What have we chatted about?
We take notes at all PITA meetups, because our memory is shocking.
PITA 043
TOPIC 1 How do you approach options where the pain/gain is not distributed evenly across the org?
Get the team with the most benefit/least pain to help out - lend a hand with the team(s) that experience more pain/less gain
Acknowledge it - be honest about it
Make it part of the overall incentive structure - ensure they are rewarded for their pain, if the org as a whole benefits
Interrogate & ensure that there is enough benefit to offset the pain
Communicate what the reasons & benefits are (cost-cutting may be the assumption but not the reality)
Attend to Folk’s Needs (the antimatter principle)
TOPIC 2 What do you do when everyone is scared of the CTO because he's the only one who understands the code?
It’s not a unique situation
Get more tech people in that he (it’s a he!) respects and make it a bottom-up approach
Does he want to be a CTO? And does he know what the job is - and what role he wants to do?
Look at role functions, not job titles
Scenario planning - what do we do if…? (if CTO is no longer available, etc)
Work to build a relationship with him by solving a problem/removing a pain; use that to have the deeper conversation outside the direct work context
NVC (Implicit) step zero: Empathise
Love NVC, but soooo hard to do well live in conversation. (I find I have to pause for many seconds to frame any thought)
TOPIC 3 Product Aikido - non violent product development
Product Aikido | FlowchainSensei (free book)
Fundamental principle of Aikido - avoid harm, defuse situations (mirroring, empathising, etc)
War Fighting Manual of US Marine Corp - how they prep and fight. Doctrinal, not command & control. Pushing down decisions to the people in the thick of it.
Translating that to product development - self-organising teams
Leads up to organisational psychotherapy - examining shared assumptions & beliefs
TOPIC 4 Ideas for better integrating design/UR/UX/BA work into team boards to help product prioritisation and visibility
Ensure that everyone is represented
Avoid a separate board for non-tech stuff
Avoid being TOO specific - no tickets to setup a meeting or create a ticket, etc
But having a central place for Devs, Designers & More to have conversations is a good thing
Make sure that you’re writing really good tickets
For UX/UR/etc - make the tickets about the Questions to be answered or Decisions to be made, rather than the specific tasks to achieve that
Make the board wider - Discovery steps to the left of the dev, Evaluative to the right…
…but this also has the potential to create domain bottlenecks
But the visibility allows you to have conversations about it if it creeps in
And surfaces it as Retros for resolution
https://www.linkedin.com/in/iancarrolluk is great at this
PITA 042
ICEBREAKER: Yellow things
TOPIC 1 How do you manage/design products at high speed? We have 3-months to fix a problem.
Have a goal & defined success criteria
Build small & iterate quickly
Minimise handoffs - have the devs see the research happening - make sure they see at least 2 sessions, so they don’t design for one person
Imagine we have half the time - what would we do if we only had half of that?
Plan for failure
TOPIC 2 How can we create that sense of stakeholder community in (entirely virtual) complex organisations?
Weeknotes - what did we do this week, what do we plan to do next week
Show & Tells - to extend the Weeknotes point, I really like short (3 - 4 min) summary videos, both for the visual element and to make the updates feel more personal
On the week notes front having “non work stuff” in that as well can be nice.
Quarterly planning - do it together
Figure out who owns the budgets & makes the decisions
Motivation mapping
On the motivations side of things, I also like to refer explicitly back to those motivations when I’m sharing updates - helps to avoid the feeling that “We’ve had the conversation about what matters to us, then we moved on and never mentioned it again”
Create a stakeholder group - talk to them about strategy together
Agendaless lean coffee together - e.g. using donut app for Slack
Getting people with different views - get them together to collaborate on success criteria - facilitate the conversations between them to diagnose and resolve issues
Tom Wujec: Got a wicked problem? First, tell me how you make toast
The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why It Matters Kindle Edition
Get people together in person from time to time (i.e. every 3/6 mo) and mix teams up
Create better relationships by having them in non-work channels/conversations - not company mandated but created by individuals
TOPIC 3 How do you ask for help?
Link it to bigger/specific change
Show examples of other companies that do it, especially competitors
Who owns the budget for different types of things - coaching vs consulting vs leadership/professional development
Emphasise *why* i’m interested in it now - how this helps things, and especially how this learning can be shared across the organisation
Emphasise continuous improvement, and trying it with one team before rolling it out everywhere
Also to address the point about vulnerability i.e you’re already supposed to know the answer, I’ve also seen this framed as “I am hoping to become *Even More Amazing* at this, and coaching with a leading expert can help me get there”
Identify specific needs/weakness/maturity of the organisation - internally, or via a third party - then use that as the basis to address them
Demonstrate by doing - show that you have a coach
Pitch that strong, capable leaders get coached, leading by example
Before you ask for help yourself, ask senior leaders how they ask for help - do we ask for help, resources or support? Ask in Town Halls, etc
Another pitch for leader coaching I’ve seen people be happier with is “I want to experience coaching so I can coach my people better” — wanting to “get better at coaching” being seen as more acceptable than “I need coaching”.
Frame the question around support/enablement for professional development rather than necessarily asking for help
TOPIC 4 How do you help people get used to change when they're used to stable environments?
Micro level: Controlled, small experiments within teams to get them comfortable
Macro level: Sports metaphors, showing how top teams have made changes after prolonged periods of success
Show how you participate in the change
Don’t talk about change. Talk about the problems being solved
John Kotter, Leading Change
People will only change to solve problems that they recognise and care about
Is it change or evolution?
PITA 041
(forgot to grab a screenshot!)
TOPIC 1 Ways of communicating commercial needs in a non-profit organisation
Working out a narrative to to ensure that there’s an understanding of how one fuels the other
Visualise the gap for people
Don’t use the term ‘monetisation’
Dark Patterns workshop
Culture change - use goals, behaviours and leadership comms to drive the change
Storytelling, long term sustainability
TOPIC 2 Do you have to be good at producing polished slide decks to be valued as a PM?
