The Product Bakery Podcast: Recent Episodes
Alex Dapunt & Christian Strunk
Are you currently working in a Product Company or even considering starting your own? In this Show, Design Manager Alex Dapunt, and Product Coach Christian Strunk are bringing people from all product functions together to talk about the key to build successful products customers love. This involves everything from Product Management to Design as well as Development and Marketing, breaking down traditional silos around these functions and fostering an open dialogue between them. Tune in for weekly interviews, discussions, and best practices that help you understand the whole product process.
Spoiler: This episode might be disturbing and might change your point of view on how product people and organizations should work...
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We discussed the current situation in the hiring and job market, addressing why hiring processes often drag on and the challenges encountered by both parties.
This is particularly hard when either a candidate or a company realizes, late in the hiring process, that there isn't a good fit.
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Check out our latest episode where we break down what makes product marketing truly effective.
We tackle the question of when marketing crosses the line into overselling, pointing out that it happens when your message doesn't match your product's real value.
Tune in for practical tips on keeping your marketing on track with what your product brings to the table.
Don't miss out!
Copy Writing Article:
https://frankkernprivate.clickfunnels.com/how-to-create-free-articles-reports-and-blog-posts-that-sell
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Even though we started talking about Jira and project management we've ended up on a crucial topic:Expanding product lines vertically and horizontally. We discussed the specific example of "True Fruits" a smoothie producer and some of their new products failed.
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A new generation is arising. Generation Alpha (A).
How will these people (children) develop and how do you address marketing and brand building for younger generations?
Is it ethically "correct" to target younger people?
Tune in to learn more.
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This time, we talked about the current state of the tech world. We discussed what's happening behind the scenes based on general bad experiences with products, customer services, and more.
Will the internet explode? Tune in to learn more.
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Branding is more important than ever, whether for yourself or your company. In this episode,
Alex coaches Christian on the essentials of branding. Together, they discuss everything from crafting a clear mission statement to choosing the perfect color scheme for your brand.
Dive into our 'brand' new episode to discover Alex's approach to branding and how you can apply these strategies to your own brand.
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Alex says you can't predict the future, but you can learn a lot by watching how users behave. In this episode, we explore how observing user behavior helps us spot patterns and make educated guesses about what's next.
Tune in to discover our research insights.
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In this episode, we dive into the nuances of A/B testing, guided by Christian's latest side project.
Alex shares his insights on conducting effective A/B testing, striking the perfect balance between thorough testing and decisive action.
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This time we dive into the new possibilities to quickly build products with automation tools like make.com, and zapier.com, in combination with AI tools.
This fast way to build MVPs and prototypes accelerates the whole process of shipping and testing products.
Tune in to learn more!
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In today's episode, titled "The Vision-Based Product Strategy," our hosts Alex and Christian tackle the challenges and importance of having a clear product vision. They discuss the common pitfalls of defining a vision and how it can lead to misalignment within the company. Christian challenges the traditional approach of creating a single inspiring sentence and emphasizes the significance of also including the "what" and the "why" in the product vision. The conversation evolves into distinguishing between a company's mission and its vision, and how these two aspects need to be aligned to drive success. Get ready for an insightful discussion filled with practical advice on crafting a strong product vision.
What we've covered:
(00:02:34) Defining an inspiring, world-changing vision.
(00:04:18) Product vision = future state and covers the what and why
(00:07:53) The mission in concise sentences.
(00:10:30) Vision and missions in multiproduct companies
(00:14:59) Alignment with input from teams.
Blog Article: https://www.product-bakery.com/blog/product-vision-strategy
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In today's episode, we dive into the world of Chief Product Officers and explore what sets apart the effective ones from the ineffective ones. Drawing from our recent conversations with CPOs from around the world, we discuss the differences between European and US CPOs, the impact of culture and leadership styles, and the key ingredients for success in this role. So grab your favorite pastry and join us as we uncover the secrets to being a top-notch CPO.
What we've covered:
(00:02:33) CPO's role in companies and European culture.
(00:06:32) Cultural differences and leadership styles impact teams.
(00:10:09) Trust, autonomy, growth, and teamwork for CPOs.
(00:11:07) Product strategy: problem-solving, profitability, and future positioning.
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In today's episode, Alex and Christian shed light on the growing emphasis on tools in the industry, particularly in the realms of design and product management. While tools can be immensely helpful and time-saving, the duo reminds us of the importance of not neglecting the craft itself. Join us as we explore the relationship between tooling, skills development, and the enduring need for human judgment and understanding in the product creation process. So grab your notepads and get ready for some insightful discussions.
What we've covered:
(00:18) Love for software tooling and emerging trends.
(05:17) Tools don't replace understanding and communication.
(09:03) Steve Jobs discovered through books and aesthetics and craftsmanship in product design.
(10:23) Tools change, learn history, study good designers.
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In this episode, Alex and Christian bring you an insightful discussion about a hot topic in the industry. They dive into the recent announcement by the CEO of Airbnb, who boldly stated that the company is moving away from product managers. They explore the implications of this decision and its potential impact on the role of product management. They also share their thoughts on the evolving nature of the product manager role and how organizations can optimize their workforce for efficient product development. Join us as we unpack the CEO's vision for a more design-driven company and the possible implications for the future of product management. Stay tuned for a thought-provoking conversation addressing product managers' role and relevance in today's ever-changing landscape.
What we've covered:
(00:01:56) Apple worked without product managers, interesting discussion.
(00:05:26) Engineering manager enables on-time delivery, overlaps determine role necessity - Apple example.
(00:08:16) Designers and CPMs should work together effectively.
(00:11:44) One person can cover the process, but experts validate.
Product Marketing Episode With Martina (click me)
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We know you might be tired of people talking about AI...
Nevertheless, there are tremendous trends changing the industry and we believe it's important to stay on top of things before...
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Innovation is a word that many companies claim to do. Or, they want to be more innovative by hiring external people, setting up innovation labs, and more. What is innovation though? We took it from there and dove into the definition of innovation as well as what it needs to "do innovation" and how not to do it.
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The summer break is over! We're back with an episode about learning from feedback, news, podcasts, books, and other resources. We don't only talk about how you learn, we talk about how you learn in the right way by taking a wider perspective on things instead of "just adapting" new knowledge.
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Long story short: We'll change the podcast format to make our conversation even more interactive. Tune in and learn about our plans ;-)
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We've been invited to the Product Conference in Munich and interviewed great guests about the importance of the product strategy.
Here are the questions we've asked:
The importance of product strategy
- Why do product teams need a product strategy (or not)?
- What are the key steps for a team or individual PM to define a strategy (ideally with examples)?
- Which key parts & information need every strategy to cover?
- How can teams & leaders ensure that their teams live by the defined strategy and further develop it so it doesn't get outdated?
- What do CEOs & founders need to give buy-in?
Follow the guests:
- Shilu Mistry: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shilu-mistry-b56598a/
- Pankaj Gupta, Ph.D.: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pankaj-gupta-germany/
Check out amplitude:
https://amplitude.com/
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We've been invited to the Product Conference in Munich and interviewed great guests about the product discovery process.
Here are the questions we've asked:
Running the product discovery process
- How do you run product discovery at your company?
- How did you initially set up or adjust a product discovery process when starting at your company?
- Which KPIs & metrics do you use to measure the impact of your discovery (ideally with examples)?
- At which point of the discovery process do most teams fail?
Check out amplitude:
https://amplitude.com/
Follow the guests:
- Gopi Kannappan: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gopikannappan/
- Sophie Genty: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sgenty/
- Vikas Seth: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vikas-seth-/
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Whether AI is a trend or not... it's there and it provides many ways and solutions to automize and outsource certain types of work and workflows. We've talked to Ofir Natan an AI specialist who shared with us the power of AI tools, and how he uses those to work with teams and empower companies.
On top of that we dropped the critical question if and how AI specialist might replace product people and engineers in the near future.
Connect with Ofir:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/ofirnatan/
Link to Ofir's AI talk:
https://ofirnatan.gumroad.com/l/gen-ai-for-product-teams-eu-cpo-conf-2023
Link to the resources:
https://amplitude.com/blog/supercharge-with-ai
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We invited Esmar to our show who is an experienced product leader. In this episode, he talked about how to set up a product discovery process as a leader who recently joined a new team/company.
Connect with Esmar Mesic: https://www.linkedin.com/in/esmarmesic/
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After diving into the product discovery, we continued our conversation and talked about the product delivery process.
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This week, Alex talks about how he does product discovery and how he and his team managed to establish a new process within their company.
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After many requests, we finally talked for the first time about OKR planning! In this episode, we looked at the whole planning process of OKRs on a team and company level. We specifically looked at the planning process and the common traps teams fall into.
OKR planning & process
https://www.christianstrunk.com/blog/practical-okr-planning-guide
Defining OKRs:
https://www.christianstrunk.com/blog/5-okr-best-practices
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This time we attended the Chief Product Officer Conference 2023 in Berlin. We've hosted a panel discussion and talked about product lead growth as well as the importance of AI.
Our guests:
Mirela Mus - CPO & Founder @Product People
Rhiannon White - CPO @Clue
Belen Caeiro - VP Product @Microverse
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After our previous discussion about product owners and managers, we looked deeper into product design vs. UX design.
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Product management and design collaboration is what we've talked most about in the past. The same goes for product and engineering collaboration.
In this episode, we talk about how product designers and engineers should collaborate to ensure seamless delivery to production.
Follow us on LinkedIn:
- Alex Dapunt: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexdapunt/
- Christian Strunk: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christianstrunk/
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We enjoyed talking to the analytics veteran and product evangelist Adam Greco. Adam has more than 20 years of experience in the industry. We talked about the importance of good data for marketers and product teams, the shift from sales-led growth to product-led growth as well as the upcoming trends around machine learning and AI.
Table of content:
- 00:30 - Intro Adam
- 02:40 - The rise of data
- 05:10 - Privacy, GDPR & more
- 13:25 - Marketing vs. product analytics
- 19:00 - Tracking based on business questions
- 27:20 - Good tracking vs. bad tracking (example)
- 33:10 - The trend of AI
- 36:45 - Adam's advice for product teams
Linkedin: Adam Greco
Website: amplitude.com
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The product manager vs. product owner discussion is still a thing. What's the difference and how do companies distinguish these roles? This time, we shared our thoughts and experiences around the titles.
