What have we chatted about?

We take notes at all PITA meetups, because our memory is shocking.

randy silver 4/10/20 randy silver 4/10/20

PITA 004

TOPIC 1: Remote Discovery & Framing

Resources popping up everywhere
There’s a lot more prep needed when doing these sessions remotely, and not enough time between meetings to do it properly
Pre-prep - worksheets or send things in before the call, set up the Miro/Mural board ahead of time - allow for more anonymised ideas as well and a more open discussion
Liberating structures, in smaller groups in breakout rooms
Two facilitators - one lead, one helping, then flip
More tiring than a normal session - split it amongst 2 days
Schedule in time to review
How to create serendipity

Create happy hour, social coffee, other non-work calls
Donut and Shuffle. Dungeons&Dragons. Board games.

TOPIC 2: Selling the value of Product in an organization that’s never had Product before (and might not understand it)

Cost of delay/cost of team doing the wrong things
Find the zombie features - call out the waste, quantify the cost
Show the value of disrupting yourself
Show the value of the product mindset
This can be painful and take a long time - use a failure to pivot them
If it’s too hard and frustrating, are you even in the right company? Maybe if you’re not invested in it, it could be time to leave
Does everyone need a product mindset? Figure out the problem that they have and work from that. Continuous improvement from an iterative project perspective
Are there any direct comparisons with competitors? Make it personal. Find case studies where product companies are winning.

TOPIC 3: Frantically Changing Priorities vs strategy

Lots of commiseration
Teresa Torres, Opportunity Solution Tree
Impact Mapping
Focus on business continuity plans - how can we hep shape these for the future?
https://www.texasmonthly.com/food/heb-prepared-coronavirus-pandemic/

TOPIC 4: What does your Product Strategy look like

Tech focus vs behaviour focus
Start with vision, mission, etc
Factor in assumptions, opinions etc from stakeholders
Make it deliverable
Communicate it
Understand the org’s history - why are they organised the way they are? What are the stakeholder’s motivations/rewards?
Separate strategy from roadmap
Good Strategy, Bad Strategy book, https://amzn.to/2XkPPvi
- Quote regarding bad strategy:
- Fluff. Fluff is a form of gibberish masquerading as strategic concepts or arguments. It uses “Sunday” words (words that are inflated and unnecessarily abstruse) and apparently esoteric concepts to create the illusion of high-level thinking.
- Failure to face the challenge. Bad strategy fails to recognize or define the challenge. When you cannot define the challenge, you cannot evaluate a strategy or improve it.
- Mistaking goals for strategy. Many bad strategies are just statements of desire rather than plans for overcoming obstacles.
- Bad strategic objectives. A strategic objective is set by a leader as a means to an end. Strategic objectives are “bad” when they fail to address critical issues or when they are impracticable.
- Rumelt, Richard. Good Strategy Bad Strategy (pp. 31-32). The Crown Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

TOPIC 5: Onboarding a New Direct Report, Remotely

Default orientation on a monday and friday
Weekly retro
1:1s with lots of different people/functions set up for them, 30 mins
Shadowing opportunities - attending, running
Remote lunch for the practice (social)
Daily 30 min Q&A between boss & report for the first period
Screen sharing for collaboration/alignment
Try and get them physical kit ahead of start date, if possible - and flowers for the first day!
Get them to start a wiki/dictionary of terminology - and get other new starters to extend it

randy silver 4/1/20 randy silver 4/1/20

PITA 003

TOPIC 1:

Creating psychological safety - when everyone disagrees with the boss, but still likes them

Not an intervention
Arrange sessions discussing alternative ideas
Accelerate book
The Westrum Model: Measuring organizational culture
Motivation mapping for the boss - what are they trying to achieve?
Open anonymous forum, if the boss is strong enough, or externally facilitated
Radical Candor book
Aesop’s fable of Who Will Bell the Cat? - do it together
‘If we only have opinion, we’ll go with mine” Steven Elop, ie challenge with data.
Also: go to a segmented roadmap, so you break down the strategy into segments owned by others as SMEs.
Externalise it - make it the team’s strategy as a whole, not his/her personal strategy decision
Also - just coz most of the team think they’re wrong doesn’t mean that _are_ wrong :-) Finding safe ways to [in]validate it helps everybody.
Strategy vs tactics
Remove emotion from it where possible
Radical Acceptance talk from MTP (Making Smarter Decisions with Mental Models by Andy Ayim)
perhaps find a person with "no stake" in the strategy and who has the bosses trust and have them communicate to the boss how shitty their strategy is
Translate strategy into OKRS… to highlight deployment ‘issues’
People under “the boss” should also try and encourage a more creative and autonomous environment, hopefully showing “the boss” the power of experience and knowledge coming from the specialists in each team. Try and encourage/suggest design thinking as well.