Yes, because storytelling is important - and this is a primary vector for comms in most companies. It may not be the BEST vector, though,
People respond well to visuals
Russell Davies - Everything I Know About Life I Learned From Powerpoint book, Everything I Know About Life I Learned From PowerPoint site, and Doing Presentations site
Know your audience and use the appropriate terms
Slides - not too many words, and if presenting, add something instead of just reading them out
Resonate® | Duarte book & course
2 use cases: (1) presentations and (2) decks made for reading, which can be more inviting than a doc with the same content. PE/VC all done with slides…
That lower barrier to entry for slides was why Jeff Bezos banned presentations at Amazon
Have good notes but don’t read them verbatim (maybe use bullet points or keywords as notes only and form your sentences on the spot)
TOPIC 3 ChatGPT - is anyone doing anything interesting with it? Planning to?
It did a good job writing release notes for an app, with a decent prompt
Writing HOW-TO blog posts, from an outline, then went through an edit process
Social media content creators - generate topics for new stuff, or create an ugly first draft
CEO used it to fend off PE questions
For generic answers or lists, for things I’ve argued many many times, when dealing with idiots
‘Give me 30 questions’ to use in an interview
Write 5 activities and a timing plan for a workshop - draft my plan
Basic explainers
Quick copy for landing page tests
Pinch-hit for a UX person when they were on holiday
TOPIC 4 Where do I start with startup funding?
Startup accelerators - they share relevant materials but mainly offer programs/support. Other resources available, but she will have to decide what she’s willing to give up on and what’s non-negotiable. Those people will take a proportion of the equity but will provide resources in return.
Be careful who they listen to - they have to be the decision maker
Smaller Angel investors are a possibility
Some banks have specialty startup loans
Government loans are a possibility
Make sure PMF, strategy, milestones etc. are well-presented and communicated
Find pitching events on meetup.com and listen to what others do - get examples and tips
Startup competitions are a good place to practise, pitching events are good place to practise. The hack --> go there not expecting to win, but expect to get feedback and observe what the winners do
Startup pitching events online - watch a few before even starting to form your pitch, many probably available on meetup.com, i.e. https://www.eventbrite.com/d/online/pitch/
PITA 040
Product nerds, deep in thought
TOPIC 1 How to manage demand for dates on a roadmap
Put in very rough - and wide - timeframes for anything in the NEXT or LATER parts of the roadmap.
Include confidence numbers/% on anything past the next quarter
Do a retro on the strategy - how much came true? What changed and why? Get a good chat with the boss regarding how much a long term roadmap is a work of fiction
Overcommunicte about change as it happens
Show both a Roadmap AND a Release Plan - separate tabs in the same doc
Understand WHY they have a need for dates
TOPIC 2 Tips on persuading management they need a strategy?!
Show the impact on recruitment, retention, team health
Can you point to any issues that the lack of a strategy creates? Use this to illustrate why
You need to be able to articulate why this is important - what problem it solves
Use a template doc and co-create it
Create it yourself and get feedback
maybe drive the need for a strategy to FOCUS - which will reduce costs/waste (since revenue is not driving)
TOPIC 3 (I'm almost ashamed to mention the next 2 words but...) business cases and agile - waaahhhh - anyone done one lately in a public sector org?!!
Create regular reviews, VC-style funding, to make sure that the work is still needed, appropriate, etc
The point of these is to make prioritisation decisions. How can you make them useful?
Finance runs in Waterfall; we’re trying to be responsive, the two are incompatible - try to have a good conversation about this with the people requiring it
Ensure that the case is comprehensible in 1 screen and review the assumptions together - it will be inaccurate and wrong, but make sure you agree on what the assumptions are
Does it matter if the business case is wrong? Don’t beat yourself about being super accurate; it’s just organisational process & politics
Run a retro on the previous business case to help influence how to write the next one (aka pre-mortem for the new one)
Lay out the options, from DO NOTHING to FULL FAT to come to an acceptable level and validate needs (a Clear choice review)
TOPIC 4 Best way to gather metrics for a B2B solution
Look at leading & lagging metrics, and metrics per persona (users and purchasers)
Align your metrics with customers realising value, not just your corp KPIs
Usage, time to onboarding
Measure sentiment/CSAT in usage
TOPIC 5 What's the difference between a Scrum master and an Agile Delivery Manager/Lead
Scrum Master runs scrum ceremonies; Delivery helps ensure that value is achieved; it's more iterative/nimble
DMs have a wider remit; SM’s remit is a subset of the DM responsibilities
The UK government has a good description
If you’ve ever worked with a good DM, you’ll understand!
The line does blur between a PM and DM’s responsibilities at time - but it means that the PM no longer has to be a project manager
See Part 2 of The Product Experience podcast with Marty Cagan for more on this!
PITA 039
TOPIC 1 How do you get a team comfortable with "I don't know"?
Go back to user research - ask, “What does it indicate?”
Model the behaviour
Co-create with the stakeholder - design sprint, estimation workshop, write the press release - something to get them collaborating, not fearing
Lower the stakes & tackle something smaller in this way
get someone senior/respected in the discussion to say "I don't know, and that's ok" - I usually do this if I am the most senior person in the room.
Repurpose the Failure SwapShop to an I Don’t Know SwapShop
TOPIC 2 How do people figure out what "level" to do discovery at? High-level to figure out what initiative to work on next vs low-level to figure out detail of what to build
It’s fractal, baby - it happens at all levels. Start somewhere (anywhere!) depending on who you need to get involved/what you need to achieve
Dragon mapping can help diagram the uncertainty
Do just enough discovery at any point to free up things so that you can make some progress
Things don’t move iteratively from ideation -> discovery -> build; sometimes they go backwards
Teresa Torres’ Opportunity Solutions Tree - you can modify it to use it as a primary artefact in place of a backlog
TOPIC 3 Tips on how to get CTO(!) to focus on the bigger outcomes, rather than the easy to add 'features'
Tie the results to a bonusable measure/motivation - ensure they are aligned to what matters (h/t to Rich Mironov)
Measure wasted code - and bin the features/code that isn’t being used
Other sensible ideas that won’t work with this particular individual…
Try to get them to focus on the unknowns - “wouldn’t it be even cooler if…?”