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Giving and receiving feedback can be very challenging. Especially when it comes to the topics that bother us. In this episode, we talked about how we're giving feedback as well as the negative side effects of not speaking the truth.
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Do you have a place where you collect every idea of a stakeholder, team members, etc.? Are some ideas getting lost sometimes?
We discussed some approaches to manage ideas and report transparently on the progress of the stakeholder requests.
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Christian was at the Berlin Product Conference 2023 and hosted a panel discussion about the importance of user-centricity in product development. The whole conversation was recorded including the QA session.
Panel Guests:
- Henning Witzel - Head of Product Design @NewStore
- Benjamin Keyser - CPO @Latana
- Vamsi Krishna Wuppalapati - Interims CPO @Phyntelligence
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Netflix shared their new salary ranges due to the legal requirements for open positions. Interestingly a senior designer role has a range between $50k - $600k. We discussed the crazy range and what you can do to get the salary that you deserve!
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Creating a good product strategy is one thing. Another is ensuring that the whole company buys in and follows the strategy. We talked about how important it is to clearly communicate our plans as product leaders.
Need inspiration? Check out this product strategy template:
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1mLNt7f6CPPa3FzNxnHZAS7pxgp-QDOLL2UtsBe7fcKI/edit?usp=sharing
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"I don't have time to..." is maybe a quote you've said or heard many times. We made a deep-dive into time management and talked about the root-causes.
Meeting attendance decision tree:
👉 https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ZfkXdTt7hfkxWNe9ujPe4QdmoaWsuilS/view?usp=sharing 👈
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Today, we talked about the recent news on FTX (crypto exchange) and the current mass layoffs the tech industry faces. We took a deep dive into how the current economic situation impacts hiring, culture, how people are approaching job search, and more!
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After an eventful year, we're heading into a short break. Thank you all for the support throughout this year and see you back in 2023.
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We're sure you've heard about ChatGPT! In this episode, we discussed the new technology and the threats and opportunities of this new enhanced AI.
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Backlog management is not only a task for product managers. Design teams need to manage and prioritize their work as well. Therefore, we talked about how to best manage and coordinate the work between product and design.
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The new Arc browser is on its way! This time, we discussed how browsers have developed and what we expect from a product & design PoV from a good browsing experience.
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Maybe you've experienced something similar...
Many times people work on features or solutions... if you ask the question though: "what's the problem" you are not getting a real answer...
In this episode, we discussed why people tempt to jump to solutions and how you can be more problem/customer-centric.
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After more than 91 episodes we finally talked about design thinking. This time, Alex got interviewed about his opinion on design thinking and how to apply it.
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There is a tool... called the company compass or medicine wheel. It's used for strategic planning and defining clear roles within a company, project, or group. In this episode, we talk about the new framework we've discovered and how to apply it in product.
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This time, we talk about how to best approach when your team members are struggling with their performance. We looked at questions like:
- What best to do?
- What do the people need?
- How can you empower them?
Tune in to learn more!
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What to do if you're in trouble with your leader(ship team)? Can individual contributors make a change? Is it even their job? Or, should you just move on and let it go? This time we talked about what product people can and may should do if they want to change the direction of their leaders.
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You may have noticed that Instagram updated its app and rolled it back to the previous version. We took a closer look at what has happened, especially on the product & engineering side.
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In this episode, we talk about the importance of having and working with experienced people who coach or mentor you.
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Access granted! No, it's not about that kind of accessibility. We talk about what most product & design teams call edge cases or "we can ship that later."
We believe people with disabilities and restrictions need to be fully included in the product planning and development process, especially for products that are already live and be used by customers.
Tune in to hear our perspectives on understanding all customers and how to plan feature and product releases.
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You can't help others if you can't help yourself. You can't manage others if you can't manage yourself.
We've touched on those quotes a couple of times in previous episodes. In this conversation, we dive into a leader's role and what a leader should expect from their employees. Clarity about the role of a leader is the key to defining their employees' role.
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Many people update their Linkedin profiles and add new positions in Web 3.0 startups. That raised the question for Alex whether he should quit his job to work on a Web 3.0 startup. We took a deeper look into that and discussed what Web 3.0 actually is and if it's a hype or trend you shouldn't miss.
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There is one big question many people asking themselves currently: Should I work full-time or as a freelancer? In this conversation, we talk about why we're doing what we're doing. It's not about what is better! It's about what motivates us to work full-time or as a freelancer.
Tune in to get a different perspective on the two sides.
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The world goes crazy... corona, war, inflation, and many more things are happing right now. The impact on the economy is huge. Due to the financial situation, many companies need to save budget and start firing people to save costs. At the same time, many business models and strategic plans start to break too.
In this episode, we talk about how you as an employee and a company can make the best out of the situation and convert it into a great opportunity!
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There is so much to say and write about our opinion on boot camps. However, the best way is to tune in ;)
Enjoy and let us know what you think about boot camps!
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We've talked about how important it is to take of yourself if you're a leader in this episode. How do you want to help people if you can't help yourself? What should you expect from your employees? What are your primary responsibilities as a leader?
Tune in for a deep dive into the (product) leadership role and self care.
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It has been a while since our last episode. We both were very busy with our jobs, side projects, and vacation recently. Nevertheless, we decided to regroup and continue with new episodes about great topics. Tune in to get the latest update and what's coming up next.
Best,
Alex & Christian <3
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It's not always about data. Sometimes, you need to listen to your gut!
This week the Product Bakers interviewed Projjal Ghatak talking about how to solve customers' problems and how to bring in the right people into a company.
Table of content:
- 00:30 - Episode Intro
- 02:00 - Intro Projjal Ghatak
- 04:20 - Starting a company based on a problem
- 06:55 - Dealing with intuition vs. data
- 12:30 - Networking to find the right people
- 17:10 - Understand and define good problems
- 25:00 - Company strategy: quality vs. growth
- 28:30 - Delivering value to customers
- 30:40 - Creating a great advisory board
- 34:45 - CEO advice: Fokus
Connect with Projjal:
- Linkedin: @pgonloop
- Twitter: @gprojjal
- Website: www.onloop.com
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In this episode, Alex and Christian discussed the danger of falling in love with your first idea or solution.
Table of content:
- 00:30 - The importance of quality
- 03:30 - The of too much MVP thinking
- 06:30 - Not enough vs. too much data
- 09:00 - 8 sketches, 8 minutes
- 11:20 - Timeboxing research & prototyping
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Doing product management isn't easy. Even though, with gazillions of books that people have read, they can sometimes not execute the knowledge. In this episode, Christian and Alex took a deeper look at why that's the case.
Table of content:
- 00:30 - Why is product management so hard?
- 02:40 - Chicken & egg problem
- 03:30 - Collaboration & soft skills are essential
- 06:50 - Regular reminders
- 08:15 - Making a change as an individual
- 10:55 - Making compromises
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Asking great questions is a real-life superpower! Sometimes though, it's important to take a step back and ask (powerful) stupid questions, especially when you are new in a role as a product person.
In this episode, the Product Bakers talked to Paul about coaching CEOs to develop a product mindset. Despite that, they've talked about what product people can do to establish more product thinking.
Table of content:
- 00:30 - Episode Intro
- 01:50 - Intro Paul
- 04:45 - The ego of founders
- 10:50 - What founders need to hear
- 16:10 - Influential product management
- 22:35 - Asking dumb questions
- 32:35 - What founders & PMs can do to make a change
Follow Paul:
- Linkedin: @paulortchanian
- Bainpublic: https://www.bainpublic.com/
Reads:
- Why the Product Manager Should Also Play Dumbhttps://blog.bainpublic.com/post/why-the-product-manager-should-also-play-dumb
- Why Empathy Is the Key to Success for Your Next Product Objective
https://blog.bainpublic.com/post/why-empathy-is-the-key-to-success-for-your-next-product-objective * You accomplish everything through othershttps://blog.bainpublic.com/post/you-accomplish-everything-through-others * Product Management: Saying No Without Shutting Them Downhttps://blog.bainpublic.com/post/product-management-saying-no-without-shutting-them-down
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Public roadmaps became a hot topic in the past. Christian & Alex decided to speak about the benefits of sharing your roadmap with your customers and how to define it in a way that they will understand your future plans.
Table of content:
- 00:30 - Intro & chit chat
- 02:35 - Transparency is key
- 03:20 - The idea of "open startup"
- 05:50 - Customers love knowing your plans
- 07:15 - Using good terminology
- 11:25 - Getting feedback from your customers
- 13:30 - What you should not share publicly
- 16:00 - Don't be afraid to share your plans
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The Product Bakery podcast was started on the 10th of September 2020. After one year of podcasting and many interviews, Christian and Alex sat down to take a couple of looks back...
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The whole insurance space is very slow. At least it used to be! Konrad Heipmel's mission @Getsafe is to disrupt the insurance market. As VP of Data & Product, he shared with the Product Bakers how they focus on data to build a product that fits the market needs and solves the customer pain points.
Table of content:
- 00:30 - Episode Intro
- 02:20 - Intro of Konrad & the insurance space
- 07:00 - The biggest challenges of the industry
- 10:40 - Working with product principles
- 13:45 - How to scale up domains & teams
- 16:15 - The relevance of data
- 18:15 - Establishing a data mindset & culture
- 21:10 - Data-driven product strategy
- 25:15 - Data as a foundation to form teams & squads
- 29:25 - Entrepreneurial decision vs. data-based decisions
Links & connect with Konrad:
- Linkedin: @konradheimpel
- PMF Survey: https://review.firstround.com/how-superhuman-built-an-engine-to-find-product-market-fit
- Getsafe Jobs: https://www.hellogetsafe.com/career
- Getsafe tech blog: https://medium.com/hellogetsafe
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Many companies and teams want to become faster and speed up projects. That's a topic Christian & Alex are regularly faced with. This time they spoke about the concept of project-specific teams (task forces) and how to form them as well as their pros & cons.
