The Product Experience

Why do good people make bad products? You know the feeling: you're trying to complete a transaction on someone else's site or app,and it Just. Does. Not. Work. You wonder who the poor product manager is for it - or if there even is one. And then you remember the last time you sat in on customer support calls, and how hard your own product can be to use.  How does this happen? We chatted with Rachel Obstler, Heap's VP of Product, to understand how we can use metrics to suck less. Featured Links: Follow Rachel on LinkedIn and Twitter | Heap | 'Why Every UX Designer Should Be a Data Analyst'  Modus articleOur HostsLily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She’s currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She’s worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath. Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury’s. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group’s Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether) and Product Coaches. He’s the author of What Do We Do Now? A Product Manager’s Guide to Strategy in the Time of COVID-19. A recovering music journalist and editor, Randy also launched Amazon’s music stores in the US & UK.

Back in the dark ages of web design — back when the job title Webmaster was a thing — every team included someone who specialised in Information Architecture (IA). These days, that work is often considered to be part of UX, but that can mean that we're not doing the job well enough. Abby Covert joins us on the podcast to chat about why IA is important, how and when we should work with Information Architects, and how you can incorporate the principles and lessons from the discipline into your work.Featured Links: Follow Abby on LinkedIn and Twitter | Abby's Website | Abby's first book 'How To Make Sense Of Any Mess: Information Architecture For Everybody' | Pre-order Abby's forthcoming  book 'Stuck: The Purpose, Process And Craft Of Diagramming' | Max Cohn's 'Karl Marx Visits The Cheesecake Factory' | IHOP's omelette pancake batter secret feature at Huffington PostOur HostsLily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She’s currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She’s worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath. Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury’s. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group’s Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether) and Product Coaches. He’s the author of What Do We Do Now? A Product Manager’s Guide to Strategy in the Time of COVID-19. A recovering music journalist and editor, Randy also launched Amazon’s music stores in the US & UK.

We always encourage people to experiment with their product development techniques - but experimenting with your team can be a step too far.  We talked with Monzo Chief Product Officer Mike Hudack (ex-Facebook, Deliveroo) about how he approaches this: what's worked and what hasn't, avoiding cross-team dependencies, communication & collaboration, and much more.Featured Links: Follow Mike on LinkedIn and Twitter | Molly Graham's 'Give Away Your Legos' and Other Commandments for Scaling Startups Blog | Work with Mike at Monzo - he's hiring!Support our sponsorsGive Sprig (formerly Userleap) a try for free by visiting Sprig.com to build better products.Our HostsLily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She’s currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She’s worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath. Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury’s. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group’s Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether) and Product Coaches. He’s the author of What Do We Do Now? A Product Manager’s Guide to Strategy in the Time of COVID-19. A recovering music journalist and editor, Randy also launched Amazon’s music stores in the US & UK.

We've all had the experience of presenting to the leadership team - but what do they say about you when you leave the room?  What's it like to work at that level? And how do you get promoted to the C-suite? We talked with experienced product & boardroom vet Tanya Cordrey about all of this - and much more - for this week's podcast.Featured Links: Follow Tanya on LinkedIn and Twitter | Jörg Malang Five Ways of Becoming a Respected Product Leader in the C-Suite | The GuardianOur HostsLily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She’s currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She’s worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath. Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury’s. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group’s Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether) and Product Coaches. He’s the author of What Do We Do Now? A Product Manager’s Guide to Strategy in the Time of COVID-19. A recovering music journalist and editor, Randy also launched Amazon’s music stores in the US & UK.

When we sat down with Roll20.net Product Director Kenton Hanson for this week's podcast, we were hoping to hear tales of how he and his  product team (or band of adventurers!) went on quests to conduct user research. We wanted to hear about dodging orcs and dragons (stakeholders) while collecting  treasure (insights).Instead, we learned that it's only Roll20's marketing team that cast spells.  But we also learned a lot about conducting research for such a large, passionate community, qualifying candidates, sharing learnings, and much more.Featured Links: Follow Kenton on LinkedIn and Twitter | Kenton's Website | Roll20 | Patrick Lencioni's teamwork system The 5 Dysfunctions of a Team | Erika Hall's book Just Enough Research Give Sprig a try for free by visiting Sprig.com to build better products.Our HostsLily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She’s currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She’s worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath. Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury’s. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group’s Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether) and Product Coaches. He’s the author of What Do We Do Now? A Product Manager’s Guide to Strategy in the Time of COVID-19. A recovering music journalist and editor, Randy also launched Amazon’s music stores in the US & UK.