Apply the One Minute Manager - praise them for every good thing that they do. Find ways to make them a hero when they do so.
Conversely - point out the CTO jobs that they’re not doing
Or point the CTO at a tough problem (scaling?) that they can pursue solo while unblocking the rest of the team
Get them to talk to other CTOs — that's been super education for some folk I've worked with who sound similar.
TOPIC 4 Factoring environmental impact into product decisions
Carbon Neutral Roadmaps - Chris Adams on The Product Experience
Find a relevant measurement and set a target for the team - and track progress
Follow Amy Wagner
PITA 038
ICEBREAKER: Item that starts with D
TOPIC 1 Diplomatic but effective ways to tell people/teams their level of maturity is low
Give an example of what good looks like - fictionalised or real - for them to baseline against
Examples from other companies / experiences
Encourage experiments to bring about chats about outcomes
Talk about the characteristics of teams at all levels - what does poor look like? What does good & great look like? Show that it’s a continuum and teams move through them
Frame it as ‘I need this…’
Facilitate a workshop to help them find the answers themselves
TOPIC 2 What balance do you find between being customer-centric and competitor-informed?
Ensure you have a clear proposition for your product, else you may think you’re competing with everyone
How are you going to be different if you copy it? And what value do you add? Or are you just doing it because you haven’t a clue?
B2B, RFP-driven processes - sometimes you can’t avoid ticking boxes to ensure you do what competitors do. B2C, informed is good… but never prioiritise based on it
Understanding why someone chose a competitor is more important than copying their features list
Don’t be Excel
Where do Customer & Competitor stuff come together? - Are you in the same market?
Can you be customer-centric about your competitors? Interview people who use your competition’s product. What do they like & dislike?
Even if you copy… mind how it fits in to your experience
TOPIC 3 How best to influence product people that support experience for users is important
Get people to work the support desk regularly
Recruit PMs from the Support team
Get a OKR/target metric that’s aimed at saving money. Cost of Support is often quite high.
Can you tie support issues to people leaving the product?
Support is a signal for Product/Market Fit (retention, engagement, etc)
Get the actual data from the Support team and make it interesting
TOPIC 4 Organizations have written and unwritten knowledge - how do you share/socialise that with new hires or people moving around the organisation?
Onboarding buddy or two. One from the discipline, one from another area.
Get the people who have recently been onboarded to update the documentation as they go through
Accept that you can’t fix everything in this space
New starters only at the beginning of a month - create a bootcamp, rotating the hosts, with lots of informal chat
Baptism by fire - give them a project that makes them encounter everything important
People who move - give them a formal transition plan, too
Understand WHY the person was moved
PITA 037
TOPIC 1 How do you put in practice the continuous discovery in your company (Teresa Torres) ?
Start by understanding what problems it might solve
Work with Sales and Ops to do customer check-ins with them or to understand/prioritise their feedback
Write a 1-pager about what the team needs to learn
Regular check-ins with Sales & Support for context/empathy/alignment
Align to ranking of customer problems, then discovery about how you plan to solve them/how it’s going
TOPIC 2 How do you conduct cheap experiments to find PMF?
Use something visual - concepts are hard for people to understand
Pricing - test of different bundles, with Yes/No - make it binary & simple, people have no idea about price
Closed-Door testing & Concierge
Crowdfunding - test the appetite for something
David Bland’s book Testing Business Ideas
Test the reactions/messaging from people - are they saying similar things? Are you covering 80% of the same feedback in interviews?
TOPIC 3 Favourite PM resources?
Just Google it
Nielson Norman for user research
The world ahead: a different dystopia | The Economist (podcast)
Matt LeMay’s Product Management in Practice
PITA 036
ICEBREAKER: 15 second draw-a-horse challenge
TOPIC 1 Are you using opportunity tree mapping, and how does it work for you?
Teresa Torres’ book is great - Continuous Discovery Habits: Discover Products that Create Customer Value and Business Value
Yes, it’s a great conceptual model…
But it can be hard for others to grasp at times. So: Dragon Mapping as an easier version to use
Doing a lot of upfront work myself to lay it out has helped, with others checking/validating it
It’s helped people to concentrate on one bit, and understand how it fits into the whole
The struggle: but how do I then get it into tickets?
TOPIC 2 - I am using Continuous Discovery methods (recently started) but would love to hear practical tips on how to actually translate the solutions on to a dev board
Issue: the solution is vague at this stage - so how do we translate that into actions
So: write discovery/testing stories? Use David Bland’s Testing Business Ideas: A Field Guide for Rapid Experimentation as inspiration
It is the PM’s job to drag this thru - to get to the stage where there’s an artefact that can be understood for the next stage. That could be build, or prototyping - whatever is needed for the next level of validation.
There are some chapters in Shape Up that talk about translating the PMs “pitch" and the product team turning it into "scopes" to build
One team use the Opportunity Solutions Tree as the artefact. Another use it as the product backlog, then create sprint tickets. Another still used it to fill the gap between the streams of work.
TOPIC 3 - How do you balance transparency with information overload?
Start it small with lots of communication in an environment that isn’t used to it, then ramp it up slowly
People need to have access to the information that they need… but what are the right routes? What is the info that they need?
Regular cadence of things (show & tell, etc) is critical. It builds up expectations.
Self-service is good for people - solves the issue of overload
Centralised ops team and regular communications about business-critical capacity needs from the dev teams to deal with issues that weren’t part of day-to-day business strategy
TOPIC 4 -Communities of practice: where have you seen them work well? Where have they failed spectacularly?
OneHealth Tech - hubs in cities around the world, aimed at equality & diversity in the field, across many companies - worked really well for a while. A couple of amazing organisers really drove it. Really welcome and infectious. Fell off as one of them has dialled down their involvement.