Table of content:
- 00:30 - Example: Redesigning an app
- 02:45 - The concept of a task force
- 05:10 - How to form a task force
- 08:00 - Good project management is key
- 12:40 - Outsourcing projects to agencies
- 16:35 - Estimating scope and delivery
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Alex and Christian did manage for a long time to meet and record in person again. Therefore, they picked up the topic of working remove vs. being onsite. How can and should teams decide what's best in terms of tooling and location? Tune in to learn more!
Table of content:
- 00:30 - Meeting in person
- 05:05 - What's best to be creative?
- 08:40 - 1:1s vs team meetings
- 12:25 - Industry and professions are relevant
- 17:25 - Cross-functional teams onsite vs. remote
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Communication can be the hardest work sometimes. Due to the fact that a lot of companies moved to remote work, it's not getting easier. This time Christian and Alex picked up the whole topic of stakeholder management and what product people can do to bond and keep up alignment.
Table of content:
- 00:30 - Is communicating getting harder?
- 02:45 - Different people with different agendas
- 06:35 - Stakeholder awareness
- 09:40 - The first step to good stakeholder management
- 11:45 - Being proactive instead of passive
- 13:45 - Planning and preparing communication
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Alex is close to going on vacation. Therefore, he and Christian caught up on the whole topic of work-life balance.
Table of content:
- 00:30 - Alex going on vacation
- 02:50 - The importance of work-life balance
- 05:25 - Working on vacation
- 07:00 - Taking care of your employees
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Sometimes, the products we use seem to become more complex than easier. The product bakers discussed why that happens and the reasons.
Table of content:
- 00:30 - iOS 15 and the safari URL bar
- 07:20 - Strategy & big picture vs. UX
- 09:30 - Designing against the customer
- 13:00 - The danger of copying trends
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This time, Christian and Alex talked about the development of artificial intelligence (AI) and its advantages and potential downsides.
Table of content:
- 00:30 - Turn of your notification
- 01:55 - What AIs do already these days
- 04:50 - Strong vs. weak AI
- 08:00 - Losing human interactions
- 11:50 - Good data & diverse teams
Book recommendation:
- Competing in the Age of AI
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In this episode, Christian and Alex talked about how they organize their time and todos.
Table of content:
- 00:30 - Episode Intro
- 02:30 - Using spare time to be productive
- 04:10 - Color coding the calendar
- 05:10 - Blocking time in the calendar
- 07:45 - Declining meetings
- 09:45 - Manage the stakeholders
- 12:10 - Documentation & tooling
Christian's Meeting Course:
- https://www.christianstrunk.com/courses/meeting-facilitation
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Christian Idiodi is a partner at the Silicon Valley Product Group. With his experience, he helps product and leadership teams across the globe to solve their customer problems. In this episode, he shares the biggest challenges that product teams have and how especially leaders can help and empower product people to solve those.
Table of content:
- 00:30 - Episode Intro
- 02:10 - Intro Christian Idiodi
- 03:50 - The biggest challenges product people have
- 08:25 - Missing empowerment from leadership teams
- 13:35 - Prioritizing doesn't work without strategic alignment
- 19:25 - Supporting the leadership team as a product manager
- 25:45 - Keeping the strategy updated as a leader
- 27:35 - The #1 tip every PM should follow
- 30:10 - The #1 tip every product lead should follow
- 32:15 - Micromanaging CEOs
Follow Christian Idiodi:
- Linkedin: @cidiodi
- Twitter: @CIdiodi
- Website: https://svpg.com/
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This time Alex and Christian focused on a topic that they haven't talked about at all. Ethics! Both discuss how current products tempt to become more unethical and what to do about it.
Table of content:
- 00:30 - Episode intro
- 02:10 - Dominated by white people
- 06:40 - Ignoring minorities
- 08:55 - Balancing ethics in your organization
- 09:50 - Are product principles a solution?
- 11:30 - No regulations in tech
- 14:25 - Discrimination on Twitter
Books links:
- Technically Wrong
- Ruined by Design
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Christian recently read the book "The One Thing" which reminded him how important it is to focus only on one thing. Together with Alex, they've discussed the key learning of the book and how to apply it to your day-to-day product life.
Table of content:
- 00:30 - Intro
- 01:15 - Multi-tasking & context switching
- 05:50 - Identifying your own one thing
- 08:05 - Focusing on only one thing
- 09:30 - Tips to get started
Book link: The One Thing
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The Product Bakers touched a couple of times on the topic of case studies as part of the hiring process. Alex has a very strong opinion when it comes to overall candidate experience. Therefore, they've decided to dedicate this episode to talk about the downsides of case studies and why it makes good candidates not start working for your company.
Table of content:
- 00:30 - Small talk
- 01:30 - The downsides of case studies
- 05:40 - Understanding how candidates think
- 07:50 - Why companies need to rethink their hiring process
- 12:30 - Respect peoples' time
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🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/
In this episode, the Product Bakers discussed their experiences around structuring organizations in hyper-growth and what mistakes leadership teams should avoid doing.
Table of content:
- 00:30 - Intro episode
- 02:40 - Basics to structure an organization
- 04:40 - The Spotify model
- 06:45 - Why copying models don't work
- 08:35 - Taking a look at the company culture
- 10:25 - Mistakes to avoid
- 11:15 - Autonomy vs. anarchy
- 16:05 - Summary
Article & book recommendations:
- https://www.christianstrunk.com/blog/organic-organizations
- Exponential Organizations
- Scale Up
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Jill is a strategic and visionary ex-Experience Director with over 12 years of experience. She currently works for Bain & Company as one of their most senior Designers in EMEA.
Throughout her career, she has led and helped international companies and start-ups to innovate, to instill a human-centric design approach, and to grow. She designs interactions at the intersection of people, products, and environments, and brings out incremental and revolutionary changes for the people she designs for.
She's worked in London, New York, Abu Dhabi, and Taipei. Her clients include Sony, Tiffany & Co., Kellogg's, BP, BT, Jaguar Land Rover, HSBC, Macquarie, and more.
Table of content:
- 00:30 - Episode summary
- 03:00 - Intro Jill
- 05:00 - The definition of strategy
- 08:30 - Enabling innovation with strategy
- 10:20 - In-house agency vs. embedded teams
- 12:30 - Strategic design vs. service design
- 16:00 - Design & product strategy
- 19:30 - The biggest strategic challenges companies face
- 26:20 - Combining design & product strategy
- 30:00 - Ensuring a holistic design in cross-functional teams
- 35:40 - 3 Tips if you work on/with a design strategy
Follow Jill:
- Linkedin: @cyjilllin
- Twitter: @jillybeanlin
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Biases are part of human nature. In this episode, Alex discussed with Christian the importance of understanding and identifying your own bias.
👉 Episode feedback survey ✍️
Table of content:
- 00:30 - Intro & small talk
- 02:10 - Asking biased question during interviews
- 04:10 - Common "biased" mistakes
- 05:50 - Stereotypes
- 07:05 - Being over-excited
- 09:25 - Disproving your biased opinion
- 11:50 - Understanding the most relevant biases
Article about biases:
- https://xd.adobe.com/ideas/process/user-research/how-to-overcome-cognitive-bias-in-ux-research/
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I don't care who does the work; I do care that we solve the problem! That was one of the great quotes from Jonathon talking about what content design is and why it's so important to think about it.
In this episode, the Product Bakers and Jonathon discussed how to establish content design in a company and what positive impact it has on the UX and success of a product/business.
👉 Episode feedback survey ✍️
Table of content:
- 00:30 - Episode Summary
- 01:40 - Intro Jonathon
- 02:55 - The definition of content design
- 08:25 - Collaborating with product people
- 11:05 - Adding content designers to teams
- 13:10 - Measuring the impact of content design
- 16:00 - The role & responsibilities of a CD
- 19:15 - Desing principles
- 25:25 - When and how to hire a CD (team)
- 33:15 - Dealing with languages & internationalization
- 35:10 - Branding & Marketing
- 41:05 - The future of content design
Follow Jonathon:
- Linkedin: @jcolman
- Twitter: @jcolman
- Intercom product & design principles: https://www.intercom.com/blog/intercom-product-principles
- How Jonathon maximized the impact of content design at Intercom
- Intercom's design team site and job levels for product and content designers
- Are you being clear or clever?
- A guide to narrative design
- Kristina Halvorson, Erika Hall, and Mike Monteiro talking about content
- Books on content design: Content Design, Strategic Writing for UX, Writing is Designing
- Events for content design: Design & Content, Button, Information Architecture Conference
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Based on questions from the community and general observations the Product Bakers decided to talk about how to land a job in product. They focused on topics such as searching for a job, preparing for an interview, as well as some dos and don'ts for the CV.
Table of content:
- 00:30 - Small talk & intro
- 03:30 - Applying as junior vs. senior
- 04:15 - What makes a good CV stand out (and why)
- 09:25 - 1 to 5 ratings in CVs (spoiler: NO GO!)
- 13:20 - Mocked interviews & alternative ways to prepare
- 15:40 - Applying for the right companies
- 18:15 - Portfolios for product jobs
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Starting a new job as a Product Manager can be very challenging. Especially, if you don't have a mentor a someone who guides you through the process of becoming a PM. Shaun Russell made it to his mission to support people on that journey as a product coach.
In this episode, the Product Bakers and Shaun discussed the challenges people are facing when starting a new PM position and how to overcome them.
👉 Episode feedback survey ✍️
Table of content:
- 00:30 - Episode Intro
- 02:30 - Intro Shaun
- 05:30 - Starting a new PM position
- 08:15 - Common challenges PMs have
- 10:20 - Understanding the organizational structure
- 13:00 - Crucial methodologies to learn
- 17:30 - Managing stakeholders
- 19:10 - Being stuck in a position
- 25:10 - Product Management is like learning a new language
- 32:15 - Why Bootcamps suck!
- 34:46 - Passion > Theory
Follow Shaun & his links:
- Website: https://www.shaunrussell.me/
- Linkedin: @shaun-russell-coach
- Twitter: @_ShaunRussell
- Book recommendation: Continuous Discovery Habits
- https://www.producttalk.org/opportunity-solution-tree/
- https://andrewskotzko.com/how-to-know-if-youre-interviewing-at-a-product-led-company/
- Continuous Discovery Habits
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🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/
Nacho works for more than 12 years in Product Management. One of his key takeaways after more than a decade was, that the product strategy is the most undervalued tool to make a product company successful. He decided to structure and share all his knowledge in his recently launched book: Product Direction.
