Hello, welcome to the bottom up skills podcast I'm Mike Parsons the CEO of quality Qualitance. And today we're going to talk about emerging trends. In fact, today is the start of an entirely new series talking. In depth about emerging trends for 2021. And boy, I mean, the reason we really needed to do an emerging trends report was it just feels like things are changing so quick.

And I know you're thinking, yeah, we say that every year, Mike, but I really did feel after 2020 kind of a year to forget in many respects, it really felt that we needed to get the pulse of what's happening. So I'm so delighted to share with you an eight part series. In fact, I [00:01:00] think I'm going to go further than eight.

I'm going to go nine or 10 episodes where we're going to go really deep into the trends. That are happening in the tech design product world. Um, and this will help us work out what's happening. This will help us if we know what's happening, we'll know what to do. And that's really the whole aim of bottom-up is to bring to you a podcast that really highlights to you.

Sort of a snapshot of what's happening in the world with product, how to think about it and how to take action. And today we're going to start with the big picture and obviously the way we kind of orientate ourselves here is understanding kind of where things are at and we're going to stop blowing them up.

So, uh, you will enjoy that, but here's the other important thing I'm going to. Touch upon not only technology trends, but also collaboration [00:02:00] trends. And this is really new for us because we've been doing this trends report for five years now. And this is the first time that we've had a collaboration section to this report.

And we really felt that if you want to build great product with great technology, you need to understand how to collaborate, how to work together, how to get everyone on the same page. So that's why we have both trends in the technology world and in the collaboration world. So let's start by kind of trying to grab the moment the here and now the present.

And I would propose to you that having studied the responses of over a hundred people from all around the world, experts, product people, entrepreneurs, you name it. There was a really big starting point to which everybody had the same experience. It didn't matter what industry, what role. What geography.

[00:03:00] And that is what I call the complexity conundrum. The reality is no matter whether you're a startup scale up or enterprise. Everybody is facing a level of complexity, which is really unheard of. And we were able to kind of grab this moment, the here and now that is really, there's a lot of complexities and interdependencies.

When we're trying to launch new products, trying to do a big upgrade to an existing product. It really is a question of sorting through the complexity and it comes from everywhere. It's like data insights, you know, analytics, uh, customer feedback, you know, stakeholder management. There's just a lot of things happening when we talk about the big trends of how we build brand new products that truly make a difference in the world.

So this complexity conundrum is. The starting point. It's the complexity engine that you [00:04:00] experienced when someone says, Hey, let's do something new and you instantly have this. This feeling, Oh, a new product or a new feature on a product. And you're like, Oh, that means we're going to have to do all this stuff with, uh, customers.

Then those we're gonna have to change the marketing. Then we're going to have to work out what customers want. We have to do the UX and the wire frames. And we got to look at the data and make sure that that matches to the qual. So we got a quote-unquote match. Oh. And then we have to like, think about the integrations that we have.

What do we need to update? In our analytics, is it mix panel? Is it Google analytics? Oh, by the way, then there's other content that we need. Then we need to do business process design. You kind of get where I'm going. I could go on, but you kind of get the, the sort of complexity that if you're a product owner, that's really all landing at you.

So for this, uh, trends report, we really wanted to capture where we're at, but also bring a message of, Hey, don't worry. It's okay. Uh, take a breath. It'll be all [00:05:00] right, because we broke the world down into tech and collaboration, and we've got a ton of answers for you. I think the next thought I want to go to.

So if the first one is look everyone's at this complexity situation, the complexity conundrum. This really marks a very new distinct chapter of digital transformation. If the first era of digital transformation was all about exploring, well, now we are definitely in the second wave of digital transformation, which is about.

Execution. So there, you've got this second idea that we took from the trends report. We're no longer in exploring we're now in the sort of execution ear of digital transformation and obviously 20, 20 COVID quarantine that really has forced a lot of big picture trends that we've seen. Um, And this is kind of accelerated things a lot.

So there's no more time for exploration. This [00:06:00] is all about execution. Customers want to be serviced in all channels. And there's another group of stakeholders that have come along just to make it more complex. But I'm going to get to those guys in a second. So first idea, look, we're facing complexity without a doubt.

If you want to build a product it's just complex, complex. Number two. We're now really under the pressure to execute at a huge scale at a huge speed. Um, and really omni-channel multi-channel whatever the word that you'd like to use is to describe being everywhere for your customer and, um, Really interesting thought here.

