Before financial software provider Aquila Heywood transformed how it approaches prioritisation, it had a backlog that was more than 20 years long and its projects took about seven years to release.  Product Director Holly Donohue was part of the team that changed how the business approaches its work, so that it now sees value being [...] Read more »

The post Take Control of Prioritisation – Holly Donohue on The Product Experience appeared first on Mind the Product.

Our Hosts
Lily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She’s currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She’s worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath.

Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury’s. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group’s Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether) and Product Coaches. He’s the author of What Do We Do Now? A Product Manager’s Guide to Strategy in the Time of COVID-19. A recovering music journalist and editor, Randy also launched Amazon’s music stores in the US & UK.

Before financial software provider Aquila Heywood transformed how it approaches prioritisation, it had a backlog that was more than 20 years long and its projects took about seven years to release.  Product Director Holly Donohue was part of the team that changed how the business approaches its work, so that it now sees value being realised in a few months.  As she says, there’s still some way to go – but in this conversation, she shares some of the lessons learned on the journey so far.

Quotes of the Episode

The challenge with the matrix is… the illusion of it being a science, when actually it still needs to be a bit of an art and still needs the human conversation.

Technical debt is like your basement is flooding – but if you don’t turn that tap off, you’re wasting your time.

Listen if you’d like to learn more about:

* Saying no – and how to do it

* The importance of communication and measurement

* Transforming your processes

* Balancing work on defects/debt and strategic work

* Prioritisation strategies

Hosts

The Product Experience is hosted by Lily Smith and Randy Silver.

Lily enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. Lily has spent 13 years in the tech industry working mainly with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She has worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank in Bristol, the Product Managers’ meetup with regular events and talks on Product now with 800+ members and growing. This year Lily will be launching ProductCamp in Bristol and she joins the MTP team as co-host of  The Product Experience podcast.

A recovering music journalist and editor, Randy has been working as an interactive producer and product manager across the US and UK for nearly 20 years. After launching Amazon’s music stores in the US and UK, Randy has worked with museums and arts groups, online education, media & entertainment, retail and financial services. He’s held Head of Product roles at HSBC and Sainsbury’s, where he also directed their 100+-person product community. He’s also spoken at Mind the Product Engage (Hamburg), at a number of ProductTanks (London, Zurich, Manchester, Birmingham, Bristol, Oxford,  & Brighton… so far!) and at conferences across the US and Europe.

Music

Our theme music is from Hamburg-based Pau, featuring ProductTank Hamburg’s own Arne Kittler on bass. Listen to more on their Facebook page

Suggest a guest

Have you seen someone give a great talk? Suggest a guest to us here

Talk to us

* Tweet at us!

* Use the #podcast channel in the Mind the Product Slack community

Tim Herbig has made many mistakes (who hasn’t?). Fortunately for us, Tim not only owns up to his mistakes, he’s written a book to help the rest of us avoid making the same ones.  We’ve all had issues with how to work best – not only within our individual teams, but with the rest of [...] Read more »

The post How to Influence Without Power – Tim Herbig on The Product Experience appeared first on Mind the Product.

Our Hosts
Lily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She’s currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She’s worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath.

Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury’s. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group’s Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether) and Product Coaches. He’s the author of What Do We Do Now? A Product Manager’s Guide to Strategy in the Time of COVID-19. A recovering music journalist and editor, Randy also launched Amazon’s music stores in the US & UK.

Tim Herbig has made many mistakes (who hasn’t?). Fortunately for us, Tim not only owns up to his mistakes, he’s written a book to help the rest of us avoid making the same ones.  We’ve all had issues with how to work best – not only within our individual teams, but with the rest of the organisation as well. In our conversation, he shares some simple and practical methods to diagnose when you have a problem and how to solve it.

Tim is Product Director at Iridion, a trainer and coach, a co-organiser of ProductTank Hamburg, a frequent speaker, and the author of Lateral Leadership.  We’re not sure if he ever sleeps.

Quote of the Episode

One warning sign is [that] if people just ask for more granular specs to simply get their job done – this shows that you have established an unhealthy hierarchy within your team.

Listen if you’d like to learn more about:

* How to create influence among your peers

* Building trust

* Empowering your team(s)

Links mentioned in this episode:

* The Agile Peer Canvas

* Lateral Leadership – Buy the book now!  Overview / US / UK

* The Auftragsklärung framework

Tim’s recommended reading list:

* Radical Candor – US / UK

* The Hard Thing About Hard Things –  US / UK

* Reinventing Organisations (illustrated version) – US / UK

Hosts

The Product Experience is hosted by Lily Smith and Randy Silver.