In this episode, the Product Bakers and Nacho make a deep dive into how to define a product strategy and how to communicate and share it with the whole company to get full buy-in.
👉 Episode feedback survey ✍️
Table of content:
- 00:30 - Episode summary
- 02:00 - Intro Nacho
- 04:50 - The importance of a product strategy
- 07:20 - Product Leads drive product strategy
- 10:55 - How to start creating a strategy
- 18:10 - The timeframe
- 20:20 - Roadmapping based on strategy
- 22:55 - Roadmapping vs. OKRs
- 28:50 - Communication is key
- 31:20 - Mistakes to avoid
- 34:55 - Measuring strategy & its impact
- 39:30 - The most important things to take care of
Nacho online:
- Linkedin: @juanbassino
- Medium: https://nachobassino.medium.com/
- Podcast: Conversaciones de Producto
- Nacho's book: Product Direction
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🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/
This time the Product Bakers picked up a frequently asked question from the community and talked about the agile frameworks Scrum and Kanban. Christian highlighted the differences and gave some tips on what framework you can get started with.
Table of content:
- 00:30 - Episode intro
- 02:10 - Agile frameworks
- 03:35 - Scrum vs. Kanban
- 04:35 - Agile = not changing the plan all the time
- 07:25 - Velocity vs. throughput
- 09:00 - Planning & estimating
- 10:45 - Getting started with scrum
- 12:30 - Kanban for experts?
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Richard and Ben both love working with people and startups. It became their mission to help people with great ideas and minor to no technical knowledge to make their dreams come true. However, not every business idea is necessarily a good idea. Therefore they support founder teams with everything they need from product discovery, building the product to shipping it to their future customers.
In this episode they've talked about the importance and the process of validating business ideas, setting up teams for success, and what it needs to build a trust relationship between external agencies and founder teams.
👉 Episode feedback survey ✍️
Table of content:
- 00:30 - Episode summary
- 03:00 - The story of Rich & Ben
- 07:35 - When founders should work with an agency
- 11:10 - What founders make fail
- 14:05 - The benefits of no technical knowledge
- 17:25 - MOHARA's SCUBA framework
- 20:30 - Validating business ideas
- 22:35 - The challenges of working with founder teams
- 30:05 - Fundraising
- 35:11 - Building trust as the foundation for collaboration
- 37:15 - When to stop working with an agency
- 40:20 - What founders can expect from agencies
- 43:35 - Rich & Ben's biggest learnings working with startups
Follow Richard & Ben:
- Website: http://mohara.co
- Linkedin Richard: @samsrichard
- Linkedin Ben: @ben-blomerley
Article:
- Doing the product due diligence right
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After another dinner, the Product Bakers decided to do another product review. This they took a deeper look at Atlassian's product JIRA and how to set it up in the right way.
👉 Episode feedback survey ✍️
Table of content:
- 00:30 - Small talk
- 03:25 - Love it or hate it
- 06:10 - JIRA & working agile
- 07:00 - JIRA classic & its terrible UX
- 11:00 - Defining workflows and projects for success & scale
- 14:15 - Who should manage & own JIRA?
- 16:00 - Cross-team collaboration & reporting
- 19:30 - Two tips to better use JIRA
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The Product Bakers talked the first time to another Product Manager & Design "couple." Yoav (PM) and Tudor (PD) share their experience about working together on projects and how they split responsibilities and maintaining a trustful relationship.
In this episode, they've caught up on topics such as design review, prioritization, and design sprints.
👉 Episode feedback survey ✍️
Table of content:
- 00:30 - Episode summary
- 02:35 - Intro Yoav & Tudor
- 05:00 - Their day-to-day business
- 06:50 - Team setup & collaboration
- 08:50 - The key for good collaboration
- 11:45 - Data for better decision making
- 15:50 - What design needs from product for discovery
- 21:40 - Prioritizing solutions
- 27:25 - Team workshops (design review & design sprints)
- 39:20 - Yoav's & Tudor's tips for good collaboration
Yoav & Tudor online:
- Yoav Linkedin: @yoavfarbey
- Yoav on medium: https://farbey.medium.com/
- Tudor Linkedin: @tudor-teisanu-7b08a4b2
- Tudor on medium: https://teisanutudor.medium.com/
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📸 Instagram: @productbakery
🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20
🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/
During dinner, Alex and Christian had a discussion about personas and the common mistakes people do while working with them. They decided to continue this conversation in this episode and dive a bit deeper into the whole world of personas.
👉 Episode feedback survey ✍️
Table of content:
- 00:30 - Are personas the right way?
- 04:00 - Slicing personas instead of working with one
- 06:00 - Jobs to be done
- 07:30 - Understanding customer problems instead of assuming
- 13:10 - User vs. persona
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📸 Instagram: @productbakery
🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20
🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/
Varya started her career as a Frontend Developer and was always passionate and engaged in working with design & frontend components before design systems were invented. At some point, she decided to use her knowledge and focusing on helping companies and the community on building design systems in the right way and understand the value.
In this episode, Varya talks about how to manage a design project in the most structured way and how to convince senior leadership teams of its value based on data.
👉 Episode feedback survey ✍️
Table of content:
- 00:30 - Episode intro
- 01:50 - Intro Varya
- 04:10 - Engineering vs. design mindset
- 06:30 - Best timing to build a design system
- 08:50 - How to allocate resources & focus
- 11:05 - Kicking off the project
- 17:30 - Communicating & aligning across the organization
- 21:55 - Convincing Senior Leadership Teams
- 26:35 - Design systems vs. creativity
- 28:30 - Biggest mistakes companies do with design systems
- 32:45 - Varya's design system course
Follow Varya:
- Design system course: https://hands-on-workshop.varya.me/
- Website: https://varya.me/
- Linkedin: @varyastepanova
- Twitter @varya_en
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🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/
Alex talked to Christian about his past experiences working with Designers. Christian shared his story about how he developed a good eye and understanding of UI and UX.
Table of content:
- 00:30 - Small talk
- 01:45 - Christian's design history
- 06:20 - Working together with a Designer
- 07:50 - How design skills help Product Managers
- 08:20 - Keeping an open & honest relationship
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🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/
Daniel & Robert working at ready2order as Director of Product and Talent Acquisition Lead. They both have the mission to build an amazing product with great people. Daniel is on board for more than 5 years and Robert joined 7 months ago to streamline hiring processes for all departments and especially Product Management & Design.
In this episode, they share how they defined and implemented a new hiring strategy to find the right people at the right time.
Table of content:
- 00:30 - Episode summary
- 01:40 - Intro Daniel Ibrahim & Robert O'Donoghue
- 03:35 - How hiring has changed @ready2order
- 08:05 - Product vision & strategy as a blueprint for hiring
- 10:55 - Setting up the hiring process
- 14:30 - Case studies to identify the core strengths of candidates
- 17:50 - How to measure case studies
- 21:00 - Filtering out candidates
- 25:50 - Pros and cons of case studies
- 30:10 - Hiring decisions made as a team
- 35:30 - Salaries & benefits
- 40:00 - How to hire and collaborate remotely
Daniel & Robert online:
- Linkedin Daniel: @daniel-ibrahim
- Linkedin Robert: @rodonoghue1
- Jobs @ready2order: https://ready2order.com/en/career/
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📸 Instagram: @productbakery
🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20
🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/
In the second part of the coaching vs. managing series, Alex interview Christian about coaching practices as an external and unbiased coach. Christian talks about how to identify and define goals together with his coachees as well as deep-diving into asking good and the right questions.
Table of content:
- 00:30 - Intro Alex
- 01:20 - Unbiased coaching
- 03:45 - Why product people call a coach
- 04:40 - Defining and working towards goals
- 07:15 - Asking the W's (who, what, by when)
- 08:55 - What are good questions?
- 11:40 - Therapy vs. coaching
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📸 Instagram: @productbakery
🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20
🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/
Martina Lauchengco started her career in product management for Microsoft Office and has worked in and taught product and product marketing since. One of the big things she's seen in the last couple of years is that modern product marketing demands a more iterative approach.
In this episode, Martina talks about the power of product marketing, the role of a Product Marketing Manager, and how companies can improve their processes to be more "product-marketing-driven."
Table of content:
- 00:30 - Episode summary
- 02:05 - Intro Martina Lauchengco
- 05:00 - How product marketing changed over the past 25 years
- 10:10 - Product Manager vs. Product Marketing Manager
- 17:10 - Finding product-market fit
- 21:30 - Everyone does product marketing differently
- 24:45 - The 4 elements of product marketing
- 27:50 - Communication as a Product Marketing Manager
- 34:10 - Hiring the first Product Marketing Manager
- 40:00 - Marketing = planting seeds
- 44:50 - Martina's upcoming book!
Martina on the internet:
- Linkedin: @martinalauchengco
- Twitter: @mavinmartina
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📸 Instagram: @productbakery
🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20
🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/
Following up on the previous episode, Christian and Alex share what podcasting tools they use and how the process of creating an episode works.
Next to that they followed up on their product review format and took a deeper look into the tool Descript.com.
Table of content:
- 00:30 - Intro podcast tooling
- 01:55 - Anchor.fm for podcast distribution
- 02:00 - Zencastr.com for recording
- 03:35 - Adobe Audition for the raw cut
- 04:45 - Descript to finalize the episode
- 06:20 - Squarespace for our website
- 08:00 - Deep-dive into Descript functionality
- 16:45 - Rating Descript from 1 to 5 Descript
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🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/
A while ago the Product Bakers have promised to talk about how they started the Product Bakery. In this episode, Alex and Christian share how they started this project and the processes they set up to manage themselves.
Next to that, they talk about how they interate on the podcast format based on the feedback they get from their community.
Table of content:
- 00:30 - Small talk
- 02:25 - Podcast Alex & Christian are listening to
- 05:50 - Product Bakery's problem statement
- 06:50 - From the idea to execution
- 09:20 - 2 team members with different skills
- 10:30 - Bias to action
- 11:55 - New formats & validating ideas
- 14:00 - Community feedback to improve the show
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📸 Instagram: @productbakery
🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20
🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/
The product bakers decided to talk about coaching product managers & designers as a leader over two episodes. In this episode, Christian interviews Alex to talk about his experience of being a manager and coach at the same time.