This is probably the third thought that big picture thought that we got from the, from the report is that you really need to have this idea of continual learning. And for those of us that are not engineers by birth, we don't need to become engineers, but we need to have the basic [00:07:00] ability to understand and think.

Like engineers in order to interface with them and the products, the platforms that they build. So we, uh, we did an expert interview with Marie and ignite, who is the head of retail distribution. At the bank BCR out of stir. And he talked about this idea, you know, code has to become a language in teams.

Everyone's got to understand these basic principles of how we build software in order to come together. So this was really interesting, particularly for those of us who are business stakeholders, who are maybe not engineers by birth. It really means we have to do this continual learning to get our skills into the right place.

Okay. So. Let's now kind of frame, uh, before we get to the, uh, for technology trends in the, for collaboration trends, let's understand why these trends exist. And I want to touch on some key points here. Now [00:08:00] earlier, if we look at the factors, the environmental conditions that are really affecting us as product creators, designers, builders, entrepreneurs.

I talked a lot about omni-channel the multichannel for your customers? I think that was something that was happening well and truly before last year, but what will did that get accelerated? You know, particularly when people can't go to the store, then obviously you really need to be, omni-channel all the digital touchpoints, but here's the one we didn't see.

Employees are working from home. So in fact, they want an omni-channel experience as well. So you had two huge stakeholders as a, as a product owner. You have the customer, and then you've got the employee. Now, anybody who's worked on a mission, critical enterprise e-commerce style of app, the admin. On the backend is just as important as the shop on the front end.

So whatever your front end experiences [00:09:00] for your customer, you also need to have a great experience for your employees and your peers and your teammates. Otherwise they cannot execute, manage, and deliver on the things that customers are putting into the system. So these are two big post COVID expectations that are really.

Pushing driving factors, creating change in order to serve both the customer employee. We have our second big trend, which is this idea. Second big insight. Really. It's not really a trend. Second big insight is that in order to serve those two constituents employees and customers, we've all got multi-platform digital solutions.

Like your CRM has to talk to your CMS, which has talked to payments, which has to talk to your ERP system. For example, like. Threading that together, being the polymer and, you know, connecting everything up. That's a, that's a lot of stuff talking to each other. That means your Salesforce is talking to your Azure, which is talking [00:10:00] to your content management system, which is talking to your analytics system, which is talking to your advertising system.

And it's the idea of these multi-platforms being merged, combined integrated this results in the third factor behind the scenes of this high complexity, but it's not only, it's not only the complexity of platforms. It's the complexity of the people that have to operate, drive and build those platforms too.

So we saw this really interesting correlation that you cannot have the platforms. Without the people enhance. That's why we included collaboration. So very interesting. These big factors. So let's back it up a bit. The first factor work from home employees, omni-channel customers means number two, you need multi-platform digital solutions, lots of things, all tied together.

Hence number three, it's all getting pretty complex. And the fourth thing is. The thing we are [00:11:00] all trying to do is to truly now, and this is very distinct from the first wave of digital transformation to the second is we now have to be everywhere for everyone. This is a really huge challenge. This is where the complexity comes from that recalls upon those platforms that we talked about, which means you have to serve employees, customers, and alike.

So this is the challenge. This is why. We need to understand the right trends in terms of tech and collaboration, because they are the way forward. They are the way you gain this agility mindset to really overcome those factors that I've just described to you. And don't forget. But this is in a bigger picture, this digital transformation.

This is a huge part of this Titanic shift on a really macro level. And I'm talking over here hundreds of years, we are literally shifting out of an industrial [00:12:00] yeah. Into a digital age where it's not about machines. It's about data where it's not about your organization. It's about how. Teams integrate where we shift from stability into change from factory worker to knowledge worker from capital being the essence to knowledge or that one's, that one's a really big one.

And then obviously there are themes of self learning and so forth, but the world so differently is no longer top down. It is in fact bottom-up and that. Ladies and gentlemen, that's why we exist. We want everybody to understand that don't, you don't have to be frozen by this complexity. You can actually learn the skills and the mindsets to help you get through and build better products, products that make a difference for the users, products that have an impact in the world.

And do you know what we've published? This report? You can get it@bottomup.io. You can take the full course on this report at bottom-up dot IO. [00:13:00] It's all free. A bottom-up that I IO and there's a ton of other courses as well. So strap on those seatbelts, get ready because we together on this podcast, we're going to be going into each of the themes, each of the trends, finding the answers.

And if you want to take the masterclass, if you want to get, download the PDF, get all the goodies on the charts, paired to bottom up. Wrap of the bottom-up skills from the costume.