Lily enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. Lily has spent 13 years in the tech industry working mainly with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She has worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank in Bristol, the Product Managers’ meetup with regular events and talks on Product now with 800+ members and growing. This year Lily will be launching ProductCamp in Bristol and she joins the MTP team as co-host of  The Product Experience podcast.

A recovering music journalist and editor, Randy has been working as an interactive producer and product manager across the US and UK for nearly 20 years. After launching Amazon’s music stores in the US and UK, Randy has worked with museums and arts groups, online education, media & entertainment, retail and financial services. He’s held Head of Product roles at HSBC and Sainsbury’s, where he also directed their 100+-person product community....

If you’re active on Product Twitter, then you already know John Cutler.  It’s not just that he’s extremely prolific – it’s the quality and depth of his tweets (and his longer essays) that reach deep into the heart of what we’re struggling with on a daily basis – especially his post 12 Signs You’re working in [...] Read more »

The post Podcast: How to get Your Team to do Their Best Work with John Cutler appeared first on Mind the Product.

Our Hosts
Lily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She’s currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She’s worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath.

Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury’s. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group’s Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether) and Product Coaches. He’s the author of What Do We Do Now? A Product Manager’s Guide to Strategy in the Time of COVID-19. A recovering music journalist and editor, Randy also launched Amazon’s music stores in the US & UK.

If you’re active on Product Twitter, then you already know John Cutler.  It’s not just that he’s extremely prolific – it’s the quality and depth of his tweets (and his longer essays) that reach deep into the heart of what we’re struggling with on a daily basis – especially his post 12 Signs You’re working in a Feature Factory. Now a Product Evangelist at Amplitude, John joined us to talk about removing the roadblocks that stop you and your team from being as effective as possible.

Quote of the Episode

All product managers should set aside [time] every day to do the deeper work… product managers are so reactive, they’re always struggling to keep up – yet if you don’t do the deeper work… you’re always going to be on the back foot. Not doing the busy work – but actually revisiting assumptions.

Listen if you’d like to learn more about:

* What is a product team?

* Organising your day

* Creating learning teams

* Scaling

Links mentioned in this episode:

* Catch John at the Agile-Lean Ireland conference (also featuring our producer, Emily Tate!)

Hosts

The Product Experience is hosted by Lily Smith and Randy Silver.

Lily enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. Lily has spent 13 years in the tech industry working mainly with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She has worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank in Bristol, the Product Managers’ meetup with regular events and talks on Product now with 800+ members and growing. This year Lily will be launching ProductCamp in Bristol and she joins the MTP team as co-host of  The Product Experience podcast.

A recovering music journalist and editor, Randy has been working as an interactive producer and product manager across the US and UK for nearly 20 years. After launching Amazon’s music stores in the US and UK, Randy has worked with museums and arts groups, online education, media & entertainment, retail and financial services. He’s held Head of Product roles at HSBC and Sainsbury’s, where he also directed their 100+-person product community. He’s also spoken at Mind the Product Engage (Hamburg), at a number of ProductTanks (London, Zurich, Manchester, Birmingham, Bristol, Oxford,  & Brighton… so far!) and at conferences across the US and Europe.

Music

Our theme music is from Hamburg-based Pau, featuring ProductTank Hamburg’s own Arne Kittler on bass. Listen to more on their Facebook page

Suggest a guest

Have you seen someone give a great talk? Suggest a guest to us here

Talk to us

* Tweet at us!

* Use the #podcast channel in the Mind the Product Slack community

Bruce McCarthy was the president of the Boston Product Management Association, is the founder of consultancy Product Culture and co-wrote the book on roadmapping, Product Roadmaps Relaunched.  He joined us live at the Mind the Product Leadership Forum to chat about how he builds his own roadmaps, prioritisation, product vision, OKRs and quite a bit more. Quote [...] Read more »

The post Podcast: Roadmaps, OKRs, Vision and Prioritisation with Bruce McCarthy appeared first on Mind the Product.

Our Hosts
Lily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She’s currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She’s worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath.

Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury’s. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group’s Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether) and Product Coaches. He’s the author of What Do We Do Now? A Product Manager’s Guide to Strategy in the Time of COVID-19. A recovering music journalist and editor, Randy also launched Amazon’s music stores in the US & UK.

Bruce McCarthy was the president of the Boston Product Management Association, is the founder of consultancy Product Culture and co-wrote the book on roadmapping, Product Roadmaps Relaunched.  He joined us live at the Mind the Product Leadership Forum to chat about how he builds his own roadmaps, prioritisation, product vision, OKRs and quite a bit more.

Quote of the Episode

A really good roadmap is a story about the future – and why it’s going to be awesome for everyone involved.