Alex shares his point of view of the thin line between managing people and working toward business goals vs. coaching, leading, and empowering people.
Table of content:
- 00:30 - Intro Christian
- 01:15 - Coaching & managing people
- 04:00 - Different types of employees (designers)
- 05:35 - Coaching vs. managing
- 08:30 - Radical candor to help people improving
- 11:45 - Asking the right (non-leading) questions
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📸 Instagram: @productbakery
🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20
🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/
This is the first case study where the Product Bakers made a deep-dive into a real-world project with Product Lead Mathias Kluge. Mathias shared how he and his team identified churn reasons and the process of finding solutions.
Besides reducing churn by over 40%, Mathias faced also many challenges and made a lot of learnings which are shares in this episode.
Table of content:
- 00:30 - Intro Mathias Kluge (Matze)
- 03:05 - From Product Design to Product Management
- 03:55 - When to start looking at churn
- 06:35 - Defining, gathering, and analyzing data
- 11:25 - Creating hypothesis with your team
- 15:15 - Best practices to analyze churn
- 17:50 - Defining success metrics & KPIs
- 23:30 - Preparing the backlog & the solution
- 24:45 - Prioritizing & negotiating
- 30:05 - Collaborating with Designers
- 37:35 - Explaining problems not solutions
- 38:55 - Mathias’ key learnings
- 41:30 - Debrief Alex & Christian
Mathias online:
- Linkedin: @matkluge
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🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20
🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/
Christian was curious and asked Alex what the key things are he takes care of in his first days as a fresh leader joining a new company. They touched upon the topic of strategy, tooling, and getting to know the leadership team and staff.
Table of content:
- 00:30 - Intro Christian
- 01:40 - What to look at when you apply for a new leadership role
- 04:30 - Getting to know the leadership team & your staff
- 07:00 - Reviewing the strategy & understanding decisions
- 10:05 - Alining on tools
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📸 Instagram: @productbakery
🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20
🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/
Josh Seiden is a designer, strategy consultant, coach, and author. He started his career in the early 90s. Since then a lot of things have changed. That's why Josh decided to write and share his experience, and latest observations in amazing books such as "Lean UX" or "Outcomes over Output."
In this episode, Josh discusses with the Product Bakers everything about Lean UX and how to work with hypotheses and problem statements. They've also touched upon the topic of lean experimentation to validate ideas as quickly as possible.
Table of content:
- 00:30 - Intro Josh Seiden
- 03:30 - The change of Lean UX
- 04:30 - Making product & design teams work
- 06:25 - The notion of design thinking
- 08:25 - Defining good problem statements
- 11:40 - Defining good hypotheses
- 16:05 - Finding problems & defining success criteria
- 19:10 - Josh's definition of an MVP
- 25:20 - Perfectionism kills success
- 28:35 - Experimenting instead of solutionizing
- 30:35 - Josh's biggest learning with Lean UX
- 33:30 - Debrief Christian & Alex
Follow Josh:
- Josh's Masterclass: Online masterclass outcomes for product teams
- Josh's books: Lean UX, Outcomes over Output
- Medium: @jseiden
- Linkedin: @jseiden
- Twitter: @jseiden
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📸 Instagram: @productbakery
🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20
🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/
This week Alex picked up the topic of prioritizing and saying no to stakeholders and customers. Christian explains in this episode where to start before you make a decision (saying no) and how to say no in the right way.
Table of content:
- 00:30 - Intro by Alex
- 03:10 - Self-awareness and doing your homework first
- 05:20 - Prioritizing against OKRs & company goals
- 07:15 - Balancing operational and research work
- 12:00 - Explain why you say no to people
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🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20
🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/
With many years of experience in product management, data, and analytics Ben Yoskovitz joined the Product Bakery to have a conversation about these topics. As a founding partner of Highline BETA a venture studio and venture capital firm, he looks a lot into data and analytics of companies to support business ideas and startups.
In this episode, the product bakers discussed the basics of defining good metrics & KPIs as well as the history and future trends of data-driven work and mindsets.
Table of content:
- 00:30 - Intro Ben
- 03:50 - The rise of data awareness
- 05:20 - Working with & defining data
- 06:55 - Leading vs. lagging KPIs
- 11:25 - Defining one metric that matters (North Star)
- 16:30 - Measuring wrong data
- 19:45 - Complexity of quantitative data & vanity metrics
- 27:10 - Establishing a data mindset in startups & teams
- 30:20 - Understand the big picture as a Leadership Team
- 32:30 - Defining assumptions & hypothesis
- 37:30 - Dealing with legacy data infrastructure
- 38:30 - Ben's outlook for the future of working with data
- 41:20 - Debrief Alex & Christian
Follow Ben's work:
- Twitter: @byosko
- Linkedin: @byosko
- Book: Lean Analytics
- Website: https://highlinebeta.com/
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📸 Instagram: @productbakery
🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20
🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/
The topic of user story mapping has been discussed many times recently. In this episode, the product bakers focused on the counterpart: customer journey mapping. Alex shares his experience and discussed with Christian when and how you should start working with a customer journey map. As always, Christian also tried to better understand how you can combine customer journey and user story mapping.
Table of content:
- 00:30 - Intro by Christian
- 01:10 - What is customer journey mapping about?
- 04:00 - Structuring a journey map
- 05:45 - When to map out a customers journey
- 07:20 - Customer journey map vs. user story map
- 09:45 - Speeding up the product discovery
- 13:40 - Death through perfectionism
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🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20
🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/
This time Alex came up with "the top of mind topic" of in-house vs. consulting and agency product management. Together with Christian, they've discussed the different focus areas different parties have and what product people need to become for example a good consultant or coach.
Table of content:
- 00:30 - Intro Alex
- 02:25 - Differences between in-house, coaching, and agencies
- 05:30 - When should I choose and do what?
- 07:55 - Training and educating people (coaching)
- 09:10 - Deep-dive into working as agency/project team
- 12:05 - Interims VP jobs
- 13:45 - Freelancing with no experience
- 16:30 - Why Alex moved from consulting back to in-house
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📸 Instagram: @productbakery
🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20
🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/
In this episode, Christian and Alex are discussing on top of their minds the topic of "double diamond." They quickly fall into topics of design thinking and process definition and shared some insights and refreshers on how to validate and deliver product ideas.
Table of content:
- 00:30 - Podcast intro
- 01:35 - Double diamond and design thinking
- 04:20 - Setting up a double diamond process
- 06:05 - Research & delivery aren't linear processes
- 08:10 - Adjusting the process
- 09:25 - Iterating, iterating, iterating
- 10:40 - Don't be too religious about it
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📸 Instagram: @productbakery
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🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/
Empirical process control and understanding people were and are Andrea Tomasini's biggest passions. After starting his career as Engineer and leveling up to VP Engineering, Product, and CTO, he reached the point where he wanted to build his own agile organization.
These days Andrea's agile consultancy agile42 operates in more than 13 countries across the globe, helping companies of all sizes to establish an agile mindset. Even the Product Bakers have been trained and coached by Andrea already.
In this episode, Andrea shares his wide and deep experience and best practices on where to start with an Agile transition and what pitfalls to avoid.
Table of content: * 0:30 - Intro Andrea * 08:40 - People over processes & tools * 14:45 - Organic agility & understanding people/culture * 24:25 - Becoming more agile as a Leader * 28:31 - Experimenting in safe to fail environments * 33:25 - Trust as the basis for change & transformation * 42:15 - The 3 focus areas to introduce agility * 45:05 - 3 biggest mistakes leaders do * 48:25 - Debrief Alex & Christian
Get in touch with Andrea:
- Linkedin: @andreat
- Twitter: @tumma72
- Website: https://www.agile42.com
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📸 Instagram: @productbakery
🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20
🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/
After studying psychology in the late '90s, Cindy started her product, research, and design career. She has lead many Product, Design, and Research Teams over the last decades. Next to that she wrote and published the book Lean Customer Development.
Cindy speaks in this episode, about how to best do customer research. She shares very practical examples of how to understand customer problems without interviews, and best practices to understand what customers really want and need. One of her key messages is that asking questions is not only important for customers, it also helps inside companies to better understand each other.
Table of content:
- 0:30 - Intro Cindy Alvarez
- 3:20 - Day to day business as Customer Researcher
- 5:05 - Doing research on Twitter, Reddit, and co.
- 10:25 - Building stakeholder relationships to push research
- 13:25 - How to get started with research in your company
- 16:15 - Reducing and avoiding bias
- 19:15 - Talking and negotiating with customers
- 21:50 - Understanding customer problems
- 24:20 - Customer research vs. user research
- 27:40 - Handling design critiques with founders and managers
- 31:15 - Stock questions to understand the “why”
- 36:15 - Documenting research outcomes (TL;DR)
- 39:25 - The biggest mistakes leaders do about research
- 42:25 - Debrief Christan & Alex
Cindy on the internet:
- Linkedin: @cindyalvarez
- Website: https://www.cindyalvarez.com
- Cindy's book: Lean Customer Development
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📸 Instagram: @productbakery
🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20
🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/
As a follow-up on the previous discussion about Design Operations, the Product Bakers invited Pete Fossick, who is a seasoned Design Director, Coach, Trainer, and co-founder of the DesignOps Network & conference to diving deeper into the topic. The whole conversation was around the history of design ops, how the role developed and evolved as well as its specific responsibilities.
At the end of the conversation, they've discussed how to accelerate innovation with an operations team as well as how to hire for such positions.
