One Knight in Product

Kate is a consultant who advises organisations how to build Product teams and practices. She is also the author of "Hiring Product Managers: Using Product EQ to go beyond culture and skills", a book that aims to help hire effective Product leaders in the first place, or develop Product leaders that are struggling to make an impact. We talk about a lot, including: How her experience hiring Product leaders helped her write a book about it, and how hard it was to keep it succinct How hot shot VPs / Heads of Product can fail if they rely too much on technical skills, and how as an industry we focus too much on hiring for them How long to stick with Product leaders before having that difficult conversation about their next move How new leaders often aren't set up for success through lack of coaching, and just left to get on with it The importance of a shared understanding of what the job role entails, and not just copying and pasting job descriptions from Google The problem with "Cultural Fit" and how you need different puzzle pieces and not a stack of the same How neurodiversity fits into a high EQ world and how to adapt hiring processes to cater for different ways of thinking What progress we've made with advancing women in Product Management, and what hasn't changed at all And much more!

An interview with Deepti Tadala. Deepti is a Technical Product Manager with Synacor, a technology firm based in upstate New York, and a former management consultant with Deloitte. She's also a Founding 200 Member at Product School, former Content Lead for Products by Women, and a member of Toastmasters International. We talk about a lot, including: The difference between Technical Product Managers and non-Technical Product Managers The importance, even as a TPM, of having close contact with customers and considering the market How working as a Management Consultant for Deloitte prepared her for Product Management, and how it didn't The troubles of getting that first Product Management job when racing against the immigration clock Learning to be a Product Manager and the importance of walking the walk Her passion for education and using her story to inspire others and pay it forward The importance of learning public speaking skills even if you don't want to speak publicly The importance of having a platform for women to share experiences and support each other Her power morning schedule and what it helps her to achieve

Cindy Alvarez, Director of Customer Research at GitHub, talks about customer research with software engineers, testing interview questions, importance of empathy, writing a book on Lean Customer Development, objections to customer interviews, and optimizing for continuous discovery.

An interview with Carlos Gonzalez de Villaumbrosia. Carlos is the Founder and CEO of Product School, the global leader in product management training with a community of over one million product professionals. Product School instructors are real-world Product Leaders working at top companies including Google, Facebook, Netflix, Airbnb, PayPal, Uber, and Amazon. We talk about a lot, including: How a lack of Product training resources when he started led him to start a Product Management training start up How he fills his days at CEO of the largest Product Management learning community How he ensures that, as the leading Product Management learning community, he isn't seen as all size, no quality His passion for lifelong learning and giving away as much free content as possible What led him to write The Product Book with Josh Anon and what he expected to achieve from it How MBAs are great but they don't really prepare people to execute as Product Managers His and Product School's commitment to inclusion & diversity on their team, their instructors and their attendees And much more!

An interview with Melanie McKay. Melanie is the Head of Consumer Product at Rightmove, the UK's #1 property marketplace. She has worked in a number of Product Management roles, and took an interesting move into secondary school teaching in the middle. Since coming back to Product she's gone from strength to strength, including an appearance at Product School's ProductCon. We talk about a lot, including: How Product works at the biggest property marketplace in the UK and whether you get loads of weird requests you get when your TAM is pretty much the entire UK population How she got into Product by mistake, and what she did to get good at it with no good information to lead her Whether it is in fact harder for new PMs now because there is too much competing information for them How her passion for education got her into teaching, how it was teaching computing to kids, and why she came back What her experience of teaching taught her that she can use in her Product Management career Getting involved with ProductCon and the importance of going outside of your comfort zone Her well-received take on the classic PM Venn diagram, and how it's gone down with the PM community And much more!

James is a Delivery Manager for Discovery Inc., a VOD entertainment platform. James is a passionate advocate for using story points for just about everything, and using data to inform delivery decisions. We speak about a few topics, including: How to bring delivery together across multiple technical streams for a big media company The interplay between Delivery and Product and the importance of a good Product Manager How to get Product, Delivery & Engineering to work harmoniously How story points can save the world and how to use them properly Whether Scrum is any good and some of the ways to make it work for your business The tricky balance between Product Delivery and fixing tech debt How to use the data you already have to help inform future delivery decisions How to use data to sell your message to the leadership team How running a band and running Product Delivery are pretty similar And much more!

Renowned Product Management thought leader Marty Cagan discusses starting SVPG, blogging, book writing, challenges in being Product-led, promoting diversity in tech, and more in a captivating interview.

An interview with Christine Itwaru. Christine is Senior Director of Product Operations at Pendo. Christine is a problem-solving, Product-obsessed New Yorker who has swapped the Big Apple for the City of Oaks as Senior Director of Product Operations for Pendo. We talk about the fundamentals of Product Ops, how it works at Pendo, the types of people you need, what they can do for you, and when you need them. We talk about a lot: How she traded the Big Apple for the City of Oaks, moving to Raleigh, North Carolina to work with Pendo The exciting challenges and opportunities of working for a hypergrowth SaaS company What Product Operations is and how it can help a company as it scales, and how Christine made it happen The core skills and mindset needed to work in Product Operations The difference between being data-driven & data-informed, or whether there's any difference at all The importance of cross-functional communication for Product Ops, and Product teams in general Some of the challenges being a woman in tech and how she's trying to help solve them And much more!

An interview with Jackie Bavaro. Jackie started her Product Management career as a Program Manager at Microsoft, before joining Google's Associate Product Manager programme and then getting hired as the first Product Manager at Asana. Back in 2013, she collaborated with Gayle McDowell to write the best-selling book "Cracking the PM Interview", which inspired a generation of Product Managers to get their first jobs. Jackie and Gayle are back with "Cracking the PM Career" which explains how to get good at it once you're in. Understandably, we cover a lot, including: How Jackie got into Product in the first place, and why Microsoft calls Product Managers Program Managers The pros and cons of working for Google versus a new startup How she met and decided to collaborate with Gayle McDowell and how they write together How the FAANG companies reacted to her giving away all their secrets Excellent advice on how to make an impact in your new PM job How to avoid the dreaded Feature Factory, build a strategy and sell it Why it's important to look outside your Product bubble for inspiration And much more!

An interview with Heather James. Heather is the Founder of The Product-Led Alliance, providing a community, events and materials fora community of passionate product professionals, obsessed with Product-Led Growth. We talk about... What the Product-Led Alliance is and what it offers Why Heather is so passionate about Product-Led Growth and some of the challenges in getting there How she defines Product-Led Growth and how it differs from the dictionary definition What made her start the Product-Led Alliance when she did How a community with so much free content pays the bills How they had to pivot because of COVID-19 What makes her most proud of the Product-Led Alliance so far Future ambitions to take over the world Shock horror ... a rival podcast! mumble grumble And much more!