Listen if you’d like to learn more about:

* Prioritisation – and why scorecarding is Bruce’s favourite method

* The art and science of product management

* Owning your product vision

* The biggest mistake people make on roadmaps

* Roadmaps vs release plans

* OKRs v roadmaps

Links mentioned in this episode:

* Interested in the book Bruce co-wrote, Product Roadmaps Relaunched? Check it out at  O’Reilly / Amazon US / Amazon UK

* Bruce’s consultancy, Product Culture. Sign up for his nano-letter, One Thing, and find out if he’s got an event near you.

Hosts

The Product Experience is hosted by Lily Smith and Randy Silver.

Lily enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. Lily has spent 13 years in the tech industry working mainly with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She has worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank in Bristol, the Product Managers’ meetup with regular events and talks on Product now with 800+ members and growing. This year Lily will be launching ProductCamp in Bristol and she joins the MTP team as co-host of  The Product Experience podcast.

A recovering music journalist and editor, Randy has been working as an interactive producer and product manager across the US and UK for nearly 20 years. After launching Amazon’s music stores in the US and UK, Randy has worked with museums and arts groups, online education, media & entertainment, retail and financial services. He’s held Head of Product roles at HSBC and Sainsbury’s, where he also directed their 100+-person product community. He’s also spoken at Mind the Product Engage (Hamburg), at a number of ProductTanks (London, Zurich, Manchester, Birmingham, Bristol, Oxford,  & Brighton… so far!) and at conferences across the US and Europe.

Music

Our theme music is from Hamburg-based Pau, featuring ProductTank Hamburg’s own Arne Kittler on bass. Listen to more on their Facebook page

Suggest a guest

Have you seen someone give a great talk? Suggest a guest to us here

Talk to us

* Tweet at us!

* Use the #podcast channel in the Mind the Product Slack community

Marty Cagan recently called her an “exceptional discovery coach”, but we’ve known that Petra Wille is special for a long time. One of the co-organisers of the MtP Engage conference in Hamburg (and a featured speaker at the Leadership Forum this year), she gave a talk a while back on Egoless Product Development. We wanted to [...] Read more »

The post Podcast: Don’t Worry About Being Cool with Petra Wille appeared first on Mind the Product.

Our Hosts
Lily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She’s currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She’s worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath.

Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury’s. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group’s Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether) and Product Coaches. He’s the author of What Do We Do Now? A Product Manager’s Guide to Strategy in the Time of COVID-19. A recovering music journalist and editor, Randy also launched Amazon’s music stores in the US & UK.

Marty Cagan recently called her an “exceptional discovery coach”, but we’ve known that Petra Wille is special for a long time. One of the co-organisers of the MtP Engage conference in Hamburg (and a featured speaker at the Leadership Forum this year), she gave a talk a while back on Egoless Product Development. We wanted to dig in deeper on what that means, the deck of cards she’s produced to help get you unstuck, and more.

Quote of the Episode

You are never alone in a room with your user – we’re just one of 60 apps on average…  If you don’t make the user’s life better, easier… then maybe you’re just not that relevant for them. Even if your brand is cool.

Listen if you’d like to learn more about:

* Alternatives to NPS

* When it’s important to be cool – and when it’s not

* Applying the Kano model

Links mentioned in this episode:

* Buy Petra’s 52 Questions card deck

* Tristan Harris’ TED talks

* Video: Building a winning product strategy from the Kano model by Jared Spool

* MTP Engage Hamburg tickets

Hosts

The Product Experience is hosted by Lily Smith and Randy Silver.

Lily enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. Lily has spent 13 years in the tech industry working mainly with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She has worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank in Bristol, the Product Managers’ meetup with regular events and talks on Product now with 800+ members and growing. This year Lily will be launching ProductCamp in Bristol and she joins the MTP team as co-host of  The Product Experience podcast.

A recovering music journalist and editor, Randy has been working as an interactive producer and product manager across the US and UK for nearly 20 years. After launching Amazon’s music stores in the US and UK, Randy has worked with museums and arts groups, online education, media & entertainment, retail and financial services. He’s held Head of Product roles at HSBC and Sainsbury’s, where he also directed their 100+-person product community. He’s also spoken at Mind the Product Engage (Hamburg), at a number of ProductTanks (London, Zurich, Manchester, Birmingham, Bristol, Oxford,  & Brighton… so far!) and at conferences across the US and Europe.

Music

Our theme music is from Hamburg-based Pau, featuring ProductTank Hamburg’s own Arne Kittler on bass. Listen to more on their Facebook page

Suggest a guest

Have you seen someone give a great talk? Suggest a guest to us here

Talk to us

* Tweet at us!

* Use the #podcast channel in the Mind the Product Slack community