Product Thinking

In this Dear Melissa segment, Melissa answers subscribers’ questions about learning how to compromise and collaborate with fellow product managers and new team members. Q: How do I work with other PMs in a productive manner and avoid an unhealthy competitive atmosphere? [1:41] Q: How can I improve a relationship with a new PM and our ability to collaborate? [6:31] Q: How do you determine how much you need to reduce the scope of a feature when defining an MVP? Do you have any ideas for how my PM and I can come to an agreement? [13:36] Resources Melissa Perri on LinkedIn | Twitter MelissaPerri.com

Adam Thomas is a product management expert, speaker, writer, and the Lead Product Manager at SmartRecruiters. Adam has spent his professional life helping teams reduce friction and craft product strategies that lead to better outcomes for their organizations. He joins Melissa Perri on this week’s Product Thinking Podcast to discuss a concept he developed called survival metrics, which enables product teams to change direction safely and quickly.  Here are some key points you’ll hear Melissa and Adam talk about in this episode: Adam's professional background and how he got into product management. [2:13] Survival metrics as a concept were created by observing the process that goes into building a product. It's born out of the psychology of thinking about what the customer needs. [7:37] The mark of a good survival metric is action. The metric should be something that helps people in the organization understand what steps need to be taken and why those steps are important. Conversely, a bad survival metric has no direction - it’s more 'go with the flow', vague, and subjective. [9:25] Your company's metrics strategy is tied to the anchor of your vision and mission. This is important because it is what's going to drive your organization forward. [11:39] Survival metrics are tied to a company's culture and are developed through employee feedback. When building a product, find out what employees care about and what their incentives are. The more that product managers do this, the better understanding they would have of the company culture. [16:36] Every project product managers work on should have at least one aspect of the 'stop, pivot, and invest' concept. This will get product managers in the mindset of not just thinking about the bad, but also the good. [19:58] When Adam trains new product managers on survival metrics, he first gives them small projects to observe how they assess them. He gradually introduces the concept of survival metrics after a few weeks. [21:09] Adam shares advice he gives to budding product managers who aren't confident in their decision-making. [24:04] Succeeding in product management requires soft skills. It requires being humble enough to come up with multiple decisions and not knowing the answer immediately. Product managers run into trouble when they act on things they have little or no information on. [26:36] Adam lists the types of things that have worked to break down barriers and make product teams more collaborative. [28:58] Resources Adam Thomas | LinkedIn | Twitter

In this Dear Melissa segment, Melissa dives into the world of experimentation, answering subscribers’ questions about metrics and signals for internal applications, measuring the success of company transformations, and the best way to track experiments. Q: Do you have any recommendations for metrics signals for internal applications, particularly where we are trying to change behaviors over the long term? How can an organization measure the success of a product-led company transformation? [2:05] Q: How do you track experiments and the results in a central way? [8:44] Q: How do I set a timeframe for measuring success and performance of a product before I pivot or iterate? How do I know when to kill a product, if after a couple more tries the initial idea didn't work? [11:36] Resources Melissa Perri on LinkedIn | Twitter MelissaPerri.com

Petra Wille is the author of the new book, “Strong Product People: The Complete Guide to Developing Great Product Managers.” A successful product management and leadership coach based in Germany, Petra joins Melissa to talk through how product teams can meet their full potential, and how leaders can achieve effective whole-person management and mentorship. Here are some key points you’ll hear Melissa and Petra talk about in this episode: How Petra became a product leadership coach. [2:10] A common complaint from product managers about their professional training is that there is a lack of guidance. There are no career conversations; one-on-one conversations are usually focused on progress updates, revenue updates, and how the product is doing. Managers aren’t focusing on the people development part, and they need to be. [4:45] Petra lists the five steps to forming strong product people. [6:24] Petra talks about the PM wheel she created which is a framework of skills every product manager should have. Petra says this framework embodies her principles and values, and it is customized for each company she works with. [12:29] Petra goes into how she coaches product leaders who don't have backgrounds in product management. [16:40] Petra explains that if you want to transform your organization, you have to bring in people that know how it’s done. You have to invest in a community of practice. “Do some basic training in the beginning, then create a community of practice. Make sure they learn on the job while they're actually doing it,” Petra tells Melissa. [20:25] If people who know how to do products aren’t given the support, they aren't going to stay with your company. Give them the infrastructure to be successful, Melissa says. [26:05] Product managers need to understand and accept that the impact they have now is through others. [27:02] Giving people several ways to structure their feedback can help them have an open dialogue and not be worried about hurting other people’s feelings. Basing your feedback on the impact of whatever situation or action occurred within the organization, positive or negative, makes all the difference. [29:27] Petra gives advice for product managers who don’t have leaders that are mentoring them. [35:32] Resources Petra Wille | LinkedIn | Twitter

