Product Momentum Podcast

Product people get excited about solving problems that make users’ lives better. On that we can all agree. It’s the approach through which we choose to achieve that goal where differences arise. Sometimes the differences are more clear – Agile vs. Waterfall, for example. On other occasions, the difference is less obvious. Take user-centered vs. human-centered design. On their face, they seem synonymous; after all, users are human. But as we’ll hear from Kim Goodwin, the difference between them is more than a mere distinction. In this episode, hosts Sean and podcast newcomer Paul Gebel welcome Kim Goodwin, author, consultant, and a featured keynote speaker at ITX’s 2nd annual ITX UX 2019: Beyond the Pixels design conference. Paul is a new host for the show and a Senior Product Management at ITX. Kim discusses the power of human-centered design, in which product people must draw ever closer to those most familiar with the problems they face every day. It is those most familiar with the problems our product aims to solve, she says, who hold the key to their solutions. If we are to create products that solve those problems, we need to think in terms of meeting human needs. Read our blog post. The post 17 / Human-Centered Design appeared first on ITX Corp..

Imagine a world in which we drop the labels that segregate us as Lean, as Agile, as Waterfall, as Design Thinkers. Instead, imagine a world where we build the kinds of organizations and cultures that encourage and reward learning and customer centricity, that incentivize teams to deeply understand their customers, and that ensure that we’re always delivering value on their behalf. This is organizational agility as Jeff Gothelf describes it. In this episode, hosts Sean and Joe chat with Jeff Gothelf. He is an author, coach, consultant, and featured keynote speaker at ITX’s 2nd annual ITXUX2019: Beyond the Pixels conference. As you listen to the podcast, it’s clear that Jeff is focused on helping teams build healthy collaborations that deliver products and services that customers love, rather than holding fast to a philosophy that may yield less-than-optimal results. The world Jeff hopes for may not be the one he predicts will come to pass. But it’s a world that allows us to freely pick and choose the components and methodologies that work best.  “Our job [as product builders] is to meet them there. Understand their specific challenges, embrace the problem to be solved, the job to be done.” Read our blog post here. The post 16 / Developing Organizational Agility appeared first on ITX Corp..

Software product development is hard enough. It’s harder still when our investment of resources is based on a set of untested assumptions. The probability that we perfectly address each of the hundreds or thousands (millions?) of assumptions, hypotheses, and decisions is super low. Once we get comfortable with the idea that many of our assumptions are wrong, we can embrace the uncertainty and engage the anxiety that comes from it, says Dan Olsen. In this episode, Sean and Joe chat with Dan Olsen, Silicon Valley-based consultant, author, speaker, and proponent of the Lean Startup approach to software product development. He also hosts the Lean Product & Lean UX Meetup – a monthly gathering of nearly 8,000 members who come together to learn from industry experts and one another about product management, UX design, Lean Startup, growth hacking, and Agile development principles. Dan reminds us that the surest way to eliminate anxiety is to confront its causes. Articulate your hypotheses and test them. Whatever the outcome, the evidence you gather from user testing will boost your confidence and increase product-market fit as your anxiety fades. Dan’s unique insights on product-market fit – a perspective that serves as a melting pot where all the best ideas come together – are sure to be useful to you no matter your role or the product you work on. Read the full blog post here. The post 15 / Test Assumptions to Achieve Product-Market Fit appeared first on ITX Corp..

The common understanding is that to be successful in today’s digital environment designers need to solve problems while building products that people want and need to use. While that may be the core of it, it’s only the core. There’s so much more to it these days, Tim Wood explains. When we talk about interaction design, today’s rapidly emerging next-gen experiences, and the future of product design, designers now need to think about what it means to learn, to adapt, and to change. In this episode, Sean and Joe chat with Tim Wood, a designer with over 20 years of experience in the software and electronics spaces. Tim wears a couple of hats, one being a Professor of Industrial Design and Interactive Design at Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT), and the other as Design and User Experience Innovation Lead at Corning Inc. Playing in both sandboxes gives Tim the opportunity to engage in the private sector while peering beyond the horizon, to the future of product design, through the lens of higher education. His ability to draw conclusions relating to design from a variety of fields sets him apart, and you are sure to learn a lot from him in this episode. Read our blog post here The post 14 / Taking Design Beyond Today’s Conventions appeared first on ITX Corp..

Product people possess the creative and ethical wherewithal to persuade users to behave in ways that materially improve their lives – using our powers for good. The secret is to understand that, if we want to connect our product’s use to a repetitive consumer habit, we must identify the internal trigger that drives consumer behavior. Understanding this crucial piece can explain how software products become so habit forming, Nir Eyal explains. In this episode, Sean and Joe chat with Nir Eyal, a keynote speaker at ITX’s Product Momentum: Beyond the Features product conference (June 19-21), whose work on Behavioral Design has brought him and us to the intersection of psychology, technology, and business. The goal of his work is to help product people design the products and services that consumers want to use and that drive positive, habit-forming behaviors. Nir combines a gift for observation with an uncanny awareness to convert life experiences into problem statements that ultimately lead to research, learning, and discovery. Listen to this episode to hear more from Nir about: The rationale behind his two books, Hooked and Indistractable How human tendencies play into habit and distraction How to ensure your product is creating a positive impact in the world Read our blog post here The post 13 / Product Design Driving Positive Behaviors appeared first on ITX Corp..