Squad/Pod-based places - didn’t work well. Leadership by fear model, top down, meant that levelling up others was seen as a threat - going beyond your remit. It happened organically to some extent as a grassroots effort. Needs leadership with enthusiasm, especially as the org scales up.
In my org, commitment & prioritisation by the membership is key. Curation by the organisers makes a real difference - reading list/articles/content to share. Must be a safe space.
If you think that it’s important & valuable, then TREAT it like it is important and valuable. Don’t schedule it over lunch, devote actual work time to it.
Understand the makeup of people who attend - set up an agenda in advance, allocate time accordingly
Need to have a goal - and resource/sponsorhsip to follow up on any ideas
Failure modes: org not investing. Or community thinking it’s MORE important than the rest of the business priorities.
A sample agenda from a Goverment agency:
We meet weekly at 1pm on Thursdays.
Open dial in to all product people across the organisation – you will find:
Talks , show and tells & advice from other product managers
Product crits, bring us your work in progress and get advice
External speakers from across Gov and outside on all things product
Workshops on new product techniques
Share your product problems & woes
Lean coffee – come and ask and question of the product hive mind
See our Trello board for upcoming meet-up topics & useful resources
TOPIC 5 -Conferences and Events that changed you (for better or worse) -
For me, tech conferences get my creative juices flowing more than Product conferences - hearing from people doing OTHER things
It’s like Glastonbury - don’t see Beyonce, see something weird in a tiny tent
Going as a speaker is completely different than going as an attendee - sometimes better, sometimes worse
Don’t feel the need to see everything. Curate your experience. Relax. The ‘corridor track’ of just talking to people can be the best part.
Camp Digital was raved about recently
lots of good free ones too (and in my experience often more meaningful) - I like Women in Product
PITA 035
ICEBREAKER: Cards Against Agility
TOPIC 1: Ideas for ways to "claim" ownership over product with very old school command & control CEOs with zero product mindset
Case studies, gentle nudging
Starting vs scaling - the role of a founder changes
Do you WANT to work with these folks?
Consensus: uh, NO
Try to get them to focus on success and outcome definitions instead of specs
TOPIC 2: What's stopping your team from succeeding?
Noise - lack of consistency, changes in strategy/priority/focus
Communication - having to re-explain how we got to conclusions/justify the work/hypothesis - fear of committing to build
Firefighting
People are not motivated to build - they don’t believe in the strategy
Too much debt (product, tech, etc)
Psychological safety - worried about their role, commercial standing
Stakeholder alignment (lack of)
Lack of direction/ownership
Biz stakeholders don’t care about product/craft - they care about results in the short term // DONE is done before it’s done
Working with Procurement (they can (inadvertently) prevent good work even when all other parties are aligned)
Inexperienced team
TOPIC 3: What do you wish product leaders (Heads, etc) had done to help you in your role?Giving me the chance to prove i can handle complex things - they challenged me
Start the relationship with trust, not distrust
Bad - not having a compelling vision for the product & the practice
Model the behaviours for success in the org
Defining the roles & skills needed, career dev, mentoring & training
Supporting the development of the right relationships
Positivity - developing products can be joyful. Find the joy for the team
Curating for each person
TOPIC 4 -What (if anything) completely changed your approach to Product work?
Cenydd Bowles - Future Ethics: “The idea that a rank-and-file technologist can change the culture of a large firm, let alone the industry, reminds me of a lovesick teenager’s desperate attempts to heal a difficult partner: a generous but ultimately doomed act that saps emotional energy”.
Gaining patience & perspective 🙂
Sitting in on my first user research session
Letting go of perfection & ownership, embracing and seeking change
Being user-centred but also apply a commercial lens
Being able to step back and watch personal dynamics in meetings
Just because other people can’t see it yet, doesn’t mean that it’s wrong
Dolly Parton quote - “Find out who you are and do it on purpose,”
Getting a coach
Speak to users to learn, not to convince
PITA 034
ICEBREAKER: Cards Against Agility
TOPIC 1 - How do you tell people things they will (might) find hard to hear, in a way that they can hear?
Radical Candor - but this presupposes that you have formed a relationship
The Culture Map - cross-border cultural differences
Ask them questions around the outcome of that behaviour/issue and lead them to the answer
Motivation mapping - Empathy maps
The Five Conditions for Improvement | by Roy Rapoport | Medium
The Situation-Behavior-Impact-Feedback Tool - From MindTools.com
When I worked at Redgate, managers were asked to have 1-1s with all their reports each week. Good opportunity to pick up issues early. Everyone also got 360 feedback from people they worked with outside their line management hierarchy.
I went on a “how to have difficult conversations” course, so you can get training on this. Also one can practice. I coached someone who had to put some of his team at risk of redundancy and helped him practice different scenarios for them reacting differently.
TOPIC 2 - How to best use overlapping skills between PM and UX in the same team (e.g. user research)
The voice of the customer is… the customer!
Pair in concrete tasks/responsibilities that sit on the overlap, take advantage of the differences between people to extract richer insights (e.g. from customer interviews).
If everyone thinks that THEY are the voice of the customer, at least that shows that they care.
It doesn’t always have to work the same way - it depends who is best suited to do what at any point
PM’s role is setting the problem to solve taking into account business goals and overall strategy etc - perhaps it’s OK that they are a little decoupled from user insight and UX can bring that context to the problem space
CLAM (Contributes, Leads, Approves, Monitors) - a better option than RACI (RACI Chart Template For Project Managers + Example & How-To )
Focus on who has the most experience with least bias and leading communication - The Mom Test
TOPIC 3 - Empathetic management who thinks someone could benefit from mental coaching / support. How to introduce this / is it okay to introduce this at all??
Cautious about whether offering advice on this can tick HR off; may be better to raise with HR
Make it clear that help is available (indirectly, through company-wide communication channels, and may ask the company to support/offer that)
TOPIC 4 - How do you think about work you/the team enjoy/don't? Work that energises/drains? How do you choose?