In this Dear Melissa segment, Melissa answers subscribers’ questions about transforming IT departments and legacy businesses into agile frameworks, reframing leaderships’ “May I take your order” approach towards their product teams, and making your case for strong product management practices within an IT-minded organization. Q: Our President and VP of IT want to switch the entire company from project management to product management. What advice do you have for a prospective lead product manager with no prior PM experience? [2:04] Q: How can line workers and IC’s help our management see the value of iterative product development? [10:17] Q: How do you approach arguing to an IT-minded legacy media company to introduce product discovery when they actually have only one product team to work with and multiple media assets or websites? How do we start building trust so that they are willing to hire more teams? [18:21] Resources Melissa Perri on LinkedIn | Twitter MelissaPerri.com

Dave Dame is Director of Accessibility at Microsoft. He has extensive experience in design thinking, product management, and agile delivery. Dave joins Melissa Perri on this week’s Product Thinking podcast show to discuss how making the workplace accessible and inclusive to employees with disabilities is a crucial first step in making truly accessible products.  Here are some key points you’ll hear Melissa and Dave talk about in this episode: Dave's role at Microsoft, and how he got involved in product. [2:25] Dave helps product managers understand the diversity of their users, to ensure that they're creating products that are accessible. Product managers and designers should not be designing for people with disabilities, but with people with disabilities. "There's a difference between meeting the standard and having incredible experiences. We don't want to just meet their needs, we want to give them phenomenal experiences where they become champions of our product," Dave tells Melissa. [6:16] Designing with persons with disabilities demands that product managers educate themselves on multiple uses of disabilities, and the multiple types of disabilities. It also means learning what tools are being used by persons with disabilities to manipulate your product, and understanding what your competitors are doing. [7:50] The first step to making sure you're being inclusive to everybody is to hire people with disabilities. [12:50] Everyone is going to experience some form of disability at some point in their life, so product managers need to build products that can be used by many different inputs, and in many different ways, or else they're going to limit who can use their product. [15:47] Focus on the usability life cycle instead of the product life cycle. If product managers don't start thinking about that now, they're going to lose long term loyalty and won't be able to support the modern places that use their product. Product managers have to think about it as the inevitable use case for everybody instead of a single unique use case. [18:00] Any company that is using its accessibility capability as a marketing edge, is a company that's doing it right. [22:21] No two people with the same disability are the same. [28:17] Product leaders and managers need to be mindful of individuals with invisible disabilities, and need to be better at being proactive. They need to make sure that no one is being left behind. Different thinking is needed to push towards the future. The only way this can happen is through equitable platforms that allow for diverse thought to exist. [29:32] When you speak up for your particular needs it becomes relevant for other people in different situations. Disabled people should not have to suffer in silence. [33:07] Resources Dave Dame | LinkedIn | Twitter

In this Dear Melissa segment, Melissa answers subscribers’ questions about which part of an organization really owns user research, the scope of a product team’s vision and strategy, and how to tell when your product has too many features.  Q: How do you delineate the goals of product manager and product marketing research? [2:03] Q: Should every product manager have a 2 to 10-year vision and strategy, or should each respective PM rather craft division and strategy only covering the current strategic intent? [7:27] Q: How do you know when you have too many features in your product? Any suggestions on how to change the mindset that more is better? [13:26] Resources Melissa Perri on LinkedIn | Twitter MelissaPerri.com

Product Discovery Coach, Teresa Torres, discusses the heart of continuous discovery, the importance of defining the customer boundaries, and the framework for discovering opportunities. She emphasizes the need for deliberate product leadership and highlights the dangers of misaligned incentives and unethical behavior. The podcast also explores the connection between design justice and continuous discovery, as well as the significance of stable teams and outcome-focused leadership for successful continuous discovery habits.

