One Knight in Product

An interview with Anna Maste. Anna is a software developer turned company co-founder who set up Boondockers Welcome with her mum. Having never owned an RV or had any dealings with the community, Anna engaged with said community via her mum's influencer status and ended up scaling the business and exiting. She's now back with her second company and going for it again in another industry. We talk about a lot, including: Explaining what the heck a "boondocker" is to this Brit, the problems they where having that were worth solving, and how they created a mix of Airbnb and Tinder to solve it Whether starting a company with your mum is the ultimate Mom Test and the pros and cons of working with close family members How she had no experience with the RV community, but used her RV influencer mum's experience to understand the needs that the community had and how they might solve them Some of the challenges of creating a digital platform for people that are by definition "off grid" and how the platform grew over time as mobile technology improved Whether playing the long game and working to build community relationships would have been possible if they'd been forced down the growth at all costs VC route How their successful exit came about, how they had to pick a company that they could trust to carry on their good name, and whether the community felt it was a betrayal or sell out How she's started a new company to solve a problem she had in her first company, and how she's going about engaging with a brand new community for the second time And much more! Contact Anna If you want to catch up with Anna, you can reach out to her on Twitter or check out Subscribe Sense.

An interview with Dan Chapman. Dan is a British export to the US where he's busy building internal products to help make smart scientists more successful. Dan's strong on product principles but flexible on the details as he tries to transfer book talk into action for one of the biggest pharmaceutical companies in the world. We talk about a lot, including: His work with Merck, how there are actually two Mercks and a summary of the differences between them and why they diverged The challenges & opportunities of working in product management when your end users are hardcore scientists, and whether this is the one time you actually do need to be an industry expert to be an effective product manager Whether situations like the Theranos scandal loom large over the medical research industry, and how "move fast & break things" doesn't work when people's lives are on the line That tricky balancing act where you're trying to be agile and move fast whilst working for a company (and an industry) that values process, predictability & compliance Whether working for a big multinational means he's defaulted to having to use SAFe and why legacy waterfall companies are attracted to such frameworks Whether being an introvert in product management is a barrier or a superpower, and how to survive all the meetings & presentations when your natural tendency is not to want to be in the room Why idealistic product principles only get you so far, how to work out which ones matter, which don't, and why waterfall might actually be the better option sometimes (🤢) And much more! Contact Dan If you want to catch up with Dan, you can reach out to him on LinkedIn or on Twitter.

An interview with David Dylan Thomas. David is a product designer and self-taught expert in cognitive bias. He's now consulting with companies to help them make ethical product design decisions and is the author of "Design for Cognitive Bias", a book that aims to help us all understand the implicit biases that underpin our decision making when we design products. We talk about a lot, including: How he got into writing and consulting about cognitive biases in the first place, whether you need to go back to college to learn about this stuff and whether it's intimidating having your work reviewed by academic experts Why we have cognitive biases, how our brains are constantly lying to us, and how we'd struggle to cope with having to make a trillion decisions a day without them The importance of taking complicated scientific concepts back to a human level and making sure you can explain things like you would to a five-year-old How cognitive biases can manifest themselves when we're designing products, the most common biases that we might come across, and why the framing bias is by far the most dangerous bias of all Why it's sometimes important to insert speed bumps into our products rather than continuously trying to optimise for speedy decision making Some of the ways to interrupt cognitive biases in product design, including the red team / blue team approach and the Black Mirror test The importance of participatory design and giving the people most affected by bias the power to decide when something that affects them is actually ready to go And much more! Buy "Design For Cognitive Bias" "We humans are messy, illogical creatures who like to imagine we’re in control—but we blithely let our biases lead us astray. In Design for Cognitive Bias, David Dylan Thomas lays bare the irrational forces that shape our everyday decisions and, inevitably, inform the experiences we craft. "   Visit the book website or check it out on Goodreads. Contact David If you want to catch up with David, you can reach out to him at https://www.daviddylanthomas.com