Sharing war stories - you had to be there!
“For every job that must be done, there is an element of fun” - Mary Poppins, the first agile coach
Try to find the small wins along the way - and celebrate them!
PITA 033
ICEBREAKER: ESL Story Dice Online
TOPIC 1 - Making change happen in super large orgs, top-down versus community led, and ideas for developing products in this space.
Start small- try and join up good practices/approaches from a couple of the smaller regions/groups
Federation vs Centralisation
Create principles & standards with the community, coordinate loosely
Create a small central group with reps from each community
Don’t reinvent everything - who has done this well? Can you aim everyone at emulating that?
Confront them with the anti-product and ask the groups to respond to that
Is there a global architect? Can you build to encourage a good result?
TOPIC 2 - How to build team culture and engagement across lots of time zones?
Optimise for async communication
Delegate to the teams
Ring-fence budget and time for regular team offsites and activities
Culture-forming event - time-chained, where it keeps going in a follow-the-sun model
Maybe penpals? send care packages. Get people talking sync or async
TOPIC 3 - What are some good techniques for evaluating the competition when it comes to developing a new product?
Understand the problem, from the customer perspective. Then understand what their current options are in the market,. Then positioning: how will we solve this better than anyone else, on at least one axis? From https://outofowls.com/book
It’s a part of user research
Build a simple framework to work in - i.e. a table with the criteria you want to compare and learn what others do well or badly, all from a user perspective - e.g. tone of voice, target audience, payment options, web vs mobile app, reviews and feedback online, offering specific features, etc.
More on positioning: Obviously Awesome, by April Dunford
Also look at your product neighbours, doesn’t have to be immediate and obvious competitors in your industry, look at companies and products that have conceptual similarities you can learn from
Do usability testing oncompetitor’s products
TOPIC 4 - Dual-track agile, yes, but how?
Dual Track Development is not Duel Track – Help your organization focus on successful outcomes (Jeff Patton)
A 2x2 matrix, credit to Jeanette Fuccella: https://twitter.com/johnrayknight/status/1458041301497257990
Think of it as a balance, not a divide - where is the dial?
Don’t do it - we’re cleaning up the mess from having separate people doing it with poor communication/collaboration
Remember: research has a shelf life - it goes stale
PITA 032
ICEBREAKER: Poems in the Aether
TOPIC 1: How to balance moving fast with doing things the best way, but slower?
Early stage, finding product/market fit
Design sprints/prototype to learn
Saying no - alignment to vision/mission/strategy
How to Time Product Launches (the Peanut Butter effect)
TOPIC 2: Prioritisation when going from zero-to-one (low data, high competing demands)
Can you draw clear proposition lines around the different options? Pick one to focus on
Don’t beat yourself up- we all have to go back to intuition sometimes. But get data as soon as you can
Rephrase it as a bet, and timebox the experiments
Advice on startup metrics: https://amplitude.com/startups
TOPIC 3: How do I convince stakeholders they need proper product teams set up? (merged into new org with our existing products, they are not used to digital teams)
Approach from the direction of the acknowledged problems that they have, not the solution you want to implement
What user research do you have? Talking to users and representing their pain/issues/needs is a good start
What stakeholders/influence do you have?
Get a timebox on a consultancy to show results (quick wins)
Classic managing up techniques: make it their idea! (tactical framing)
Showing the issues from a support/devops perspective - the cost of NOT having a product team
TOPIC 4: Hiring remote-only PMs during these absurd times (perspectives from companies and candidates)
Companies are looking at this from a lot of angles
Look for
Hard skill profile - has that shifted for remote-frost. More of a corraller, documentation, etc
What’s going to make the company sticky? How do we create culture whe emote
New Microsoft Study of 60,000 Employees: Remote Work Threatens Long-Term Innovation
Expectations (and success) really depend on if only the PM is remote, or the whole team/organisation is at least remote-first
PITA 031
TOPIC 1 - Recruitment and retention: how are you doing it well right now?
They need to perceive progression
Recruit within the network
Look at the culture and people who are staying vs who is leaving - any root causes for staying or leaving
Flexibility options are a big winner
Is the tech stack appealing?
Take another look at the job ads - are they boring?
Best job advert: https://archive.is/aL7rt
TOPIC 2 - Ways to manage "strong" personalities - outspoken people in the team with really strong opinions that not everyone else appreciates
Try to get the challenging people to recognise the value of hearing more diverse voices- warn them in advance that you will call on the quieter people if loud people dominate
Restrict feedback for 24 hours
Run a ‘Thinking Round’ - no interruptions, everyone contributes, then move on
Model good behaviour - and reward it with your attention/approvals.
Say ‘Thank you, PERSON, but i’d really like to hear from [other person]’
Get it Right / Get it Done/ Get Along / Get Credit / -diagnose the personality type/motivtion
Capture and reward good behaviour
Liberating Structures - 1/2/4/All Liberating Structures Menu
Thinking Time Slack app Introducing ThinkingTime. Introduction | by Josh Elman | Medium
TOPIC 3: Making the transition to Freelance PM - why did you do it, would you do it again, why did you stop?
By accident! Yes, if I didn’t find a job I liked, and because i found a job I liked
Hard to make a lasting impact/brave decisions and pick up context as a freelancer
You don’t get stuck somewhere you don’t want to be
No job is actually permanent - you can always leave if it doesn’t work out as expected
Working with startups, sometimes they can’t afford you fulltime
TOPIC 4: Tips for fostering an environment where there is greater engagement, collaboration, and discussion of the backlog within a software dev team / How to encourage collaboration within product teams in a remote setting?(Cameras off,etc)
Is this really a problem? Are we getting results even with this environment?
Put people in a situation where they are expected to contribute (ie, a User Story Mapping session)
Add in social interactions by design so people see each other as humans more - Donut, team intros, etc
Set expectations for contributions and participation; build it into meeting structures - but cater to introvert’s styles
How psychologically prepared are people for yet another call WTI Pulse Report Research Proves Your Brain Needs Breaks
TOPIC 5: How do I recover from programme prioritisation burnout?
