

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What percentage of your software product launches have been successful? If you answered, “about 50%,” you’re ahead of the curve, says Itamar Gilad. Itamar is a product leadership coach and author who also held senior product management and engineering roles at Microsoft and Google, where he worked at YouTube and led parts of Gmail.

In today’s conversation, Itamar looks back on his early career that – he readily admits – includes ‘not that many big wins.’ As he explains, “The engineer in me kept whispering, ‘you don’t really know. You’re just faking it.’ And the results spoke for themselves.”

It was then, while still at Google, that Itamar realized the power of discovery and user research. What he called, “all these good things that we now take for granted.” Once he embedded these techniques into his work, his perspective changed, and he started to consider a new product leadership playbook. What he came up with has replaced the traditional Plan and Execute model “that may have worked in the 20th century,” with an outcome- and evidence-based intuitive approach.

“We used to believe that if we spend enough time creating the perfect top-level plan, and build a set of cascading plans, and then execute well on these plans, we will achieve greatness,” Itamar says. “It simply doesn’t work that way.” Even ideas from the most visionary leaders were informed by research and evidence, hypothesis and testing, he adds.

In his book, Evidence Guided, Itamar presents an actionable model for bringing evidence-guided development into our organizations. Nested within Itamar’s larger framework are the GIST model, which leads to the ICE model, which then leads to the Confidence Meter. In this conversation, Itamar explains the role each model plays in specific detail and provides easy access to them.

Be sure to catch our entire episode with Itamar Gilad and consider this famous quote from the late British statistician George E. P. Box: “All models are wrong, but some are useful.”

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