Product Perspectives

Welcome to this roundtable between product management and UX Design. On the UX Design team, I’m please to welcome two of my previous guests – Pamela Sanchez and Hayden Chambers.

In episode 6, my first UX Designer representative in this podcast, Pamela Sanchez, a product designer from Colombia at Torre, talked to me about being UX designer in a start-up. She's been a product designer for over a year and a UX researcher for 2 years before that. In addition to being a creative soul, i was impressed by how she’s hands on on user research and strategic activities including roadmapping.

I discussed with Hayden Chambers in the 12th episode about his role as a Product Designer at EcoOnline, who’s worked across a broad range of design disciplines, starting in design and advertising, but also interactive and web design for agencies. Through my interview, he’s demonstrated a lot of empathy towards product manager, which he gains in various roles including as a front-end developer and mentor.

In team product management, I’m please to welcome for the first time Iryna Struk, a Product Manager at HandsHQ where she is leading 2 SAAS products that empower companies to keep their high risk teams safe. Being a true believer in the power of sharing ideas and building communities, Iryna organises monthly ProductTank meetups in London where professionals working in product come together to discuss the most interesting topics.

In this first round, we talk about UX Design and what it means to us, through the lenses of our roles. We identify different profiles of UX Designers based on their skills and aspirations and the needs of a company at different stages of its life. Product Managers can get tips about how to help UX Designers in their roles and how to think more long terms on the design side.

Who's going to win: UX Design or Product Management?

My guest today is Shipra Nirola who is VP Product Ops & Delivery at FitXR, a company that offers virtual-reality fitness classes and has been operating remote even before the pandemic. Shipra has been establishing product ops as a main stream function to accelerate ProductLed culture and scaling from 2 to 6 cross-functional teams over the last year and a half. Shipra is a seasoned leader with over 16 years of core experience in digital transformation, business agility & operational excellence. She has implemented best industry standard processes driven from Agile/Lean/SixSigma/Prince 2 and ISO quality assurance principles for continuous improvement.

During the interview, I liked her approach to questioning her mission and the different functions in the company: what do we mean by quality? What’s the role of product operations? She has a very methodical approach when talking about the 4 pillars of product operations, and shares with honesty her journey: what worked well and what she had to adjust to better fit the company’s culture and her stakeholders. She also explains how PMs can learn to see operational KPIs as a story and a tool to improve.

You can contact Shipra on Linkedin.

My guest today is Hayden Chambers. Hayden is a Product Designer, who was born in New Zealand but has been working from Spain for the last 17 years. He’s worked across a broad range of design disciplines, starting in design and advertising, but also interactive and web design for agencies. Became a front-end developer for small startups filling the gap between development and user experience. His latest role is Senior Product Designer for EcoOnline, a Norwegian Health & Safety and Chemical Management platform.

In this episode, Hayden explains how he sees the product trio as a water molecule rather than a triangle. He opens up about how he feel when PMs cut corners on MVP (or minimum Lovable Product, or Minimum Viable Valuable Validating Product), and challenges me about including UX improvements in the roadmap. You'll also learn how to navigate "design politics" and how to share your ideas with him if you're not a designer. Hayden also explains why he's a mentor and what this experience has taught him.

You can contact Hayden on Linkedin.

In this first roundtable, I welcome Charlie Penwarden, Marketing Director at Ranrobin.com (featured in episode 3) and Lauren Macpherson, CCO at Eli5 and Noco (episode 4) in the Product Marketing team. Daryl Edwards, Director of Product at Rhythm Software, joins me in the Product Management team. For this third episode, we start from the word "roadmap" and talk how it means different things depending on the audience, whether its a good idea to share it publicly and under which conditions. We also discuss about the value of user-driven features through idea boards, and how involving product marketing in the roadmap can help to avoid falling in the trap of a feature-based roadmap and focus more on outcome instead. Who's going to win: product marketing or product management?

In this first roundtable, I welcome Charlie Penwarden, Marketing Director at Ranrobin.com (featured in episode 3) and Lauren Macpherson, CCO at Eli5 and Noco (episode 4) in the Product Marketing team. Daryl Edwards, Director of Product at Rhythm Software, joins me in the Product Management team.

This is the second round and we start from the word "product-led growth" and talk about adopting a flywheel approach. Calls to action for product managers include involving product marketing early in the development process and overcommunicate, but in the way that works best for the individuals involved. Daryl shares how he collaborates with the product marketing team as he admits that product managers are sometimes guilty of thinking that just having a documentation is enough to convey information, whereas there's so much value from hearing questions from product marketers.

Who's going to win: product marketing or product management?

In this first roundtable, I welcome Charlie Penwarden, Marketing Director at Ranrobin.com (featured in episode 3) and Lauren Macpherson, CCO at Eli5 and Noco (episode 4) in the Product Marketing team. Daryl Edwards, Director of Product at Rhythm Software, joins me in the Product Management team.

This is the first round and we start from the word "product marketing" and talk about communication both between product managers and product marketers, and with the customers, identifying the root causes of not nailing the value proposition for a product or feature.

The Product Marketing team explains what they call "persona hate" and how reconciling people with personas helps to get the messaging right and bring back to discussion to the user.

Who's going to win: product marketing or product management?

This is an interview  I was really looking forward to: our first legal stakeholder talking openly about what it's like to be a lawyer in a tech company. Gabi is honest about what her peers can do better to partner with product managers and ease the tensions that occur when the legal teams are seen as "deal breakers". She shares her concerns about AI and how she works with Product and Engineering teams to address those. Overall, this episode will help product managers and legal teams to understand each other better, and collaborate earlier in the development cycle to design better products.

Gabi is a Brazilian lawyer, based in Amsterdam, and specialized in healthcare and life sciences. She is currently the head of compliance at Flo health, a women's health app, which helps people from all over the world navigate through their periods and pregnancy journeys. Before that, Gabi worked for another digital health startup as a Compliance Manager, when she was introduced to (and fell in love with) the tech world.

You can contact her via Linkedin (Gabriela Porto). Thank you to Thomas for his question.

Rachel Spurrier is a Product Education & Operations Lead at Pico and a Content Writer at Merit. Throughout her nine years in tech, she’s worked as a data architect, research analyst, implementation manager, program manager, and product manager. 

We talk about the role of Product Operations and how to get buy-in from Product Managers when introducing new processes. Rachel also touches on her love for writing and her contribution to the marketing content at Merit.

You can contact her on LinkedIn or Twitter (@rkspurrier). 

My first UX Designer representative in this podcast is Pamela, a product designer from Colombia at a company called Torre, whose mission is to be the matching network for work. She's been a product designer for over a year and a UX researcher for 2 years before that. A creative soul, she's passionate about people, understanding problems and entrepreneurship.

Despite working in a start-up, the process for running product experiments at Torre is quite structured, although flexible. Pamela talks about prioritising outcomes and solving user problems over solutions, involving many stakeholders along the way. She highlights how, as a UX Designer, she’s hands on on user research and strategic activities including roadmapping.

Note on the terminology: Pamela’s company calls project managers the individuals working in partnership wth UX Designers, and who report to the product manager (who's also the CEO). When listening to the description of their role, they act very much like product managers.