Get more hands on - change what you’re doing - to recover & reset
Run a retro with senior product people & stakeholders -what did other people think worked and didn’t? How can they help to make it better next time?
PITA 030
ICEBREAKER: Venn Comedy Challenge
TOPIC 1: Prioritisation for portfolios - innovation vs BAU, and How to prioritise amongst a portfolio of potential projects
How do we decide on priorities and get people aligned?
Clear goals and objectives are key, at a company level
Clear understanding/transparency on what stages things are at
Stakeholders want procedural justice
Weigh up one bet against another bet
Metrics: impact on lack of attention on BAU, or lack of innovation
Dot voting with virtual money - helps people understand the scarcity of resources (or capacity)
80/20 - 80 sustaining low-risk / 20 on higher risk innovation?
Value chain mapping
Don’t split Innovation and BAU into different teams
Pick the projects that align to long term plans
TOPIC 2: Divvying up and/or collaborating on UX responsibilities (wireframing, research, etc.) between UX team and PMs. How much should a PM know/do to be most helpful while not stepping on the toes of others?
What’s the difference between for and with?
Doing something lo-fi to communicate in a shared language can be useful
Being mindful of A11y can be useful and come from anywhere
Expertise in research/UX can come from people in different seats
It’s a Venn diagram - it’s facilitating and learning as much as making the diagrams; polished design comes later
Set the person who is the expert as the expert
Expect varying degrees of competency - and train up by pairing w/ people who are better than you
TOPIC 3: What symptoms do you watch out for in an SME in order to avoid getting too corporate while the company is growing?
First symptom: people aren’t talking to each other. They form silos.
Ask the team what they don’t want - and why
Red flag: we do this because we have always done it like that because someone said so
Processes keep getting added - and none get killed. (Add expiration/review dates to any new meetings or processes)
Pick an experiment that will fail so you can kill it and everyone experiences making it go away, and gets permission to do so
Chesterton's Fence: A Lesson in Second Order Thinking Reading Time | 8 minutes A core component of
Ask: what will be missing if we remove this? But pair with a retro
People regularly skipping a meeting is a key indicator
Meetings where people just don’t show up and this happens regularly
TOPIC 4: How do you earn trust in/with a new team?
Start by being humble & transparent
Identify their biggest struggle - validate the other person’s perspective
Build personal relationships
Keeping Your Stakeholder Relationships in CREDiT — Whitney and Associates
Share a process for how you’re going to handle it
Empathy
Protect the team - take the blame, give the credit
PITA 029
ICEBREAKER: Word Wall spinny wheel
TOPIC 1: What do you do when your leadership f**k up?
Pick your moments
And pick your battles
Support YOUR team and prepare them for change if you decide to leave
TOPIC 2: Onboarding a direct report to take over YOUR individual contributor PdM duties: tips to let go of your “baby”?
Rip the BandAid - make intros and initial handover, then step away COMPLETELY. Scheduled check-ins are OK, tho.
Give them permission to call you on your BS. They are explicitly allowed to say GO AWAY to you
Timebox your involvement and do the OTHER work on your plate
Esther Derby video: https://twitter.com/adrianh/status/1147107312244613121
Onboard them to the product vision, then hand it over
TOPIC 3: Tips or people/books to follow regarding designing for developers/internal tooling
Map the problems that you’re solving for to the company’s success
Managing Internal Tools - Emily Patterson on The Product Experience
Follow your users everywhere - you actually can!
But be careful of the bias that this brings - build for everyone
Product Tank London - February 2021: Internal Product Management
Check out Microsoft resources on inclusive design. Ask “who are we unintentionally excluding here?”
TOPIC 4: Convincing people to care about customer’s success - not using themselves as proxies for the customer
Google’s HEART framework How to Use the Google HEART Framework to Improve UX / Keeping Track Of Your HEART - Tomer Sharon on The Product Experience
Will change alienate customers? What will the benefit be to customers?
What metrics will be used to sign it off?
Can you bring counter examples where people were able to flip “certain” assumptions
Who are they building the product for?
Are they really at the root cause of what is wrong with it?
Spend the development budget on what the market wants, and remind them what the market looks like
Classic User testing, A/B testing, user interviews in real world
Get them to actually interview users, potentially via a different context (slightly subversive approach)
a/b testing in production
Can people be given 10% time to do their research/dev
PITA 028
ICEBREAKER: Team treasure hunt!
TOPIC 1: How do you organise your products and people? What works well and not well for grouping/ aligning products?
Value-Chain mapping - align teams to these areas, KPIs should map well to this
Can be complicated if the biz is not well defined
Map value from the user’s perspective, not the business’
What is the problem you’re solving for?
Foundation (HR, Authentication, infrastructure), Core (Service Delivery, etc) and Growth (opportunities - things that break pillars) lenses
https://www.productboard.com/blog/4-ways-to-structure-scaling-product-organization/
TOPIC 2: How do I handle a Senior Managemet Team that ‘don’t believe in User Research’?
Just do it anyway (guerilla research) and use the result to leverage more
Why do we need this when we have Google Analytics?
Get people on the team to consistently disagree to get to the point where frustration drives research
“If we have data, let’s look at adata. If all we have are opinions, lets; go with mine “ - Jim Barksdale
Find allies in other stakeholders
Plant seeds - sharing resources and examples where user research has worked and given unexpected and/or useful insights
TOPIC 3: How dio I spot when an interesting role is actually in a secretly toxic org?
Look at the backgrounds of people on the product team - do they get what the job actually is?
Look for well-formed role descriptions
Avoid Ninjas, Rockstars, etc
Ask friends and friends of friends who do - or have - worked there. Reach out to the MTP slack to ask.
