Product Momentum Podcast

Cassidy Fein is currently leading growth for Autopatch within Windows Servicing and Delivery at Microsoft. Based in NYC, she has over 10 years of experience driving product innovation, scaling teams, and delivering customer-centric solutions. Throughout her career, she’s demonstrated a passion for empowering the next generation of product leaders, especially through her teaching with Mind the Product. In this episode, Cassidy sits down with Product Momentum co-hosts Sean Murray and Dan Sharp to take a closer look at product strategy – and its execution. Using Nvidia as an example, Cassidy describes how the chip maker applied three core tenets of strategy, as outlined by Richard Rumelt in his book, Good Strategy, Bad Strategy, to become one of the world’s most valuable companies. They are: First, declare your hypothesis that gets at the root cause of the problem. Next, apply a guiding policy – your overall approach to solving it. Finally, execute a coherent action that not only makes sense to your team, but also aligns with everything your team is driving toward. Here’s what else you’ll learn from Cassidy: What Good Strategy Looks Like Cassidy explores the characteristics of good and bad strategy, and explains how knowing the difference can empower teams. There’re a couple ways to look at this, she says. “First, a good strategy should be easy to understand,” Cassidy adds. “You shouldn’t have to have a deep, complex understanding of your space and the technology within it to be able to explain it to someone else. A good strategy is also actionable; it includes all the things you and your team are doing to ladder up to fulfill that strategy.” Creating a Local Strategy When the overarching company strategy is unclear, teams should work to create their own local strategy. “I try to empower folks to understand how, by creating a local strategy, they can make their teams understand what it is that they’re trying to accomplish. As long as you’re able to protect your local area, protect your space, and make sure that that it’s cogent,” Cassidy explains, “you’re likely to have better success.”  The Consultant’s Mindset When product managers adopt a consultative mindset – i.e., understanding their market, competition, and how their products generate revenue – it helps in making strategic decisions that align with business objectives. “Thinking like a consultant, especially for product managers in a junior position, means being up to date on the competitive analysis of similar products in the market, of your pricing and packaging, and how your sales team is incentivized.” Usability vs. Business Value Cassidy addresses the tension between usability and business needs, making clear it’s not an either-or question. A successful product, she says, should meet customer needs while also driving revenue for the business. “The question of which is more important is a bit of a fallacy,” Cassidy explains. “I don’t think we get to choose between the two. If we’re going after a successful product, we need to find the right balance between the two.” Continuous Learning and Improvement Our conversation concludes with Cassidy’s recommendation for resources that product managers can utilize that will enhance their strategic thinking and storytelling skills. ITX’s Product + Design Conference returns to Rochester, June 25-26. Be sure to stay up to date with all the latest updates on Keynote Day agenda and speakers. Learn more here! The post 161 / 3 Core Tenets of Product Strategy and Execution, with Cassidy Fein appeared first on ITX Corp..

Sarah Doody, CEO of Career Strategy Lab, sat down with Product Momentum co-hosts Sean Murray and Dan Sharp to offer advice to UX designers out there who are frustrated by the volatility in today’s job market. Treat your career like a product you’re designing, Sarah says, and focus on the essential skills you need in a turbulent job market. This is what you’ll learn: Job Searchers. Think of your career as a Product. Sarah offers 3 pro tips:Think about how you’re designing your career? Marketing your career? Selling your career? Cut out the noise. Maintain a balance between collecting information and acting on it. Vet the people who offer career advice. Ask for evidence that shows their advice actually works. Expand your search beyond big tech. These days, every company is a “tech company,” so look to industries like Finance, Healthcare, Education, and Travel for opportunities. Focus on the timeless skills that will remain useful for years to come – e.g., communication skills, business acumen, relationship-building vs. software-specific skills that will continue to change. Hiring managers. Refine job descriptions to focus less on “kitchen sink” responsibilities and more on the day-to-day. Consider applicants who may have gaps, but whom you can train to fill that skill set. Product managers. Include your UX Researcher in the conversation, starting on Day 1. There’s a growing recognition that UX research enhances the user experience and reduces rework. Engage with Users. Maintain a consistent pulse on user feedback through community engagement and research cadences to inform product development. ITX’s Product + Design Conference returns to Rochester, June 25-26. Our first 3 keynote speakers have been announced! Learn more here! The post 160 / Designing Your Career: Pro Tips for Navigating Today’s Job Market, with Sarah Doody appeared first on ITX Corp..

In this episode, AgilityInsights’ Trisha Hall joins Paul Gebel for a first-ever joint podcast for Product Momentum — here, with Trisha’s Illuminating Insights. Trisha leads the enterprise solutions and government contracting team at AgilityInsights, and Paul is a VP of Delivery at ITX as well as long-time host of Product Momentum. In this inspiring conversation between friends and colleagues, Paul and Trisha explore the deep connection between organizational agility and the delivery of business value. They also discuss the role AI can play to generate user insights that help product teams convert strategy to desired outcomes. AgilityInsights’ Rebrand + Platform EvolutionAs Trisha explains, AgilityInsights (formerly known as AgilityHealth) recently went through a rebrand that included an extensive evolution of their platform and managed services AgilityInsights is better positioned to help business leaders gain insights into the value their teams are delivering. “We can’t continue to create these spinning tornadoes of work inside of our information technology organizations,” Trisha adds. “We’re focused on how we can use the data we gather to deliver value to our client organizations.” Not surprisingly, AI has found a role to play here. Leveraging Data to Facilitate ConversationArmed with more than 12 million data points in their team health radar alone, AgilityInsights is working with AI tools – embedded directly into their platform – harvesting this customer feedback to help business leaders understand where they need to lean in and which obstacles need to be removed so that their teams can continue to excel. Importantly, a human remains in the decisionmaking loop. “It’s really about having that conversation with leaders about what is most valuable – not whose project is most important. Those are two very different things.” ITX’s Product + Design Conference returns to Rochester, June 25-26. Interested in learning who will be keynoting? Find out here! The post 159 / How Agility Connects Organizational Strategy to Value Delivered, with Trisha Hall appeared first on ITX Corp..

