The ProductFitz: Recent Episodes
Scott Fitz
Sharing the realities of learning and growing in product management - uniquely as a PM in a small business over a new SaaS product for law firms. I'll also be talking to other product managers working on the craft across a range of companies, so we can all grow as product managers together. PS - I am also a full-time remote product manager.
I recently brought in our first product tool into the organization to help me. In this episode I cover what that tool is and how I use it to do things like organize our product ideas, publish a roadmap, facilitate prioritization and support better product discovery.
Fortunately, I was asked very early on to attend a marketing event, not to actually help market, but to observe and feel what I could about the market and our product. If you haven't yet attended a marketing event as a product manager, you absolutely should.
Your first few days on the job are important and kind of scary. What should you do as a new product manager at a company? I don't know what you are supposed to do, but in this episode I share what I did.
I took a new job, so I'm starting a new season of this podcast. In this first episode I share some of the things that went into making the decision to take a new job. The rest of the season will document my journey as the only product manager at my company, taking a new product from launch into the growth stage, and then further into establishing a product culture and growing a product organization. I'll still definitely interview other product managers as I shift into this new focus as my career shifts.
Spencer Behrend, Senior Product Leader at Divvy, shares with us what he looks for in a product manager, some tools they use for product management, and examples how they use leading indicators for product success. This is the third interview in the "What do You Look For in a Product Manager?" series.
Zak Johnson, Senior Team Manager at Charles Schwab, shares with us what he looks for in a product manager, some tools they use for product management, and examples how they use leading indicators for product success. This is the second interview in the "What do You Look For in a Product Manager?" series.
I read a lot about good topics and measures to watch as a product manager that honestly don't help in my situation all that much. Managing internal products in an enterprise is quite different. I share in this episode some of those differences and measures we are using to help others know what this type of product management is like.
Ben Brown, Director of Technology Leadership Experiences at Pluralsight, shares with us what he looks for in a product manager, some tools they use for product management, and examples how they use leading indicators for product success. This is the first interview in the "What do You Look For in a Product Manager?" series.
Are you for or against certifications? I'm unsure myself about certifications, but I'm definitely for the learning. In this episode I share some of my thoughts on taking the course and certification test.
Happy Thanksgiving everyone! Gratitude is huge. It physically changes our brain. We all need more of it.
Engineering changes and digging more into financials are some of the new things happening in my world as a product manager. I'll quote my manager this week when he said, "Product Management is NOT boring."
Many people think about starting a podcast or some other format to have a voice, build a community, strengthen your personal brand etc. And almost as many people procrastinate or remain still. This interview with myself recreates a real conversation that I hope provides the motivation you need to be part of the few that starts.
There is so much for a product manager to do to tell a story, have influence, get alignment, create momentum, etc... And all of it simply comes down to know what you are after clearly. Those real decisions of direction, not of features or solutions or the HOW, are the real tough ones. They also predicate the product. As a product manager you need to make sure you know what those are. There's no shortcut. Unless those decisions are made and agreed upon, everything else will suffer.
Andrew Young, Senior Product Manager at Divvy, shares with us the approach he uses for prioritization, key relationships you need to build as a product manager, how he creates and shares roadmaps, and the consistency between PMs at Divvy they try to maintain in how they operate. This is the fourth and final interview in the "Practical Tips for Product Managers" series.
We've been at it as a product management team for two years now. I share in this episode some practicalities during our first two years touching on things like personas, product review meetings, our use of metrics, and our role as a product manager.
Russell Lewis, Senior Product Manager at Adobe, shares with us the approach he uses for prioritization, key relationships you need to build as a product manager, how he creates and shares roadmaps, and the consistency between PMs at Adobe they try to maintain in how they operate. This is the third interview in the "Practical Tips for Product Managers" series.
Product Management is different within an enterprise, especially for internal products, but the core product management skills remain and any product manager can grow them no matter their environment.
Ryan Sandberg, Director of Product Management at Originate shares with us the approach he uses for prioritization, key relationships you need to build as a product manager, how he creates and shares roadmaps, and the consistency between PMs at Originate they try to maintain in how they operate. This is the second interview in the "Practical Tips for Product Managers" series.
I share a recent conversation I had with my product management team and some learnings from it. Being able to balance real technical understanding with customer empathy is what will help you be more successful as a product manager.
Andrew Higgins, Senior Director of Technology and Product Innovation at CPS Energy shares with us some practical product management tips for things like prioritization techniques, approaches in roadmapping, and how important it is to adjust to your organization, culture and relationships appropriately so all can exceed expectations delivery. This is the first interview in the "Practical Tips for Product Managers" series.
Just because you have some products and product managers, does not mean you have good product thinking. Although that seems obvious, it is also true that you can have weak product management structures in place but have strong product management thinking. My situation is of the latter, and I share in this episode 5 areas of product management thinking we are developing that is important for any product manager to have no matter the situation they are currently in.
In this one mashup episode we hear answers from 5 different product managers about what they are working on right now to be a better product manager.
Your surroundings are constantly changing, even internally, so you better not ignore it if you are to manage your product successfully.
Zakery Johnson, Product Manager (newly made Senior Team Manager) at Charles Schwab, shares with us about his early experiences a product manager. This is the 5th of 5 interviews in the series covering "Early Experiences as a Product Manager".
Doing product discovery well is largely the evidence you have to show if you are a good product organization or not. In this episode I quickly share my current realities as we are striving to become a good product organization by touching on our current product team structure and some aspects of our current culture that we must shape and change in order to do better at product discovery.
Andrew Young, Senior Product Manager at Divvy. shares with us about his early experiences a product manager. This is the 4th of 5 interviews in the series covering "Early Experiences as a Product Manager".
In the end, the engineers are the ones who actually build the product. So if you want to be a good product manager, you need to get the most out of your engineering teams.
Christopher Young, MedeAnalytics Director of Product Management, shares with us about his early experiences a product manager. This is the 3rd of 5 interviews in the series covering "Early Experiences as a Product Manager".
There are lots of words describing things in product execution, going all the way back to ideas. In this episode I talk through how I think about all these things and how they fit together in a product roadmap and a separate product release plan to help build a better product.
Ben Brown, Pluralsight Director of Technology Leader Experiences, shares with us about his early experiences a product manager. This is the 2nd of 5 interviews in the series covering "Early Experiences as a Product Manager".
Defining and building a new product is one thing, but defining and scoping many products from infrastructure, tooling and many capabilities that already exist is another. As a product management team, we've been trying to figure out how best to define our products. We've made some progress, but we are still continuing to refine and make improvements to our product definitions and offerings.
I share a real practical example that happened recently with our defect policy highlighting the shift we are still going through moving from an execution mindset to a product mindset. I also call out two aspects of managing internal products.
Ineffective purpose/mission/vision statements are a problem. Especially at a big enterprise. I give two simple rules to help create a statement that is clear and motivating enough to really create alignment and success.
Chatting with Adobe Senior Product Manager, Russell Lewis, about his early experiences as a product manager. This is the first in a series of chats with this theme.
It's clear that everyone does Product Management differently, but adding clarity and focus is something we can all start with.
This is an introduction episode covering what this podcast is all about, what's in it for you as you listen, and a little about who I am. Let's become better product managers together.