Table of content:
- 0:30 - Intro Pete Fossick and how got into Design
- 9:00 - Fixing problems vs. symptoms
- 11:50 - Responsibilities of Design Ops people
- 18:25 - Design Ops is a matter of company size
- 22:05 - The evolvement and mitosis of Design Ops
- 27:25 - How the role developing in the market
- 30:50 - Skills needed to be a good Design Operations Manager
- 35:35 - How Pete helps the Design Community to level up
- 38:20 - Design Ops collaboration with Product Managers
- 44:30 - Biggest mistake companies make in projects
- 46:50 - Driving innovation with Innovation Ops
- 50:35 - How to hire Design Ops as a company
- 53:20 - Where to find skilled people
- 56:25 - How agile governments work
- 58:40 - Pete’s gift to the audience (you)
- 60:00 - Debrief Christian & Alex
Pete on the internet:
- Linkedin: @peterfossick
- Website: https://www.factotum-design.co.uk/
- Design Ops Conference: https://designops-conference.com/
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📸 Instagram: @productbakery
🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20
🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/
From working in hospitality to building a Design community is a rare transition that Mindaugas Petruitis made. These days Mindaugas is focused on his design fellowship at On Deck (space between On and Deck) as Program Director for the Designer Fellowship. Endless conversations and networking with Product & Design People across the globe motivated and inspired him to come up with this fellowship.
In this episode, the product bakers and Mindaugas look at the evolvement of design communities as well as the challenges they are facing.
Table of content:
- 00:30 - Intro Mindaugas Petrutis
- 05:45 - The biggest challenges the Design Space is facing
- 11:00 - Bringing different functions together
- 14:30 - The On Deck Design Leadership Fellowship
- 16:55 - From IC to becoming a Leader
- 18:45 - The importance of mentoring
- 24:30 - When networking starts to pay-off
- 27:05 - The Importance of community building
- 30:40 - Different types of communities
- 34:20 - Communities aren’t sales channels
- 37:40 - Mindaugas’ research for On Deck
- 41:15 - The biggest trends in the Design Space
- 44:00 - Debrief Alex & Christian
Mindaugas on the internet:
- Linkedin: @mindaugaspetrutis
- Twitter: @MindaugasLT
- On Deck: https://www.beondeck.com/designers
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📸 Instagram: @productbakery
🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20
🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/
Jim Semick works for more than 20 years in Product Management. About 8 years ago he was looking for the next big challenge in his life. He quit his full-time job with two kids and no clear business idea. What he had back then was a great and motivated co-founder as well as the vision to make Product Managers' lives easier.
In this episode, Jim talks about the importance of having a clear vision of how to build a company with your co-founder before you even have a business idea. Next to that, Jim shared what he did to identify a problem that was worth solving which later translated into his company ProductPlan.
Table of content: * 0:30 - Intro Jim Semick * 3:40 - From Product Manager to founder * 6:20 - Evaluating & entering markets * 13:45 - Dealing with uncertainty as a founder & former PM * 15:30 - 30 in-depth customer interviews * 17:20 - Bootstrapping instead of raising money? * 19:50 - Reducing uncertainty the lean way * 25:50 - Making the first hire to build a new product * 28:05 - Why you don’t need to raise money * 33:00 - Two things you should know when you’re working on an idea
Jim on the internet:
- Website: https://www.jimsemick.com/
- Jim's books & articles: https://www.jimsemick.com/writing/
- ProductPlan: https://www.productplan.com/
- Linkedin: @jimsemick
- Twitter: @jimsemick
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📸 Instagram: @productbakery
🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20
🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/
This time Christian and Alex sat together to take a deeper look at backlog management. The goal was to clarify common misunderstandings such as who owns the backlog, who is supposed to create tickets, what ticket types are the "right" ones, etc.
Table of content:
- 2:25 - Frequently asked backlog questions
- 3:15 - Leonardo Davinci & backlog management
- 6:00 - Basics of epics & user stories
- 12:40 - Who should write tickets?
- 14:25 - Empowering teams to work on the backlog
- 19:00 - The role of the definition of ready
- 20:30 - How to take over an existing backlog
- 23:10 - Keeping the backlog clean
Christian's article & course:
- Article: https://www.christianstrunk.com/blog/user-stories-and-epics-for-the-win
- Email course: https://www.christianstrunk.com/courses/backlog-management
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📸 Instagram: @productbakery
🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20
🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/
Rich Mironov works for more than +30 years in Product Management. Based on his experience as an Independent Product Consultant & Coach with more than 150 clients he shares his thoughts and observations of Product Teams in B2B enterprise.
In this episode, he talked to the Product Bakers about how to work as a Product Leader with executives, as well as the topic of negotiating and managing stakeholders and incoming requests.
Table of content:
- 0:28 - Intro
- 5:45 - Organisational misalignment
- 6:45 - Product vs project management
- 7:45 - Product management becoming the bottleneck
- 10:15 - Working with a founder CEO
- 13:00 - PMs are anthropologists
- 17:05 - State of Product Management vs. Product Design
- 22:15 - Prioritizing & negotiating with stakeholders (e.g. Sales Team)
- 30:05 - Working with stakeholders who have no product background
- 33:40 - Working as a PM with a boss who has no product background
- 39:20 - What keeps Rich awake at night
- 42:45 - Deeply understanding customers & values
- 48:30 - Three tips for everyone who recently started a Product Lead role
Rich on the internet:
- Linkedin: @richmironov
- Blog: https://www.mironov.com/moneystories/
- Rich's recommendation to read: https://www.mironov.com/moneystories/
- Rich's book: The Art of Product Management
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📸 Instagram: @productbakery
🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20
🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/
In this episode, Alex and Christian discuss the new beta social media clubhouse and its future.
Table of content:
- 1:53 - The clubhouse trend coming to Germany
- 3:19 - FOMO
- 4:51 - MVP Mindset
- 7:50 - The roadmap & snowball effects
- 10:05 - Clubhouse the next big social network?
- 12:15 - The trend of broadcasting
- 13:50 - What’s the problem statement?
- 17:50 - Clubhouse downsides & future
Find clubhouse online:
- Website: https://www.joinclubhouse.com/
- iOS App Store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/clubhouse-drop-in-audio-chat/id1503133294
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Luca Criscuolo studied initially environmental science and holds a Ph.D. in climate science. Next to all his work and research, he decided at some point to be closer connected to the real world and people building products. From that point on he started working in Product Management and moved his way up to several product leadership roles.
With more than 14 years of Product Management experience, he's currently working at eBay as Head of Regional Product Europe.
In this episode, Luca and the Product Bakers discuss the different dimensions that are important to hire a great Product Team vs. the skills a Product Team needs to succeed based on modern best practices and the current times of uncertainty.
Table of content:
- 0:28 - Intro Luca Criscuolo
- 5:10 - Product Managers with different Backgrounds
- 7:44 - Dimensions of Product Management
- 11:05 - Growth Hacking and Marketing
- 14:30 - Hiring for the right mindset
- 20:00 - Leadership and Product Understanding
- 23:42 - Leadership mindset
- 32:46 - Coaching for the right mindset
- 35:33 - Biggest mistakes Product Managers make
- 39:14 - Corporate vs. Startup
- 44:04 - Career development
- 55:17 - The future of Product Management
- 57:40 - Closing thoughts from Alex and Christian
Luca on the internet:
- Linkedin: @lucacriscuolo
- Twitter: @loloabe
- Website: https://www.lucacriscuolo.com
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Ryan Sousa leads data innovation for Research, Hospital, and Foundation at Seattle Children’s. He is a senior leader, entrepreneur, and practitioner and brings more than 25 years of leadership experience in some of the biggest companies such as Amazon, Starbucks, Expedia, and Nokia as well as several successful startups.
Next to all the companies that Ryan has seen, he clearly noticed one key factor that drives success and innovation in companies which is empowering people! Many companies focus too much on deadlines, pressure from investors, and other things, and lose track of the main thing which is people.
To be product and not project-driven, it's crucial to share a problem instead of solutions.
In this episode, Ryan talked about the key points a leader needs to understand to empower teams instead of micromanaging them to be successful.
Table of content: * 0:28 - Intro Ryan Sousa * 5:20 - Paradigm shift: User centricity * 7:38 - Evolvement of the health care industry * 9:20 - Processes vs. company maturity * 17:15 - Restructuring organizations with the right mindset * 22:35 - Organizational structure to empower (product) people * 28:30 - Establishing open & direct communication as a Leader * 30:00 - Enabling people to be innovative * 42:50 - Planning frameworks on steroids * 47:55 - The value of Hackathons * 49:00 - 3 things that Ryan would have done differently 10 years ago
Ryan's book recommendations:
- No Rules Rules
- The Art of Action
- Think Like a Rocket Scientist
Connect with Ryan:
- Email: ryan.sousa@seattlechildrens.org
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"You learn the most from your mistakes, not your success.", is a quote that Rory Madden would immediately sign! With more than 16 years of experience as a Consultant, Entrepreneur, and Business Analyst he has a lot of experiences to share.
Rory founded two start-ups that failed, and one of the biggest learnings he made was to talk to customers as early as possible. Based on that learning, he founded the UXDC (User Experience & Developer Experience) Conference. The mission of the conference is to help people to learn about customer and data-driven agile methodologies to not make the same mistakes as he did.
In this episode, we talked to Ryan about how he "developed" the conference and how the way they interact with his community is shifting in the current health crisis.
Table of content: * 0:28 - Intro Rory Madden * 6:05 - Moving from a project to a product mindset * 8:10 - Definition of ”developer experience” * 10:50 - Birth of the UXDX idea & community * 16:00 - Finding the right speakers & supporters * 22:30 - Health crisis as a big challenge * 29:15 - Online vs. offline events * 41:26 - Building the UXDX platform product * 48:00 - 3 key learnings Rory made
Rory on the internet:
- Linkedin: @Rorymadden
- Website: https://uxdx.com/
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A long and exhausting year is over! Alex and Christian sat down together one last time in 2020 to wrap up a year of remote work and sharing some morning routine tips in times of home office to not only be productive but also to take care of your physical and mental health.
The Product Bakers wish you all a happy new year's eve. Stay healthy, stay conscious.
Happy new year! 🎉🥳🎊
PS: The next interview will be published on the 7th of January.
Check out our website update:
- https://www.product-bakery.com/episodes
Want to learn to meditate?
- The Headspace app: https://www.headspace.com/
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Could it be a better time to launch the 20th episode on Christmas?! 🎄
We want to thank all our listeners for the amazing support we've got, and wish everyone MERRY CHRISTMAS and happy holidays! In this episode, we're doing a little recap on what has happened this year as well as sharing the first outlook for 2021.
