Product Momentum Podcast

Inclusion is for everyone, says guest Bernadette Smith, CEO of Equality Institute. And, she adds, it’s good for business. Companies that prioritize diversity, equity, and inclusion are more profitable than those that don’t. But the key piece of DEI best practices, she concludes, is inclusion. “In order to realize the financial benefits, we have to unleash psychological safety; we have to unleash inclusion.” In this episode, Bernadette joins Sean and Paul and shares her best practices for bringing an inclusive mindset to your organization, many of which are captured in her best-seller, Inclusive 360: Proven Solutions for an Equitable Organization. She “keeps it real” in this discussion and is not afraid to admit that she’s still learning, too. “We’re all on our own learning journey, whatever it happens to be or look like,” she says. “And when leaders model that, and share a sense of their own vulnerability, it gives other folks permission to do the same.” Bernadette presents the A-R-C Method, a framework for getting to connection before content – a mantra that drives better conversations among teams. With practice, this simple method can help you create a more inclusive environment where there is genuine learning among individuals from diverse backgrounds. Ask. Be curious. Learn more about another person’s perspective. Allow yourself to be vulnerable. Respect. Be present and attentive. Listen…actively. Trust will follow. Connect. We’re all on our own learning journey. Using the A-R-C method is one way to foster the inclusion that drives innovation. Catch the whole pod with Bernadette Smith, and bring a true DEI mindset to your organization. Save the date! The ITX Product + Design Conference is back. June 22-23, Rochester, NY. Learn more. The post 102 / Driving Innovation Through Inclusion, with Bernadette Smith appeared first on ITX Corp..

The Product Momentum Podcast team is taking a brief pause this week but be sure to enter our 100th Episode Book Giveaway. We hope you’re enjoying some R&R time as well. See you again in the New Year! The post Product Momentum Podcast – 100th Episode Book Giveaway appeared first on ITX Corp..

No product manager wants to build a bad version of their software. But sometimes that’s what it takes to accelerate the learning process. Well, maybe not a bad version. But an early, admittedly incomplete one. Something you can quickly get out in front of users, gather some feedback about, and iterate on. Today’s podcast guest, Candu co-Founder and CEO Jonathan Anderson, explains, “If you then decide to go down the development route, you’ll be so much smarter, so much further along the path of figuring out what the right thing to build is.” This concept of drafting is super-valuable, he adds, “but not because we know what the end product will look when we’re done. But because we don’t.” Candu provides no-code web tools for SaaS apps; at its core, no-code is like products for product people. It helps non-tech-savvy product managers bring even greater impact to their teams – a sort of counter-punch to the vexing “all the responsibility, none of the authority” PM mantra. “So often we think of building software a little bit like a sacred cow, something only a handful can do along a very prescriptive process.” Jonathan says. “Maybe it’s time to allow non-technical people – like product managers, growth teams, maybe even customer teams – to actually build some of these interfaces themselves.” No-code, low-code tools help transform passive, receive-only PMs just waiting for requirements to fall from on high into more engaged product builders. We’re better positioned to shift the development effort upstream and figure out where that cut-off is – when the “bad” version of our software is still good enough to ship. Be sure to catch the whole conversation with Jonathan Anderson; and don’t forget about our 100th Podcast Episode Book Giveaway. Enter for your chance to win! The post 101 / How No-Code Tools Accelerate the Learning Process, with Jonathan Anderson appeared first on ITX Corp..

When UX design guru Jesse James Garrett first started out, user experience as we know it today wasn’t even a thing. Yet he remains among the most prominent voices in digital product design. As both witness and catalyst for more than 20 years, Jesse’s work in this space triggered much of the UX evolution and inspired the cultural change we’re now experiencing within our organizations. The emergence of product and design leadership has accelerated the ‘professionalization’ of traditional roles and has empowered teams to deliver better products and user outcomes. As Jesse explains in this – the 100th episode of the Product Momentum Podcast – “The exciting thing is that many product leaders are finding the way to gain the empowerment and the support and the leverage to drive not just good product outcomes, but organizational outcomes that fundamentally shift the way these organizations approach and think about what they do.” Product leaders are forever balancing the technical realities of what it takes to deliver a good product with the market realities of the business model, the competitive landscape, and customer realities, he continues. “And what I’m seeing are product leaders turning to design as a way to deepen their expertise … around that customer piece of the equation,” Jesse adds. “The designers who are elevating into those more senior leadership roles are the ones who are able to frame design in terms of its ability to deliver value around user insight more than around delivery.” Sean and Paul chat with Jesse not to wax nostalgic about the early days of UX, but instead to discuss the growing influence that human-centered design is having on human-centered decision-making, which eventually brings about a human-centered culture within organizations. Listen in to hear more tips from Jesse James Garrett about strategic leadership and the role of design in delivering value in this 100th episode of Product Momentum. You can also watch our conversation with Jesse James Garrett on the Product Momentum YouTube channel! The post 100 / The Emergence of Product + Design Leadership, with Jesse James Garrett appeared first on ITX Corp..