Ask how stuff actually gets done in the org during the interview
Open conversations during the hiring process
Ask about and see what has happened to previous people in the same role, or if the role is new - why it was created beyond the functional needs/scaling
Glassdoor can be useful or manipulated - treat it like an Amazon user review
LinkedIn snooping to get a feel for the org chart
if the company has any history of big changes such as changing an outsourcing/similar partner or big management changes, try to get in touch with “the other side” to learn what’s happened in the past
TOPIC 4: Can product managers coexist with program managers? Asking cos my company might be hiring both for a team and I’m not sure what the difference is between the roles.
Delivery managers are great
Definition of roles & relationship is hard and needs to be open, honest and handled well
Definition of Product (for Product Manager) and How to Deliver it (for Programme) can work well
So:very much depends on the relationship
PITA 027
TOPIC 1: How do you keep user research work & product management work aligned?
Shared artefacts & conversations
Join each other’s ceremonies
Avoid terminology - shape the language deliberately
Focus on the why
Teresa Torres - weekly interviews & share interview snapshots
Force x-functional teams to ensure shared context
Review the tests/hypotheses/experiments and learnings openly
Delivery teams should observe research so they might have insights into what is actually actionable, and UR should help story writing in something like gherkin format to get them to start being more actionable
TOPIC 2: Scaling up a product team from 1 onwards, any experiences or tips?
Domain-driven design - one PM per domain/team
Make sure there’s an OKR (or similar) for each
Figure out how to manage dependencies/not get in each other’s way
Don’t just hire another ‘Mary’ - don’t get more of the same, figure out who should do what, and what the org actually needs
3/6/12 months from now - what’s working better with this person? What is the problem that needs to be solved by this hire?
Make sure they own a whole problem
You’re going to start making decisions as a team - what are your product principles? Who owns what? How do you work together? What tools do you use?
Hire for culture/experience ADD
Make sure they can do at least one thing better than you can
TOPIC 3: Any ideas on how to kindly coach people who have been used to working in certain ways, that there are benefits in exploring new ways of working? - collaboration being considered a new way of working
Success breeds success- get a small win
Solve the problem that they perceive - why will they want to change otherwise?
SHOW the benefits, not just talk about them
https://www.productboard.com/blog/change-management-5-principles
Be able to articulate WHY the change is good
There’s also a change canvas I built in Miro that you can use with a team in a workshop: https://miro.com/miroverse/change-canvas/
Canvas support in the problem people’s teams
Exec support can be key - positional power
For there to be meaningful change there needs to be first trust and rapport
Think about how to break inertia
Look for reward incentives that are at cross purposes - or that you can change
Sometimes people that act as blockers have to go
Put a boundary on how long you’re willing to invest in this
How can you change the rules so that the way they are currently working will inevitably make them fail or break the rules?
TOPIC 4: What killer thing do you do in the first two weeks of a new gig/project/stakeholder?
Talk to a lot of people, Ask a lot of questions
Do ALL the 1:1s
Ask: what’s the 1 thing we should be discussing now?
Get a list of key people from your manager
ASK: what can I do to make your life easier? And Who else should I talk to? And what can they teach me?
Don’t give any opinions at this stage
Another good read on this topic is the First 90 Days
I also asked each person on my team 1:1 to score themselves 1-5 (5 high) “Do you feel Respected | Engaged | Challenged | Inspired” and why. This was very eye opening to the culture and to the individuals.
+1 remote onboarding has been a very different experience and so much longer than being able to walk round the office and see who’s who… but also has meant richer conversations
Make a stakeholder map - and review it with your boss (etc)
Try to have the 1:1s in a different environment (where possible)
Listen in on other people’s meetings
My favourite question: If you could change one thing, what would it be
Prioritisation of questions - figure out the most important things you need to learn
Ask if your understanding is shared
Digest the research
Map the user journeys
Make an investment in the emotional bank account of everyone you meet
Variants of “Walk me through what you did last week?” Is a question I’ve found super revealing when onboarding to understand folks' context.
TOPIC 4: Any tips on working with remote engineering teams in multiple time zones?
Can you split team priorities by time zone?
Go async wherever possible - minimise meetings
Find the golden hour of overlap where people can talk, and use it well
Don’t overdo JIRA or similar to try and impose control
Board of borards is bad
If they don’t have rules/agreements around asynchronous communication, I’d set up a document around that with agreements. Basecamp has some good resources around that.
+1 on a team agreement around comms. Other tips & advice in here
PITA 026
Experimenting with an Asia-friendly time slot
TOPIC 1: How do you work with your team members sitting in different timezones. Share challenges, best practices, etc
Take turns to feel the pain - rotate who has to get up early/stay up late
As much transparency as possible around who’s doing what
Slackbot handles async standup (what you did,. What you’re doing, any blockers)
37 Signals approach (Shape Up / Ryan Singer)
More release planning up front, with recording of demo sessions
Extra time and effort on relationship development and onboarding for new team members
TOPIC 2: Roadmapping - now, next, future vs Project timelines
Clash and debate priorities with delivery/release planning. Limit work in progress. Repeat and refine and repeat and refine.
Communicate prioritisation and justification again and again
Road maps AND release plans (one quarter). No long term Gantt charts.
6 week iterations, Shape Up approach (2 mentions so far…)
6 weeks - 1 P1 (high confidence in results), some P2s (less confidence), P0s are complete unknowns/JFDIs
Trifecta: PM, Design and Tech lead joint ownership of roadmap
TOPIC 3: Product strategy - What are the best practices while building product strategy?
Start with definition - what place are we getting to, then what steps are we taking to get there?
Defining success amongst stakeholders
Competitor Analysis - gap analysis, & Customer segment analysis
User research - Qualitative data on user behaviours is invaluable, defining the JTBD
TOPIC 4: Trade offs with Tech debt and moving functionality forward
Dedicate a set % in every sprint to paying down debt
Enforce a ‘Leave it better than you found it’ mentality with the code base
Dev team prioritise it, reserve space for it
Tech debt is not immediately tangible - when people care about it, it’s already too late. Tech lead(s) needs to stay on top of this early. Consistent focus on the ongoing change.