Since the year is coming to an end we also talk about how we prioritize & set goals for the next year. This includes a deep-dive into self-organization, tooling, and a couple of book recommendations. #planning
Tools we love to use for self-organization:
- Pen & Paper
- Google Calendar
- Evernote
- Workflowy
Our book recommendations:
- 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
- Lean UX
- The Bullet Journal Method
- Hooked
- The Future of Capitalism
- High Output Management
- Pitch Anything
- The Prosperous Coach
- Atomic Habits
Live hack:
- Listen to podcasts & educational videos at 1.5x/2x speed
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🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/
Shruti is a design researcher and interaction designer. She leads the talented team of The Studio at Zalando in Berlin. At the time of recording this episode, she led the product design & user research team at N26. She has also worked in strategic design consulting with IDEO, user experience at Nokia, and with a few other places.
Shruti’s goal has been to nurture effective collaboration between design, research, product management and engineering to deliver customer-focussed solutions – building the capabilities and processes that enable all disciplines to do their best work.
In this episode, she talks with Christian and Alex about the role of Design & Research Ops, amongst other things, that help build an effective integrated design team.
Table of content:
- 0:28 - Intro Shruti Ramiah
- 1:45 - How Product Design functions @N26
- 5:05 - Design collectives & Design Ops
- 7:05 - Collecting customer & stakeholder feedback
- 10:10 - The role & mission of Design Ops
- 21:40 - Solving symptoms or problems with Design Ops?
- 24:00 - How to hire the right people for a Research Team
- 28:00 - Collaboration between Product Managers, Designers, & Researchers
- 39:40 - Integrating Design in cross-functional teams
- 43:20 - Things Shruti would love to have known at the beginning of her career
- 47:31 - Debrief Alex & Christian
Find Shruti on the internet:
- Website: https://shrutiramiah.com/
- Linkedin: @shrutiramiah
- Twitter: @itursh
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Branding plays a key role in every kind of business. Laura Busche's passion for marketing and brand strategy started in 2008. Since then she focused a lot on working and learning everything about brands until 2013 when she published her amazing book "Lean Branding" as part of the Lean Series from O'Reilly.
Laura consulted Alex and Christian for almost one hour about building up the Product Bakery brand and community. She shared how to use a storyboard to define the brand values and target audience.
Table of content:
- 0:28 - Episode summary
- 0:59 - Intro Laura Busche & her book launch
- 6:35 - How to brand a product podcast (live coaching by Laura)
- 8:55 - Lean branding strategies
- 10:30- The brand storyboard
- 17:15 - How to identify organic growth channels & strategies
- 23:25 - Driving branding & storytelling in organizations
- 28:25 - Value proposition vs. brand recognition (brand messaging)
- 35:25 - Laura’s brand strategy for her own book
- 39:25 - Thoughts on Google’s rebranding (icon redesign)
- 44:35 - 3 Tips from Laura if you launch a new brand/brand heavy product
- 48:50 - Debrief Christan & Alex
Follow & Connect with Laura:
- Website: https://laurabusche.com/
- Linkedin: @laurabusche
- Twitter: @laurabusche
- Her book: Lean Branding
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🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/
Monica Lent is a passionate Software Engineer & Entrepreneur with more than 10 years of experience. Next to her first startup affilimate.com, she regularly launches new products, services, and communities such as blogginfordevs.com.
Monica shares in this episode many practical tips and examples on how to build up your own community and the need for companies to move beyond acquiring customers and connecting closer to their audiences.
Table of content:
- 0:30 - Intro Monica Lent
- 3:50 - 12 Startups in 12 months
- 6:25 - How she got started with her first paid community
- 8:50 - Community vs. customer base
- 13:30 - Importance of communities for businesses
- 18:35 - Launching fast vs. researching too long
- 20:10 - Learnings on starting with SaaS product
- 33:30 - Mistakes to avoid when starting with a SaaS product
- 39:30 - Bootstrapping vs. funding
- 42:50 - Monica’s top 5 tips to successfully build a community
Wanna connect with Monica?
- https://monicalent.com/
- https://twitter.com/monicalent
- https://bloggingfordevs.com/
Monica's reads & recommendations:
- https://rosie.land/
- https://nathanbarry.com/wealth-creation/
- https://robwalling.com/2015/03/26/the-stairstep-approach-to-bootstrapping/
- https://stackingthebricks.com/why-you-should-do-a-tiny-product-first/
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🌍Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/
Both Christian and Alex work on many strategic topics as consultants in their day to day business. What they've observed is that many companies need to rethink their current strategies and adapt to the current situation/crisis.
In this episode, Christian talks about how to get started with a product strategy definition based on Alex's business idea about selling Italian premium ties. He focuses on the basic skeleton of information & agenda points a product strategy should consist of as well as how to specify them.
Table of content:
- 0:30 - Product Vision vs. company vision
- 4:35 - Product vision statements (GoPro)
- 8:40 - Defining one “catchy” sentence
- 9:15 - Getting buy-in from Founders & Senior Management
- 12:00 - Revisiting the vision statement regularly
- 17:20 - Vision definition workshop example (how to define a vision)
- 23:15 - Iterating on the product vision statement
- 27:05 - Who should drive the creation of the product vision
Christian's free product strategy slide deck template:
- Slide deck: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1mLNt7f6CPPa3FzNxnHZAS7pxgp-QDOLL2UtsBe7fcKI/edit?usp=sharing
- Related article: https://www.christianstrunk.com/blog/product-strategy
Connect with Christian:
- Website: www.christianstrunk.com
- Linkedin: @christianstrunk
- Twitter: @strunkchristian
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🌍Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/
Humans love to play games! So does Alex Wheeler, Senior UX Designer at Riot Game. Alex spent many years developing the UX for champions of the most played online game League of Legends.
Alex shares great insights about the whole process of developing e.g. a new champion or changes on the client-side for more than 120 Million active users. He touched all the parts from the discovery and wireframing to the development and rollout.
Next to that, he shared why friction in UX and games is so important.
Table of content: * 0:30 - Intro Alex Wheeler * 4:35 - The addicting nature of computer games * 6:45 - Intentional friction the UX * 9:45 - Developing champions in League of Legends as UX Designer * 15:00 - Persona-based product development * 18:00 - Product discovery in gaming & LoL * 20:50 - Role & collaboration with Product Managers & Owners * 25:15 - When employees are users of your product * 30:00 - Using data to design experiences * 36:15 - Rolling out updates & new features * 39:30 - Designing for 26 countries with different languages & cultures * 43:50 - It’s all about documentation * 46:10 - Alex 3 key values of designing user experiences * 49:00 - Debrief Alex & Christian
Want to learn more about Alex?
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexwhlr/
- https://medium.com/riot-games-ux-design/ux-design-in-the-games-industry-50b0572631c3
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SaaS products are Markus Hafellner passion. Next to his experience as a Product Manager, he worked many years in the tech industry as a developer & CTO. In his current challenge at Bitmovin, he focuses a lot on defining and developing a good pricing strategy.
Markus shares how the company introduced a big pricing change and the thoughts, planning, and approach behind it as well as great tips how to align with stakeholders and getting the buy-in from the C-Level/Top Management.
Table of content:
- 0:30 - Intro Markus Haffelner & Bitmovin
- 4:50 - The challenges of defining prices in B2B
- 8:55 - Measuring & analyzing data + customer funnels
- 16:10 - A product-led approach as the foundation for a pricing change
- 19:05 - Interpreting data & defining
- 25:20 - Influencing Senior Management & Founders (how to negotiate)
- 27:35 - Rolling out & communicating price changes
- 33:35 - Driving pricing topics as a Product Manager and stakeholders
- 37:00 - Impact of the pricing change at Bitmovin
- 40:20 - Markus tips to evaluate pricing in a structured way
- 43:20 - Comparing pricing with competition/market
- 49:43 - Debrief Christian & Alex
Connect with Markus:
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/mhafellner/
- https://stratelight.substack.com/
Link from John Cutler:
- Beat the Feature Factory: Run Pre-cap Design Studios
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After a week-long road trip in Portugal Alex is looking back at all the small invisible experiences he encountered while sitting in the car. It’s things like anticipating and designing for the user's intentions that make an experience really great.
Table of content:
- 0:30 - Alex road trip in Portugal
- 2:30 - Air conditioning experience with Volkswagen
- 4:45 - User experience in cars
- 6:35 - Understanding & learning from user intentions
- 10:55 - Jobs to be done
- 15:55 - UX on purpose or luck?
- 17:55 - Autonomous driving
- 22:25 - Ethnographical studies to better understand users
Connect with Alex:
- Website: www.alexdapunt.com
- Linkedin: @alexdapunt
- Twitter: @alexdapunt
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Sebastian's role as head of product at the Founders Factory is quite different from most of the jobs. He and the product coaching team help founders and teams build the right product in the right way using their expertise and product coaching framework.
His and the team's thesis is that by both executing on the product as well as coaching founders on what good best practices look like, Founders Factory won't only build great products but also great teams and businesses.
In this episode, he shares great stories and best practices on what to consider as a fresh startup and how to hire the right people.
Table of content:
- 0:30 - Intro Sebastian Abdy Sabouné & The Founder’s Factory
- 5:35 - Coaching founders & product people
- 7:10 - Product development processes in startups
- 14:25 - 0 to 1, hiring the right people
- 18:30 - Which roles to hire first in an early-stage startup
- 21:00 - Recognizing red flags during the hiring process
- 24:20 - Setting up early product management processes
- 29:25 - Data-based decision making with no/few clients
- 32:50 - Experimenting & defining hypothesis
- 35:00 - First roles & skills needed when you kick-off a project
- 37:00 - Tips from Sebastian for aspiring CEOs and Product Managers
- 44:05 - Debrief Alex & Christian
Sebastian's book recommendations:
- Escaping the build trap
- Thinking fast and slow
- Never split the difference
Sebastian's articles:
- Product thinking
- Product coaching framework
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Urbi realized pretty "fast" that studying business administration isn't the right thing for him. After he moved to computer science he started his career as a QA Engineer and worked his way up. Currently, he works as an Engineering Manager at Trade Republic.