Make no mistake. Artificial intelligence and machine learning are super-powerful tools; their benefits seem endless. But let’s not confuse them with superpowers. AI possesses a fragility, says Dipanwita Das, co-founder and CEO of Sorcero, who is working to improve patient outcomes through advanced analytics. More blind spot than flaw, the fragility of AI is nuance that algorithms cannot now account for. Ironically, even paradoxically, AI requires interaction with humans to reveal its true power. Thought of in this way, AI quickly becomes more approachable. It’s really thinking about the people who build the tool, those who interpret its suggestions and predictions, and all the lives impacted by the outcomes down the road. Dipanwita shares some examples relating to human health. Dipanwita continues: “So it goes right back to us in how we’re collecting and organizing the data, how we’re designing the products, how we are applying this AI, and then what we are doing with its suggestions that will determine the end outcome.” Anything we have not factored in, she explains, we have to account for somewhere else. If you don’t, you invite uncertainty as to whether the AI-driven product feature will perform as it needs to. “AI is neither the silver bullet nor is it a demon,” Dipanwita concludes. “It is, at the end of the day, a tool, like anything else in software, to help us do our jobs better.” Catch the entire podcast with Dipanwita Das as she joins ITX co-hosts Paul Gebel and Roberta Oare to discuss – The role of bias in data collection and interpretation, and gaps it creates The impact of nuance on user experience design Criteria for finding the right balance of AI + Human Interaction Sorcero’s “human in the loop” approach – a built-in touchpoint where an expert is able to give active feedback. The post 99 / Overcoming the ‘Fragility of AI’ to Improve User Outcomes appeared first on ITX Corp..

Accessibility is not one of those things that’s done well when it’s tacked on to the end of a project, Sheri Byrne-Haber says. “It’s going to cost more, it’s going to put your schedule at risk, and it’s not going to offer the best experience.” Embedding accessibility into product design early on, she adds, becomes a whole lot easier when your organization’s mindset defaults toward diversity and inclusion. In this episode of Product Momentum, Sheri joins Paul Gebel and guest co-host Collene Burns, ITX’s VP of Global Talent. She explains what happens when the why of product design comes before the what. You’re free to escape a rigid checklist mentality and naturally consider how your product will be experienced in the world. When you hire the best and brightest – regardless of ability – accessible design outcomes follow because the teams are diverse. You start to see it in the DNA of the products they develop. In our conversation, Sheri also discusses the implications that new technologies have on accessibility. “Technology is moving faster than our ethical use can keep up,” she says. She adds that we can close the gap by building teams who think about all the humans who use their products, and designing experiences that actually solve the problem the product is trying to solve. Sheri Byrne-Haber is a prominent global thought leader in the fields of engineering, accessibility, and inclusion.  A senior accessibility architect at VMware, she was recently named a LinkedIn Top Voice for Social Impact 2022. The post 98 / Digital Accessibility & Inclusive Design: Understanding the Why appeared first on ITX Corp..

Kent Weathers is Chief Product Officer at Brainmates and Director at the Association of Product Professionals (APP) – valuable perspectives for a conversation about the future of software product management. In this episode of the Product Momentum Podcast, Kent Weathers joins Paul Gebel and asks us product people to imagine for a moment a world without waste – specifically, the staggering 70% of the estimated $6.8 trillion investment that companies will make in digital transformation in 2023 (HBR). As product managers, our role must be to teach organizations not only how to build things better – but also how to build better things. “That’s what product management does; that’s the missing component,” he adds. Despite making tremendous progress in recent years, professional development for product managers has been slowed. Not by the scarcity of training/learning options for them, but “by organizations that unintentionally prevent them from doing good product work.” Kent’s mission (and, by association, APP’s) is to empower product people to do what they know to do by helping C-suites structure their organizations and develop their processes around product. The key is to develop within the organization a product management practice, Kent explains. “A practice is about aligning all the necessary product functions and all the functional heads around good, sound product management and then developing a culture where people are empowered, where they’re trusted, where they know what to do.” The end result, he adds, is an organization that can unleash the power that product management brings to the table. “Without it,” he concludes, “they’ll never actually see the true value of product.” Catch the entire episode to learn more about Kent’s and APP’s shared approach: Problem. Unlike the fields of law, accounting, and education (among others), no clear standards exist that guide candidates and prospective employers where product managers are in their careers. Action. Through APP, Kent is working to get all the voices together to create – and codify – industry-standard best practices for the field of product management. Objective. Provide a genuine assessment of where product managers are in their careers, and what hiring managers should be looking for, to optimize the PMs’ fit within their organizations. The post 97 / Empowering Product Managers To Unleash Product’s True Value appeared first on ITX Corp..