Definition of DONE includes cleaning up the (inevitable?) mess
Red line: not allowed to compromise on quality for speed
Link product health check to strategic risks, make that visible to leadership
PITA 025
ICEBREAKER: Pair up. Draw a picture of your partner without looking, and without picking the pen up from the paper. Share!
TOPIC 1: Any tips for encouraging a PM to think of research to generate learning rather than as validation?
Work to disprove your own theories
Averages tell you nothing (example of having your hand in the freezer while your head is on fire)
Make sure there’s shared understanding of objectives, timelines & process
Focus on improving UX and Customer Experience instead designing/validating screens
2 phases - open-ended questions, then validation. Validation comes second
Learning early gives massive value - get everyone in that mindset
Deep conversations to make sure the intention/requirements are clear
Share case studies of various approaches
I find the ‘four big risks’ framing useful: The Four Big Risks — what’s the biggest risk for the product/idea? That should then help frame the conversation around the best method
I like using analogies to our non-work life as reference points for work. There are some people who just want to vent and don't want someone to solve their problems. The best listeners are the ones who are interested in listening and not solving the problem.
Give the generative research question to the person who doesn't want to solve it immediately. And/or go biblical: if you have two PMs who have two ideas, have them evaluate each other's ideas rather than their own. Then the incentive is to vet and not to validate.
TOPIC 2: Pardons are on my mind - if you wanted to be pardoned for one product/agile crime, what would it be?
Doing stuff by myself
Bias - making up my mind in advance
Making it perfect before shipping/showing
Cutting corners on process
Waiting too long to call stuff out
Not keeping my mouth shut
Not meeting people where they are
Not talking about/evangelising my product enough
Underestimating the effort of engaging people
Shiny object syndrome
Using the words JUST, QUICK, LITTLE and ONLY
Not counting on the impact of internal stakeholders
Saying Should and Could too much
Putting a pop-up on the website
TOPIC 3: Product sense doesn’t f@!king exist, does it?
Definition - Product sense = intuition - and how one improves intuition would be engaging with new apps. One person noted he plays with up to 200 apps per year to improve his product sense.
No. Just no.
Sounds like bias. Or a cult.
Is that any worse than the know-it-all founder, that knows what their users want?
Awareness of trends -vs- what customers actually need
Is product sense the same as experience?
Product sense, product mindset, product thinking..Anything else? :)
sometimes even mindset as well tbh, as I’ve been asked for advice using “your product sense” when they mean to ask about processes and how to get learnings
Difference between awareness and domain experience
It’s all about learning - if you can do that, you have good product sense
How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain by Lisa Feldman Barrett is a great read on a new perspective to understand how the brain works. A major point is around the brain working from a prediction perspective.
Surprise is when our prediction isn't accurate, which can be frustrating or pleasant (such as in music, according to Daniel Levitin, where a song that is too predictable is boring but a song that is too unpredictable is unpleasant. The sweet spot is the mid-spot.)
The trendy portion of analyzing a new app is important because it assesses how most people interact/what they expect to experience since their reference point is other apps they used previously.
TOPIC 4: Measuring impact once shipped - how’s that going?
Have a hypothesis before you start, then revisit that
Understand WHY you’re building whatever you’re doing - TESTS and ASSUMPTIONS work well with Engineers, categorised as leading & lagging indicators
using OKRs is an obvious one (and measuring the results)
Assumptions and then riskiest assumptions is good to prioritise
Pirate metrics for inspo is always useful
PITA 024
ICEBREAKER: Recommend a movie/TV show for the holidays!
TOPIC 1: Tips/gotchas from the field for setting OKRs when it’s the first time your org is trying out OKRs
Q1 will be wrong. Don’t worry about it.
Introduce at the top the first time. Add other teams later
Make sure you have metrics
4 key lessons I've learned about OKRs | by Richard McLean | Medium
Duration - set what makes sense for you
OKRs At The Center: How to use goals to drive ongoing change and create the organization you want by Natalija Hellesoe, Sonja Mewes
Deliverables can be KRs
Measure What Matters: OKRs: The Simple Idea that Drives 10x Growth, John Doerr
Start with a North Star - or figure it out
Start small - just one. Don’t try to do too many at first
TOPIC 2: New Year’s Resolution: what are you going to START (or STOP) doing in 2021?
Eat more veggies
Thinking of my career as a product
Find a way to go into conversations assuming best intentions, understand motivations better - so i can be less defensive
Stop trying to change people who aren’t going to change - pick other battles, ones with a chance of success
Keep count of meetings where i’m NOT interrupting people, to make sure I listen to people
Introduce silent meetings to one of my clients
Put more things on paper
Do more things asynchronously
Invest more time in challenging ‘This isn’t measurable’ statements
TOPIC 3: Tips on how to influence without ‘telling’ a young team, with lots of opinions and no real metrics!
Workshops & discussions with the team
Prioritise - avoid ‘change whiplash’
Play (good) mind games - ask questions so that they figure it out, rather than telling them what to do directly
Coaching towards a process
Help them figure out where to have processes; co-create a checklist for making decisions
Reframe opinions as hypotheses, then test
15% solutions from Liberating Structures also helps people to identify what they can control/change themselves
A great activity to get people to come up with solutions is From Obstacles to Outcomes / Resources: 15-minute FOTO
Hofstede is the daddy of cultural power distance work / Hofstede Insights Organisational Culture
TOPIC 4: Biggest Product Management Failure/learning in 2020
Get a good sponsor/stakeholder
Generic terminology (like wireframe, prototype, etc) WILL be misinterpreted/interpreted differently across the org
MVP
DevOps
Product Management
MVP+, whatever the heck that is
Summarising meetings is amazing - but I can’t be the designated scribe for other people’s meetings
Be intentional and active when training people - don’t assume
Missed out on someone getting to a burn out stage - be more careful, do more 1:1s, take care of your people
Don’t make assumptions about what someone’s dealing with - ask, support
Invite your stakeholders to your user research sessions