An interview with Moustapha Seck. Moustapha is a seasoned product professional and entrepreneur who cut his teeth in Canada before being inspired to go back to Africa to use his product management skills to build solutions for the poorest Africans. He's doing this with his new startup, Fluid, which aims to help derisk financial inclusion for marginalised communities. We speak about a lot, including: How he started out in engineering and moved into product management after finding that he got more joy out of working with & designing solutions for his users The core elements of product management, how they're not complicated individually but difficult to execute consistently, and how mentors can help you understand what's OK and what's not His journey from Canada to Africa to Canada to Africa and how the classic book Zero to One inspired him to tackle meaningful problems for Africa's poorest communities How Africa has a lot of opportunities to fix things as so many basic things don't work, how he identified the key problem to solve and the research he had to do to validate his idea The importance of leaving technology out of it when dealing with marginalised communities & how you have to do way more listening than talking in order to build trust His desire for entrepreneurs and investors to look across Africa, not just concentrate on the biggest markets and how to pick the right markets to enter into there Why it's important to enlist power users to build advocacy and help you co-create solutions in traditional industries that are not used to trying out new solutions The need to keep your power users close, but not too close as you try to work out how to build for the wider market and prepare to scale the business And much more! Check out Saeed Khan's episode Moustapha called out some mentors that have shaped his product management career, including my good friend & previous podcast guest Saeed Khan. Check out Check out Saeed's episode here! Check out Fluid If you're interested in Moustapha's company or the mission behind it, you can check out fluidfinance.co. Contact Moustapha You can find Moustapha on LinkedIn.

An interview with Holly Schroeder. Holly is a Senior UX Researcher and passionate accessibility advocate who wants us all to get better at including everyone in our product design choices. She's also a recent contributor to a new UX book, 97 Things Every UX Practitioner Should Know. We speak about a lot, including: Her life as a UX researcher, the tension between business needs & user needs and the need to be pragmatic when finding a balance between the two Her passion for making sure that we design our products with accessibility in mind, and how come we're still in a situation where people aren't thinking about accessibility as a matter of course How only 3% of websites have been verified as accessible by the accessibility organisation WebAIM, and how we would feel if only 3% of buildings had ramps or 3% of pavements had dropped kerbs or curb cuts Some of the worst offenders when talking about (lack of) accessible design, how people are failing to get even the simple things right, how it's not just about screen readers, and how accessibility overlays are just putting lipstick on a pig Why we shouldn't be surprised that people aren't learning about accessibility when coding courses & boot camps don't even mention accessibility in passing Whether it's fair enough for startups to make the choice to "go fast and break things" and ignore accessibility, why we might consider slowing things down, and whether this is all the fault of tiresome tech bros The importance of including people with disabilities in user testing, but how accessibility is everyone's problem and how we shouldn't just rely on disabled people to do our homework for us And much more! Buy "97 Things Every UX Practitioner Should Know" "Tap into the wisdom of experts to learn what every UX practitioner needs to know. With 97 short and extremely useful articles, you'll discover new approaches to old problems, pick up road-tested best practices, and hone your skills through sound advice."   Visit the book website or check it out on Amazon or Goodreads. Check out Holly's extensive library of a11y resources Holly has collated, and continues to maintain, an excellent list of accessibility resources. Check it out! Contact Holly You can find Holly on Twitter.

An interview with Matt Arbesfeld. Matt is a Thiel Fellow and founder of LogRocket, a platfom that helps you understand problems affecting your users, so that you can get back to building great software & great products. Matt is passionate about using data to drive product decisions & helping to align all of the parts of the product trio around what's important for the product. We talk about a lot, including: The mission behind LogRocket, how they started out building a tool for developers before realising that product managers were coming and using it too How he went from a tech internships into company foundership, how this wasn't his first rodeo and how he's known his cofounder since he was 1 month old Whether they had trouble taking a developer-focused tool, abstracting just the right level of data for non-developer users, and why good UX isn't just for B2C apps How they validated the need for the product management use case and whether they tried to build everything with the same team or split everything by value stream The importance of being able to have data to monitor your product feature launches and the types of decisions you can quickly make if you have that data available How having one source of truth on your product can help to align all parts of the product trio and allow you to make good product decisions The story behind Thiel Fellowships and whether they help or hinder the tendency for tech firms to hire out of the same exclusive circles And much more! Check out LogRocket If you like the sound of LogRocket and want to check it out, try the LogRocket website? Contact Matt You can reach out to Matt on Twitter or LinkedIn.

An interview with Princess Akari. Princess is a product manager at Brass where she's helping to disrupt the Nigerian banking industry. She's also passionate about supporting local product managers & standing up for the very value of product management via her community PeopleInProduct, the "Alcoholics Anonymous of Product Management". We talk about a lot, including: Her day job as a product manager building mobile applications for a disruptive fintech, and how they're taking on the banking industry in Nigeria Why someone who starts out with a degree in civil engineering and a job as a structural engineer subsequently moves into product management Her journey into product management, how it was difficult to get community support to ease the transition and how this gave her the idea to start up her own community The mission behind PeopleInProduct and how they aim to be a warm, inclusive community where people can share their issues & doubts but also celebrate their successes The problem with many Nigerian product companies not really understanding the value of product management, and how that manifests itself in the financial packages and the respect they're given How she feels that there's a need product managers to be more explicit about the value they're creating for the company & standing up for themselves How everything's always worse for women, how they're discouraged from coding or design and forced into "easy" product management jobs, and then struggle to get their voices heard once they're in there And much more! Check out PeopleInProduct If you like the sound of PeopleInProduct and want to join in, or maybe use it as inspiration to set up your local version, why not check out PeopleInProduct? Contact Princess You can reach out to Princess on Twitter, LinkedIn. She also writes on Medium.