When you’re building software products, do you think only about adding features? Or do you think in terms of hiring your software products to solve a problem you have? Context is critical. Product managers should consider new products – and their features – in the same way they would new employees, Mike Belsito says. What problems am I hiring them to solve? What will be my return on investment? In this episode, Sean and Joe chat with Mike Belsito, a startup product and business developer with a rich background in creating big, important things out of nothing. In 2014, Mike co-founded Product Collective, now a 20,000-member community of like-minded product people. He conceived the idea to help folks like himself navigate this untamed wilderness called product management. Out of this product community, Mike spawned INDUSTRY a conference in just its fifth year and it’s already one of the largest product management summits anywhere in the world. Mike describes how him and his team, as product people, have grown and improved Product Collective and INDUSTRY. Listen to hear how they apply product management processes like the Jobs-to-be-Done (JTBD) framework, qualitative feedback, and metrics to their community and conference. Read our blog post here The post 12 / Treating Your Product Community Like a Product appeared first on ITX Corp..

Design sprints introduce experimentation and the scientific method to the world of digital product development. Like experimentation, the process is not about success or failure. It’s really about validation, getting quickly to the point of success or failure with considerably less investment of time, resources, and money, and Jonathan Courtney knows this from experience. In this episode, hosts Sean and Joe catch up with Jonathan Courtney, co-founder and CEO of AJ&Smart. AJ&Smart is a 21-person product studio in Berlin, Germany that has facilitated more than 200 design sprints since 2016, with Jonathan being involved in about 100 of these. A product designer by training and trade, he commands attention through the engaging, humorous, and impassioned way he talks about using the design sprint process to help companies that struggle with defining their product goals. In fact, sometimes a design sprint is about deciding that the product shouldn’t go to market, and that’s okay. Listen to this episode to hear from Jonathan about: Exercises you can add to your sprints to make them run more efficiently How to identify what does – and doesn’t – warrant a design sprint Differences between the North American and European product and design landscapes Read our blog post here The post 11 / Validating Products Through Design Sprints appeared first on ITX Corp..

The product manager role has been around for decades, but its contributions have been generally overlooked and misunderstood.  No longer is that the case, according to the 2019 State of Product Leadership report, prepared by Pendo + Product Collective. In this episode, hosts Sean and Joe speak with Pendo Chief Marketing Officer Jake Sorofman about the recent report and the continuing evolution of the product manager role. Product management is a “role on the rise,” Jake Sorofman says, “but also one in a state of transition. It’s only in the last 10 years that product management has really come into focus as a very strategic part of the business.”  Product management is becoming a more in-demand role in the business space, with product managers coming from a variety of backgrounds from design to computer science to marketing. And this is to be expected as products are becoming more complex and the experience becomes more important, Jake says. He shares what he thinks makes a great product manager: Empathy – relating to the customer’s pains and joys Getting others on your team to care as much as you do Balancing the vision-focused and tactics-focused elements of your job Listen to the full episode to hear more from Jake Sorofman of Pendo, and read the 2019 State of Product Leadership report here. Read our blog post here The post 10 / Evolution of the Product Manager Role appeared first on ITX Corp..

How do we know our work is working? In other words, how do product designers know their work product is solving the problem it was intended to solve? These are the kinds of questions that keep us, and Kate Rutter, up at night. “It’s an insidious question,” says Kate, designer, tech junkie, artist, and Principal at Intelleto. In this episode of the Product Momentum Podcast, hosts Sean and Joe chat with Kate Rutter about metrics, but not just those that only measure performance. Kate says the true power comes from our teams’ alignment around metrics as a very tangible element that people can get behind. “It gets really exciting when you…start to see metrics as human behaviors with your products stated in numerical terms,” she says. Metrics are important for everyone from business executives to designers. Kate mentions Joshua Porter’s quote that, “your metrics will be as unique as your business.” It’s not only tracking data, but tracking the correct data, that will tell you if your work is working. Listen to hear some specific tools and examples you can use to measure the success of your product, as well as tips from Lean thinking. Read our blog post here The post 09 / Finding the Right Metrics appeared first on ITX Corp..

Have you ever wondered what exactly it takes to create great software products? Those who spend even a little time in this space learn quickly that there is no wizard behind the curtain. It’s not magic, Rohini Pandhi says in today’s episode of Product Momentum. There is no special sauce or magic potion that leads to success in this space. But roadmaps can help you along the way. In this episode, hosts Sean and Joe speak with Rohini Pandhi, currently on the product team at Square, about her experiences developing and implementing product roadmaps. Product roadmaps are high-level plans made up of paths that connect a customer’s problems with a solution that drives business forward. Although Rohini shares a lot of tactical tips and strategies from her team at Square in this episode, including: Getting the whole team involved in creating and working through backlogs, and using “t-shirt sizing” as part of this Collaboration between teams of different disciplines How to motivate the team through customer conversations All in all, great software products are made when a combination of talented, creative, hard-working people grind through priorities. Using product roadmaps helps to make sure you never lose sight of the customers’ destination along the journey. Read our blog post here The post 08 / Planning & Prioritizing Product Roadmaps appeared first on ITX Corp..