Teams Phone Product Management - Balancing Innovation and Fundamentals
Jan 2, 2025
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Emily Kirby George, a Senior Product Manager at Microsoft Teams, shares her journey from Skype for Business support to leading innovations in Teams Phone. She discusses the challenge of balancing groundbreaking AI developments with essential service stability and reliability. Emily emphasizes the importance of understanding user needs amid product management complexities, especially for varied clients. Discover how Microsoft prioritizes features while navigating legacy systems and delivering robust communication solutions.
Emily Kirby-George emphasizes the crucial balance between maintaining traditional phone system features and embracing innovative AI solutions in Microsoft Teams Phone.
The importance of understanding user needs and feedback is highlighted as essential for developing features that enhance productivity and reliability in Teams Calling.
Deep dives
Understanding the Journey of Product Management
The role of a product manager is shaped significantly by real-world experiences and customer feedback. Emily Kirby-George shares her path from supporting Skype for Business to her current position overseeing Teams Calling features. Her background in product support provided her with a solid foundation and insights into the intricacies of user needs and challenges. This perspective informs her approach to feature development, emphasizing the importance of understanding the end user's experience and pain points.
Balancing Legacy Systems and Modern Needs
In the realm of calling, there is a constant tension between maintaining traditional features and developing innovative solutions. Companies often have varied requirements; some demand legacy features for large deployments, while others prefer simplicity for smaller organizations. Emily highlights a recent feature addition, delayed simultaneous ring, which, while not flashy, addresses a critical gap affecting productivity for many users. This illustrates the necessity of catering to both extremes of the customer base to ensure satisfaction across the board.
Prioritizing Fundamentals amidst Innovation
The focus on fundamental features often takes precedence over the more exciting AI innovations, as maintaining a stable and functional product is crucial. The planning process for new features is complex and involves difficult decisions regarding what to prioritize. Emily points out that many necessary features may not attract attention but are vital to the product's integrity and user satisfaction. This underscores the importance of investing time and resources in foundational capabilities to provide a reliable experience for all users.
Emily Kirby George, Microsoft Teams Product Manager at Microsoft, shares her unique perspective on product management in the world of Microsoft Teams Phone, sharing challenges of balancing innovation with fundamental reliability.
Emily's path from support Skype for Business to a Senior Product Manager on the Microsoft Teams Calling team
How Microsoft prioritizes features, balancing traditional phone system requirements with new AI opportunities
The importance of maintaining robust, reliable fundamentals in Teams Phone and ensuring service stability
How AI is being integrated into Teams Phone
Thanks to Logitech, this episode's sponsor, for their continued support.
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