In this episode of Product Thinking, Melissa answers subscribers’ questions about compliance, dealing with physical and digital goods simultaneously, and what good UX looks like in really complicated problems. Q: I started working in product compliance at a company that offers an alternative credit product. It's been challenging for me because product teams do not see the value in my role and do not want to engage in the build-out or with issues that come up as it takes away from them shipping new features. We're a heavily regulated space, but they don't seem to care. And it's making me want to search for a new job. My previous company valued product compliance and saw me as an asset to the team, not a hindrance. How can I help the product managers see the value of my role help? [00:55] Q: I worked for a retailer that has offline and online shops, and we're trying to move towards being more product-driven. I've read a lot and listened to your answers about organizing product teams to be focused on specific value, streams and jobs to be done, and to keep them as autonomous as possible. But how should this work for companies that are not entirely digital? Our product team needs to work very closely with teams like retail, marketing, and creative when it comes to new features. So, we struggle with setting up teams that can ideate and execute entirely on their own. [05:40] Q: I think it’s the trend that many people equate good UX to simplicity. Cause simple whizzer like workflow might be okay for a phone app or web page in the B to C world, but I work on a product that is helping users to tackle complex 3D engineering tasks, construction of huge infrastructures, simulations of physical phenomenon, building of airplanes etc. These tasks can't be simple by definition and require a lot of flexibility and functionality. In my experience, blind simplification of the workflow often leads to a UX quality decrease. It's a challenge to get UX designers onboard with this very niche user workflow. What is the best way to approach this challenge, and what UX principles would work best in a complex product environment? [09:15] Resources Melissa Perri on LinkedIn | Twitter MelissaPerri.com How to Succeed as a Senior Product Leader with Georgie Smallwood

Melissa Perri’s guest on this week’s Product Thinking Podcast is Justin Anovick. Justin is the Chief Product Officer at Optimizely, a company providing digital platform software services. He is a creative thinker and provides great leadership for his team. Justin joins Melissa to discuss how to navigate through mergers and acquisitions with your organization and how to get all members to play on the same team. Here are some key points you’ll hear Melissa and Justin talk about in this episode: Why Justin became a product officer. [1:01] Understanding the customer sales cycle allows the product team to know what their customers and prospects are looking for. [3:55] Designing a product takes specific processes; if you change something at the last minute that change will have a major impact. [7:23] The questions, challenges, and differences that Justin has to confront now with his new merger and acquisition. [9:09] It’s very important that everyone is on the same page and understands the vision for the company. “We have to build demos, we have to build the messaging, we have to agree and communicate with the other side to make sure that we're spot on,” he tells Melissa. The vision can’t be conceptualized in a tagline, slogan, or image. The vision has to be about what the product is going to be in the future. [12:15] The more legitimate you can make a product, the better off you will be. The product team also plays a critical role in this. [15:35] In ensuring that a merger can be successful, you have to do things to scale. This sometimes means being okay with processes not being as high quality or going as expected. It also means integrating teams and being people first. [18:52] Invest more in the processes that you're doing well, and come up to average in your weaker areas. [20:52] Justin uses StrengthFinders quizzes with his team to understand the skills that they have, and how those skills complement him and one another. Managers need to understand that it’s not about adapting our teams to think like we do, but letting their skills complement the skills that we have. [22:36] Justin’s key focus is making sure everybody in the company understands their role, the direction the company is headed, the mission, and staying in tune with collecting key feedback from key individuals across the organization. [28:47] Justin talks about the ways he sets goals for Optimizely. [29:36] Test for understanding by using the passive check. This is simply checking with multiple people and using direct communication. We get more value from this because we can ask follow-up questions, and we don’t have to consult surveys. [34:09] Resources Justin Anovick | LinkedIn | Twitter Optimizely