When Ralph Dandrea founded ITX a quarter-century ago, the notion of product was a whole lot different than it is today. In 1997, he and other product builders thought about software through the lens of themselves as users – not of the end users who were truly using the products they built. That thinking evolved over time, not unlike the software industry itself. “In those early days,” Ralph explains, “we weren’t thinking through all the edge cases that would be discovered out in the real world. Product thinking gives you this opportunity to look at something separate and distinct and to analyze it in a way that you really can’t if you’re just trying to substitute yourself as the user.” In this special episode of the Product Momentum Podcast, ITX Founder and CEO Ralph Dandrea joins Sean and Paul to recognize the company’s 25-year history – from the Internet’s infancy and Y2K to the post-Covid era and beyond – but also to celebrate the people who helped create the culture of innovation that ITX enjoys today. The attention paid to culture at ITX is not accidental. At the intersection of intentionality and culture lies an environment where not just product innovation thrives – but also the people who drive those innovations. “That’s the foundation of our work at ITX,” Ralph says. “We’re creating this environment where we use our values, like Integrity, to create a sense of workability. We share similar beliefs; and we have expectations about how each other is going to behave,” he adds. “It makes life so much easier, makes our work so much easier. We’re lot more efficient than we would otherwise be.” “As I reflect on these past 25 years, I feel gratitude,” Ralph concludes. “I’m very grateful to everyone who’s ever worked at ITX, many of whom are still around me, which has been fantastic. A lot of it is because of the fun we’ve been able to enjoy because the environment has been set up the right way. “While I’m proud of where we are, I’m even more excited to see where we go next.” Catch the entire conversation with Ralph to hear his insights on the next 25 years – People. The broad trend is that people will be even more at the center of what we do. As product people, we can facilitate that through the software we build by including more users with different needs and goals. Discovery. The fun part is discovering trends as they’re happening, experimenting to see what works, and bringing solutions to our customers as a new innovation. Value. We look at innovation from the value that’s created in the outcome. Everything we do to innovate is about helping people do what they want to accomplish in a way that better suits their needs. The post ITX at 25: Creating a Culture of Product Innovation appeared first on ITX Corp..

There’s a lot that product managers can do to empower themselves and build reputational capital within their organizations. But the path is not a straight one. We know all too well the imbalance between our substantial responsibilities and the comparatively meager authority we have to execute on them. “It’s a tough world out there for product managers,” Paul Ortchanian says. “It’s an up-and-coming function that’s been around for a while, but it’s still misunderstood by most leaders in organizations.” In this episode of the Product Momentum Podcast, Bain Public’s Paul Ortchanian sits down with Paul Gebel to discuss not only the tactics required to navigate everyday challenges, but also the career strategies we need to build reputational capital within our organizations that allow us to effectively do our jobs. There’s a case to be made for training organizational leaders about what a product manager can be, and to deepen their understanding of what the product manager role is truly capable of. “As much as PMs try to learn and practice their craft, there’s some critical soft skills that we need to learn and apply,” Paul adds. “We want to make sure that we’re planting the seeds that help develop product managers of the future to work within those organizations where the process, the tools, and the value we bring is well understood by leaders.” Catch the entire pod with Paul Ortchanian to learn his take on – The importance of empathizing with Customer Support and Sales, as they are proxies of your B2B customers How to manage your leadership team and convince them to embrace PM best practices The power behind the “good, old-fashioned business case” for prioritizing decisions Putting yourself in the position of problem solver – proposing more than a feature, but a feature that actually solves the problem The post 96 / How Product Managers Build Reputational Capital Within Their Organizations appeared first on ITX Corp..

As consumers of everything from soap to software, all we’re looking for is better, easier, simpler. Most of the time we can’t explain why a thing is better; we just know delight when we experience it. “That’s the height of product management done well,” says Martina Lauchengco. “And it’s also when product marketing takes over to help the world understand why your product is truly different.” Martina Lauchengco is a Partner at Costanoa Ventures and author of LOVED: How to Rethink Marketing for Tech Products. In this episode of the Product Momentum Podcast, she joins Sean and Paul to explore the role product marketing plays in a go-to-market strategy. Too often, Martina explains, we emphasize the marketing piece and fail to recognize the connection between our product and the humans who are using it. And that’s the big thing that gets missed. “Product marketing is the act of connecting the market to the product, not just promoting the product in the market.” There’s actually a strategic framework for all the activities that bring your product successfully to market, she adds. “And it represents a very big difference in terms of the actions that are taken. First is the when and why. Then comes the what, followed by the how. In that order.” Martina’s framework examines not only the activities we product managers need to navigate. We’re also responsible for encouraging our teams to share product market-facing activities – each of which is assigned a specific role. Listen to the entire pod to learn more about Martina’s product marketing framework, including the fundamental roles responsible for its execution: the Ambassador, the Strategist, the Storyteller, and the Evangelist. Other insights from Martina Lauchengco: Owning the market is about owning the conversations in your category – and you can do that pre-launch. Product marketing is more a framework than a checklist of activities. Building software is not about the features you add; it’s about making someone more successful at the job they’re trying to do. The post 95 / The Product Marketing Framework: Connecting the Market to the Product appeared first on ITX Corp..