The Engineering Leadership Podcast

Data leader and author, Shailvi Wakhlu, discusses practical strategies for becoming a better self-advocate and improving negative self-talk. She also explains how engineering leaders can coach their teams to become better self-advocates, including in scenarios like job promotions and negotiating a job offer.

Clemens Mewald, Head of Product at Instabase, discusses how to enhance engineering leadership using generative AI tools, addressing cross-functional collaboration challenges. They explore creative ways to implement GenAI beyond chatbots, questions to ask when leveraging GenAI capabilities, and rethinking productivity. Clemens also shares insights on translating technical knowledge into meaningful business outcomes.

Ken Pickering, SVP of Engineering @ Starburst Data, discusses navigating catastrophe and uncertainty, building a culture of resiliency, finding PMF for a second product, and leveraging first-principles. He emphasizes the importance of communication, context, problem-solving, and adaptability in driving a strong engineering culture.

Jamie Tischart, CTO @ Bettercloud, discusses strategies for creating efficient orgs & getting the most out of your eng team. Topics include coordinating multiple senior hires, identifying barriers, making meaningful decisions, improving cross-functional relationships, and turning communication into an asset.

Hubert Palan, Founder & CEO @ Product Board, discusses how to achieve successful collaboration between product and eng teams! He addresses the elements that make up healthy collaboration, common areas of tension between product & eng, and steps for aligning the teams on product vision, tooling, and processes. We also cover strategies for engineering leaders who want to contribute more to their business’s product vision, facilitation frameworks to improve communication between product management & eng teams, and how to best advocate for engineering’s most important considerations.ABOUT HUBERT PALANHubert Palan is Founder and CEO of Productboard. Driven by a passion for building truly excellent products, he started the company when he saw a hole in the market for a dedicated product management platform. Before Productboard, Hubert was VP of Product Management at GoodData and a management consultant at Accenture. Hubert mentors and advises startups and judges teams at entrepreneurship competitions and frequently speaks at his two alma maters – UC Berkeley, where he got his MBA, and the Czech Technical University, where he received an MSc. in Computer Science."When the engineering partner would come to the conversation talking about how other products that are successful have approached that and what choices they made, as opposed to just talking about the technology in the abstract, the business aspect of it, how it helped drive business results for other companies that are in similar markets or adjacent spaces, t hat's something that's super valuable because it shows that you are thinking about the technology, just not for the love of technology, but in the business context and in the appreciation of how the technology decisions drive the business outcomes.”- Hubert Palan   Check out Jellyfish's Scenario Planner to help you accelerate your development!With Jellyfish’s Scenario Planner, you can analyze tradeoffs, and optimize resources - to ensure your highest priority initiatives meet your delivery goals and deadlines!To learn more about how Scenario Planner can help you better accelerate, predict & plan your software delivery 👉 head to jellyfish.co/elcSHOW NOTES:Elements that contribute to successful collaboration between product & eng (2:34)Tools for understanding customer demographics & behavior (4:50)Greatest areas of friction between engineering and product (8:11)How to determine who is driving what initiative (11:03)Tactics for splitting responsibilities between EMs, PMs, tech leads, etc. (13:03)Hubert’s favorite tooling techniques (15:39)Strategies for aligning eng & product management processes (17:51)Frameworks for developing product vision & breaking it down into steps (19:27)Solving friction points between existing & new customers (23:16)How eng leaders can get involved with the product vision side of the business (24:28)Handling conflicting priorities & misalignment between teams (27:42)Tips for successful communication between product & eng (29:16)Advocate for engineering’s most important considerations (31:32)Specific conversations for facilitating communication between eng & PM teams (34:32)Steps to ensure engineers are involved in defining product vision / strategy (37:27)Rapid fire questions (40:55)LINKS AND RESOURCESOutlive: The Science and Art of Longevity - In this operating manual for longevity, Dr. Peter Attia draws on the latest science to deliver innovative nutritional interventions, techniques for optimizing exercise and sleep, and tools for addressing emotional and mental health.This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team:Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-HostJerry Li - Co-HostNoah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/ Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Bhawna Singh, CTO @ Okta, shares strategies for re-architecting your product roadmap, collaborating with customers, setting up guardrails while scaling, and communicating throughout the prioritization process. She also discusses the importance of 'secure by design' approach and its implementation at Okta.

Ritu Bhargava, Chief Product Officer at SAP, shares strategies for collaboration and navigating conflicts in large-scale organizations. Topics include building bridges, gaining buy-in, minimizing ego, and setting priorities. They discuss the impact of establishing support, learning from conflicts, and the importance of flexibility in setting priorities for large-scale orgs.

Laura Bell Main, CEO & Founder @ SafeStack, shares strategies for building a security team & tool stack. Topics discussed include prioritization conversations for assessing risks, considerations for early-stage security teams, behavior change & decision-making impact on security, communicating security in terms of tech debt, measuring tools' ROI, and strategies for mature companies in the 'messy middle' phase.

Jessica McKellar, CTO & Founder @ Pilot, shares strategies for achieving product-market fit, measuring important metrics, prioritizing long-term business building disciplines, and fostering collaboration between product, eng, & design teams. They discuss understanding the business trajectory, building business discipline, tracking metrics, assessing business tools, and trends like decarceration in California.

Alamelu Radhakrishnan, a technology leader and advisor, shares her frameworks for making great decisions quickly without fear. She discusses pitfalls to avoid, strategies for avoiding decision fatigue, and concepts like first principles and the 40% to 70% guide. She also talks about effective delegation and the process of delegating tasks and decision-making.