Tami Reiss, also known as The Product Leader Coach, brings together the strategy, process, and mindset tools we need to perform our roles as product leaders with the ability to think and communicate like an executive. A coach is able to see the whole field, and they’re watching us, their player, from an outsider’s perspective. “Beyond that,” Tami says, “a coach is a great sounding board; the higher we go in our careers, the less we can turn to our bosses for advice. They’ve either never done our specific job, or we don’t want them to think we don’t know how to do it.” A coach can also help product leaders avoid these critical mistakes: Lacking a Clear Vision. “One of the biggest mistakes made by product leaders is failing to ensure there is a clearly defined vision,” Tami explains. Vision – that “story of the future” we’re trying to create in the world – helps people internalize what the world will look like because of the things we are building.” Insufficient Understanding of Finance. “The biggest jump product leaders have to make is understanding how to translate customer value into business value,” Tami says. Product leaders who lack financial acumen may face challenges in managing budgets, justifying investments, and driving profitable growth. Overlooking Inorganic Growth. “Product people spend their entire careers finding problems, building solutions, and launching products that solve those problems,” Tami offers. But they overlook the fact that sometimes you’re not going to be the person to build the solution.” Inorganic growth means you might have to find a partner; you might have to acquire the solution; or you might be acquired. Inorganic growth is about business growth, Tami concludes. It’s not about  product growth. Prefer the video experience? Check out the Product Momentum YouTube channel to catch our conversation with Tami Reiss and all our recent guests! Save the date! ITX’s Product + Design Conference returns to Rochester, June 25-26. Find out more! The post 158 / Top 3 Mistakes Product Leaders Make – And How To Avoid Them, with Tami Reiss appeared first on ITX Corp..

Katie Dove is an applied behavioral scientist and managing director of Irrational Labs, a  product design and behavior change lab. She and her team help companies like Airbnb, Microsoft, and Uber answer the question, Why do our customers behave like they do? and then help them design creative solutions that work. We caught up with Katie for an in-person chat at INDUSTRY; in our conversation, we discussed: Human Value in Products. Katie unpacked the notion of amplifying user value – human value, to be more precise – stressing the importance of understanding user behavior and needs, rather than just focusing on economic value. “When I talk about human value,” Katie explains, “I’m actually talking about what’s created for the user in the moment of using a product or an experience online. And so I contrast this a little bit with economic value. When you do that in product,” she adds, “people will come back more, they’ll be more loyal, and they’ll increase their engagement.” The Power of Feeling Known. It’s crucial for users to feel recognized and known by product builders. In fact, during her talk, Katie pointed to research that says it’s more important that the consumer feels known than it is for the consumer to know us. As product leaders, we can boost our users’ sense of feeling known through personalized experiences and interactions that build trust, loyalty, and engagement. Companies like Duolingo are successful because “one of the very first things they do is get to know you,” Katies adds. They go from knowing nothing about their user to knowing a lot by guiding them  through their onboarding quiz, which asks about the user’s preferences and increases their expectation that things will be tailored to their needs.” Balancing Personalization and Privacy. How do we balance our desire to personalize offerings with our users’ desire for privacy? One way, Katie explains, is by being transparent about data usage and actually asking users questions to ensure they feel comfortable with how their data is being used. “By asking questions, you’re doing two things,” Katie says. “You’re giving people the opportunity to have some agency in the process, and you’re making it explicit what you’re collecting and why.” Katie also points to Irrational Labs’ Three B model of behavior change. It involves Conducting a Behavioral audit, which maps out all the steps required to get to that key behavior Exploring the user’s psychological Barriers to performing that behavior, and Increasing the Benefits of taking the desired action. Be sure to catch the entire episode to learn more from Katie Dove about using behavioral science and psychology to help your team drive user value. Save the date! ITX’s Product + Design Conference returns to Rochester, June 25-26. Find out more! The post 157 / Applying Behavioral Science To Drive User Value, with Katie Dove appeared first on ITX Corp..

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 – Treating stakeholders as cutomers, Understanding/prioritizing stakeholder needs, and Bruce’s Stakeholder Canvas, a tool that helps product leaders with stakeholder alignment and prioritization challenges 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 CustomersOne 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 NeedsProduct 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 CanvasUsing 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. The post 156 / Bruce McCarthy: Prioritizing Stakeholder Objectives Is the Hardest Job in Product appeared first on ITX Corp..

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. The post 155 / Integrating Product Management Principles into Education, with Brad Eiben appeared first on ITX Corp..

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! The post 154 / How to Use AI: Separating the Hype from the Helpful, with Dan Chuparkoff appeared first on ITX Corp..

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.” The post 153 / Building Products for Technical Audiences, with Bukky Adebayo and Rye Castillo appeared first on ITX Corp..

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. The post 152 / Matt LeMay: The Consequences of Low-Impact Work on Sound Product Management appeared first on ITX Corp..