We all want more customers - but being able to understand who your best customer segments are, prioritise for them, and then land more of them?  That's a game-changer. We talked with Tamara Grominsky (Unbounce's VP of Strategy) about some easy-to-implement techniques that will help you do just that.Featured Links: Follow Tamara on LinkedIn and Twitter | Tamara's Website | Unbounce Segmentation Presentation | Strategyzer's canvas:  How to Capture Customer Jobs, Pains, & Gains that aren't Subjective | Forbes' Guide to the Van Westendorp Pricing Model | Profitwell's Patrick Campbell wrote about  Pricing for Bottom Line GrowthGive Sprig a try for free by visiting Sprig.com to build better products.Our HostsLily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She’s currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She’s worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath. Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury’s. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group’s Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether) and Product Coaches. He’s the author of What Do We Do Now? A Product Manager’s Guide to Strategy in the Time of COVID-19. A recovering music journalist and editor, Randy also launched Amazon’s music stores in the US & UK.

There's nothing more useless to a Product team than a big backlog.  Bringing backlogs to life - making them usable, relevant, and getting value from them - is something that transforms ordinary teams into extraordinary ones.  To guide us on how to do that, we asked Jeff Patton - creator of User Story Mapping - to join us on the podcast.Featured Links: Follow Jeff on LinkedIn and Twitter | Jeff's upcoming Training Sessions | Buy Jeff's book 'User Story Mapping' | Alistair Cockburn's book 'Writing Effective Use Cases'Give UserLeap a try for free by visiting UserLeap.com to build better products.Our HostsLily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She’s currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She’s worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath. Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury’s. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group’s Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether) and Product Coaches. He’s the author of What Do We Do Now? A Product Manager’s Guide to Strategy in the Time of COVID-19. A recovering music journalist and editor, Randy also launched Amazon’s music stores in the US & UK.

There's no better training ground than working in Emergency Services for learning how to  deal with stress, uncertainty, prioritisaton with imperfect information, and challenging stakeholders - all skills that are key to working in Product.  Nathan Henry joins on the podcast this week to chat about how he levereges the skills he developed as a 911 Operator. Featured Links: Follow Nathan on LinkedIn and Twitter | Brené Brown's 'Rising Strong' book | Work with Nathan at Postlight | A day in the life of a 911 Dispatcher videoGive UserLeap a try for free by visiting UserLeap.com to build better products.Our HostsLily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She’s currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She’s worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath. Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury’s. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group’s Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether) and Product Coaches. He’s the author of What Do We Do Now? A Product Manager’s Guide to Strategy in the Time of COVID-19. A recovering music journalist and editor, Randy also launched Amazon’s music stores in the US & UK.

As product people, it's important for us to love our products, our customers, and the problems we're trying to solve. (though not in that order!).  A lot of the time, though, we're not really working on something truly important.That's not the case for Randeep Sidhu—he got a call to help rescue the UK's Covid-19 app, dropped everything, and dove in. In this episode sponsored by UserLeap, he joined us on the podcast to talk about what that was like, what he learned, and how he built a team and re-launched the product in just 6 weeks.Featured Links: Follow Randeep on LinkedIn and Twitter｜NHS Covid-19 App | Gov.UK NHS Covid-19 App Privacy Notice | Understanding the Impact of Covid-19 on BAME Groups NHS Data ReportGive UserLeap a try for free by visiting UserLeap.com to build better products.Our HostsLily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She’s currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She’s worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath. Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury’s. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group’s Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether) and Product Coaches. He’s the author of What Do We Do Now? A Product Manager’s Guide to Strategy in the Time of COVID-19. A recovering music journalist and editor, Randy also launched Amazon’s music stores in the US & UK.

Over the last 15 years, Merissa has gone from New York media to Australian finance to German fintechs - with a number of stops in between.  She joins us on the podcast to talk about what she's learned along the way, including: from working in different cultures & industries, influencing executives,knowing if you want to be a people manager, and more!Featured Links: Follow Merissa on LinkedIn and Twitter｜Merissa's article 'Bringing product thinking to any team' | Merissa's article 'How to win at remote product management - Covid 19 edition' | Merissa's article 'Experiment like a boss' | Merissa's New Feature Template form  | Roman Pichler's Decision Making Chart  | Ken Norton's blog post,  'It's time to fight for a dual product management career path' UserLeapGive UserLeap a try for free by visiting UserLeap.com to build better products.Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.Our HostsLily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She’s currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She’s worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath. Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury’s. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group’s Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether) and Product Coaches. He’s the author of What Do We Do Now? A Product Manager’s Guide to Strategy in the Time of COVID-19. A recovering music journalist and editor, Randy also launched Amazon’s music stores in the US & UK.