About the Episode An interview with Dan Olsen. Dan's a product consultant, text adventure & interactive fiction fanatic and author of 2015's "The Lean Product Playbook", a book that aimed to help people innovate faster with minimum viable products and rapid customer feedback. We talk about a lot, and try to get as many tenuous 80s gaming references in as possible: Whether "The Lean Product Playbook", published in 2015, still holds up and how a new generation of product managers are finding it for the first time, and why it wasn't published as a Choose Your Own Adventure book Given that software is eating the world, whether it's good software and good product companies doing the eating, or whether there's a dastardly bad product Pac-Man on the loose How his passion for interactive fiction & text adventures was good practice for getting deep into the problem space, and whether product managers even belong there The need to develop a common vocabulary with users, being able to use the right words and ask the right questions to get the results you need from discovery and prototyping The key attributes you need on your Character Sheet to be a good product manager, and how a wide dynamic range of abilities can help you succeed in your quest What to do to battle HIPPOs when they come crashing through the door trying to derail your roadmaps and why it all stems from starting the quarter at 120% capacity and having no protection from incoming Asteroids The types of tasks that product managers should carry in their limited inventory, and why they need to advocate for the value of hiring other disciplines and not just fill in gaps And much more! Buy The Lean Product Playbook "The Lean Product Playbook is a practical guide to building products that customers love. Whether you work at a startup or a large, established company, we all know that building great products is hard. Most new products fail. This book helps improve your chances of building successful products through clear, step-by-step guidance and advice.."   Visit the book website or check it out on Amazon or Goodreads.  Contact Dan If you want to catch up with Dan, you can reach him on Twitter or his website dan-olsen.com.

An interview with Richard Awe. Richard is a Senior Business Analyst with the European Central Bank who got bored writing all those requirements documents & user stories, and decided to build a tool to help him do that at scale. He's now here with Requstory, a platform that aims to help people write user stories fast. A day in the life of a business analyst at the European Central Bank, the sorts of projects he's working on, and whether banks can ever be truly agile How he moved from training as a scientist and wannabe process engineer to business analyst because he loved being close to the users & engineers What a business analyst actually does and how similar it is or isn't to being a product manager or product owner on an agile team How working on a big project & having to write loads of user stories led him to build a no-code tool to help him do that quicker.. and how interest from friends & colleagues made him decide to make it ready for primetime How he's managing the user feedback and trying to keep focused on delivering real value rather than any niche feature that comes up Some of the characteristics of a good or bad user story and how the ultimate point is always to be something that starts off a discussion When user stories might not work for you, the different types of stories you can use, what some of the alternatives might be & whether they're really just interchangeable And much more! Contact Richard You can reach out to Richard on Twitter or check out Requstory.

An interview with Melissa Perri. Melissa is a product leader, educator, board member, consultant, coach and also the author of one of the best books on product management, "Escaping the Build Trap". These days she's an evangelist for the role of product operations and setting up CPOs for success in the executive suite. We talk about a lot, including: Revisiting Escaping the Build Trap, what the build trap is, why people find themselves there and why they struggle to get out How her thinking has evolved since the book, and why she believes that product operations is a critical lever for scaling organisations What product operations is, how it enables you to scale, and the three pillars of product ops transformation that companies tend to go through Whether it's fair to label product operations as the revenge of process people or whether that's a total misrepresentation Why we should always be looking to optimise how we're working, not just sticking to what has worked in the past because it worked in the past The need for strong CPOs so that product teams have a seat at the top table, why this is essential for product led companies and at what stage you need them What the CPO role actually involves, what product people need to do to get good at it, and the tendency for product people to lack the confidence for the top table And much more! Buy Escaping the Build Trap "To stay competitive in today’s market, organizations need to adopt a culture of customer-centric practices that focus on outcomes rather than outputs. Companies that live and die by outputs often fall into the "build trap," cranking out features to meet their schedule rather than the customer’s needs. In this book, Melissa Perri explains how laying the foundation for great product management can help companies solve real customer problems while achieving business goals. " Check it out on Amazon, or on Goodreads. You can also check out book website. Melissa's new book "Product Operations" Melissa is writing a new book on product operations with her friend & colleague Denise Tilles. Check out the progress on ProductOperations.com. Contact Melissa You can reach out to Melissa on Twitter or check out MelissaPerri.com.