TOPIC 2:

When your design and engineering team work really well together - are you still useful?

Good job! Now move from tactical to strategic
Maybe it’s a change from looking in (within the team) to looking out?
Intercom has a good framing of 6 weeks, 6 months, 6 years - move away from the immediate
Move to more research
Ask harder questions
Have more fun / mess with your team
It gives you room to innovate
Is everyone happy?
When you take your next role, who will take over, and do they have the skills?

TOPIC 3:

How to win business folks over and help them understand /prioritise data (notably folks that cannot conceptualise it without seeing it in a UI or Visualisation tool)

Create virtual currency for your team - BBC becomes $Bees; HSBC becomes $HSBucks, etc
Tell a story - Jeff Veen did a great job of this at MTP (Crafting a Creative Culture by Jeff Veen)
Effective Storytelling to Motivate and Align Your Team by Anna Marie Clifton
Why Stories Captivate | Tomas Pueyo | TEDxHumboldtBay
Tell Better Stories - Donna Lichaw on The Product Experience , or if you prefer, her book
Buy a Feature
a bonus on Story points (and whichever points you’re using): https://medium.com/serious-scrum/what-is-the-easiest-way-to-explain-story-points-a8ef01c816fb

TOPIC 4:

Mentoring: sounds relevant in tough times to >> how to get started

Encourage mentorship from outside the team/organisation
Let the mentee lead the conversion, be open to non-work subjects (esp. now)
Try becoming a mentor in external environments/programmes as well
People don’t want to talk so much about work right now!
Not coming with an agenda / being non-judgemental
Not giving direct advice but leading them in a direction / to a conclusion
Be “friends” with your mentor - takes the pressure off and mentees should volunteer to help
Knowledge Officer

randy silver 3/25/20 randy silver 3/25/20

PITA 002

TOPIC 1:

Remote games that you can play with your team or your friends?

https://kahoot.it/ (second appearance!)
http://jigsawpuzzles.io
freebingocards.com
Strava for indoors? Someone may need to invent this!
https://www.kidscreateabsurdity.com/ - but haven't found an online version yet
https://zombiesrungame.com/
Taskmaster daily challenge, follow https://twitter.com/AlexHorne https://twitter.com/AlexHorne/status/1242729749144915968?s=20
https://freehand.invisionapp.com/freehand/new
One camera on a board game, everybody joins in, one person acts as controller

TOPIC 2:

Selling Product Management as freelance/consultant for startups

Context:

Offering PM freelance work to startups (have product-market-fit, 10-20ppl, pre-series-A)
Hiring 1st product person, often don’t know what kind of PM they want

Challenge:

defining scope and measurable deliverables
Pricing: fixed vs. Time-material

Discussion:

Discovery into problems (e.g. biz talking with engineering)
What’s the problem trying to solve, and what’s in 3-6 months. Target their perceived problem.
Focusing on priorities, relied on freelances at the beginning of setting up the product.
For UI work, was single jobs with fixed-price.
For UX and user research, was 1d of work a week, with a daily rate
Try the opposite: define better ways to filter out what they don’t think the problem is.
Create the job that you want to do and pick your clients based on that.
Easier to sell UX research to a firm that knows what UX research is.

TOPIC 3:

How to start a new role - making initial connections and sizing up the dynamics remotely

https://www.collaborationsuperpowers.com/tools/

TOPIC 4:

Shock doctrine: how can we use the crisis to push for changes we have been struggling with due to the “old guard” resisting and pushing back on it

https://www.amazon.com/Naomi-Klein-Doctrine-Capitalism-12-2-2006/dp/B00HTK37WC
Stockpile stories / case studies
Look into the data
Retest assumptions / re-validate personas
People changing because the are forced / vs because they like it
Be careful to stay true to your vision

And for product people who want to pitch in on the COVID-19 effort

randy silver 3/20/20 randy silver 3/20/20

Pita 001

We all want to work from THIS home office:

https://a.cl.ly/7KuRW6RD

And to complete the 30 day LEGO challenge: https://www.dropbox.com/s/516nnsrq9145bek/IMG_0528.png?dl=0

TOPIC 1:

Digital workshops with clients - how? (I haven’t done it before and want to teach our business)

https://kahoot.it/ For quizzes & icebreakers
Miro & Mural
Sli.do
Zoom
Whichever tool people use for the primary comms, try and have a backup in case of issues (e.g. if you’re using zoom, try also having a slack channel on the go where you can type to each other in case of problems)
funretro.io or parabol.co for retros

Workshops remotely