Urbi's mission is to establish a Product and Engineering mindset in the fast-growing Berlin fintech. He shares insights on onboarding processes, the collaboration between product & engineering as well as establishing a culture of open communication.
Table of content
- 0:30 - Intro Andreas Urban aka Urbi
- 6:15 - Urbi’s mission at Trade Republic
- 8:00 - What Engineering needs from Product Managers
- 10:00 - Transitioning to a scaling Product & Engineering organization
- 15:25 - Writing documentation to speed up onboarding of new Engineers
- 17:40 - Early Engineering involvement for better product planning
- 27:35 - Helping teams to stay focused
- 30:15 - Company culture vs. processes
- 33:45 - Collaborating with Product Leads as Engineering Manager
- 39:22 - Engineering a Product & Engineering organization
- 44:45 - What Urbi motivated to pick up the hyper-growth challenge
- 48:40 - Debrief Alex & Christian
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People were always a passion for Emilie Lindström. With a background in HR & recruiting, she moved into Product Management 3,5 years ago and is now building internal tools and processes for Outfittery.
As Product Manager, Emilie spends a big part of her day working with Stakeholders to get them involved and manage their expectations along the journey. In this episode, she shares insightful stories as well as tips for everyone working with challenging stakeholders.
Table of content
- 0:30 - Intro Emilie Lindström
- 5:55 - What product newbies need to know
- 9:30 - Getting started with stakeholder management
- 13:15 - Identifying your stakeholders
- 18:55 - Treating stakeholders as domain experts & customers
- 20:25 - Dealing with “tricky” stakeholders
- 28:05 - Managing people vs. managing stakeholders
- 33:00 - How to work with customers
- 36:55 - Negotiating with stakeholders
- 41:00 - Christian’s stakeholder horror story
- 46:45 - Emilie’s key takeaways about stakeholder management
- 49:10 - Debrief Alex & Christian
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With a master's degree in psychology and many years of experience as a User Researcher, Nikki Anderson moved in 2018 from New York to Berlin. She works currently as User Research Lead at Zalando as well as her own startup the user research academy.
Nikki shares the basics of qualitative user research to be able to get started with it in a fast and effective fashion. Next to that, she talks about when a company should start doing user research and at which point it's worth thinking of hiring a researcher.
Table of content * 0:30 - Intro Nikki Anderson * 2:46 - Researching the perfect croissant * 6:55 - The basics of qualitative research * 14:10 - Choosing the right segments to research * 15:55 - Kicking off a research project * 23:00 - The TEDW framework for user interviews * 29:00 - Validating qualitative interview data * 35:25 - Hypothesis-driven research (how might we statements) * 37:35 - Evaluative research vs. generative research * 41:55 - Parallelizing market research & user research * 44:30 - When to start doing and hiring for research as a company * 51:25 - Nikki’s key takeaways about getting started with research * 54:00 - Debrief Christian & Alex
Connect with Nikki:
- Website: https://www.userresearchacademy.com/
- Linkedin: @Nikkianderson-ux
- Twitter: @productherapist
Link to Nikki's research template:
- https://docs.google.com/document/d/19_2S5c-LWhwEk86oMxemgwsYHcm6CG_rwut5TLz0byY/edit
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Alex and Christian were brainstorming during brunch about "what makes the perfect croissant so delicious." They came to the conclusion, that they could do research to find the answer. But how much research would they need to do, and would they really find the answer? In this episode, Alex talks about defining good questions and hypotheses to be able to do good research. Besides that, he touches on why many companies are hesitant to do research and how to apply it as a way to not lose speed.
Table of content
- 0:30 - Can “taste” be researched?
- 4:00 - Copying ideas doesn’t replace research
- 5:25 - Acceptance of research on C-Level
- 10:00 - Getting answers after deploying to production
- 13:10 - Dual track research
- 21:05 - Death through research summary
Connect with Alex:
- Website: www.alexdapunt.com
- Linkedin: @alexdapunt
- Twitter: @alexdapunt
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🌍Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/
Liam Murphy is a crypto enthusiast for more than 8 years as an investor and a Product Designer. He shares insights into how to build crypto products that are "more usable" for crypto investment app consumers.
These days he's focused on working for crypto communities and talks about how the community decides and builds new features & products.
Table of content
- 0:30 - Intro Liam Murphy
- 3:10 - Basics around crypto & decentralized finance (DeFi)
- 8:00 - Designing crypto products
- 13:40 - Changing user behaviors about investing
- 15:24 - Kicking off crypto projects
- 19:25 - Emerging crypto trends
- 22:50 - Designing for the crypto community
- 25:30 - The value of cryptocurrencies vs. fiat currencies
- 29:25 - Best practices to start developing a crypto project
- 32:10 - Community-driven development
- 36:35 - Will crypto become mainstream?
- 38:50 - Liams biggest challenge as a Designer in the crypto space
- 42:30 - How to get started in the crypto space
- 44:15 - Debrief Alex & Christian
Connect with Liam:
- Twitter: @lemurf
- Linkedin: @liammurphydesign
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Being a computer scientist was too boring for Henning. Once he saw Photoshop the first time he fell in love not only with the tool. He quickly started expressing his ideas on the screen and started working as a freelancer until one of his clients got acquired by the entrepreneur Stephan Schambach.
The omnichannel retail platform NewStore was born and he started as a Product Designer. These days Henning is leading the Design Team and everything related to user research, experience, and product planning. He shares deep and detailed insights about projects with NewStore's clients and how they build a B2B retail product that has touchpoints to end customers.
Table of content: * 0:30 - Intro Henning * 3:55 - Definition of Omni-Channel & NewStore * 9:20 - Product development in B2B (real-world project examples) * 14:45 - Developing modern point of sale & checkout features * 18:25 - Translating customer feedback into design & user experience * 20:55 - Challenges with quantitative feedback in B2B (e.g. Google Analytics) * 22:40 - Organizational customer feedback funnel * 24:55 - Design as a service * 30:55 - Early design involvement for the win * 38:20 - Design collaboration with Product Managers * 43:55 - When & how to say “no” to customer requests * 52:55 - Henning’s key takeaways about design thinking in B2B enterprise * 55:31 - Debrief Christian & Alex
Connect with Henning:
- Linkedin: @henning-witzel
- Twitter: @Henning_Witzel
- Website: https://www.henning-witzel.de/
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What's the difference between a product vision and a company vision? Christian talks about the definition of a product vision and the key information it should and shouldn't contain.
He describes the definition process based on examples and best practices. Next to the "theoretical" part, he talks about how to create a product vision based on two workshop methodologies that you can easily apply for your own vision.
Table of content
- 0:30 - Product vision basics
- 7:05 - The one catchy product vision sentence
- 7:50 - Benefits of having a product vision
- 11:30 - Iterating on the product vision
- 17:00 - Defining a product vision (workshop formats)
- 24:55 - Christian’s summary about creating a product vision
Connect with Christian:
- Website: www.christianstrunk.com
- Linkedin: @christianstrunk
- Twitter: @strunkchristian
Read more here:
- https://www.christianstrunk.com/blog/product-vision
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James & Tim are both founders of Avion.io, a user story mapping tool that helps Product Teams to better collaborate and plan features, products, and services.
When Tim came back from his Product Owner course 5 years ago, learning about user story mapping, he quickly realized together with James that this methodology makes planning much easier and efficient. Unfortunately, they were missing a tool to digitalize and remotely collaborate on a user story map. They sat together after work and started designing and developing Avion.io which they've launched in 2019.
In this episode, they talk about the advantages of user story mapping as well as advanced techniques on release planning, MVP definitions, and some more cool story mapping life hacks.
Table of content
- 0:30 - How Tim & James got into user story mapping
- 5:25 - User story mapping vs. customer journey mapping
- 8:30 - Story mapping during the product development cycle
- 13:30 - Product discovery with story mapping
- 19:00 - Defining MVPs and preparing the backlog
- 25:40 - Story mapping as a product documentation tool
- 26:15 - Advanced release planning with story mapping
- 32:15 - Downside of story mapping
- 35:25 - Bootstrapping Avion with story mapping
- 43:40 - Key takeaways from Tim & James
- 46:30 - Debrief Alex & Christian
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👨💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery
📸 Instagram: @productbakery
🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20
🌍Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/
This time, Christian interviews Alex Dapunt about his career path and work experience. He initially wanted to become an architect but then landed in the Digital Design Space.
Alex started his career in an Italian agency and then moved to Munich and finally to Berlin where he started working for SumUp where he became the Head of Design. Over 4 years Alex scaled up the Design team from 4 to 40 people before he left the hyper-growth startup.
Besides a lot of hiring and building up a Brand & Product Design Team, he shares the importance of introducing a design system to scale in hypergrowth.
If you're interested in his work check out the design system Circuit UI on Github.
Episode Minutes:
- 0:28 - Introduction of Alex Dapunt
- 6:00 - Key design challenges in companies
- 8:00 - Cross-functional design collaboration
- 12:20 - Leading a Design Team to build a customer-focused design system
- 15:50 - Decision-making process to build a design system
- 18:55 - Potential downsides of a design system
- 21:50 - Design system & branding
- 27:00 - Establishing a design system in cross-functional teams & multi-products
- 30:00 - Alex’s key takeaways & summary
Connect with Alex:
- Website: www.alexdapunt.com
- Linkedin: @alexdapunt
- Twitter: @alexdapunt
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👨💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery
📸 Instagram: @productbakery
🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20
🌍Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/
In this episode, Alex interviews co-host Christian Strunk to get some background on how he transitioned into Product Management.
Christian started working as a baker before he studied business administration. While studying he founded his first start-up "Pocketrobe" which opened the doors into the world of Product Management...
Besides his career path, Christian talks about his most favorite product planning methodology "user story mapping" and how to get started with it.
If you're interested, listen in! For more information about story mapping & Product Management check out his blog.
Episode minutes:
- 0:28 - Introduction Christian Strunk
- 8:00 - Product challenges in companies
- 8:45 - Get started with product planning
- 11:35 - Product planning with user story mapping
- 15:00 - Estabishing story mapping in the product development process
- 18:40 - When to not do user story mapping
- 21:25 - From planning to delivery (backlog preparation)
- 25:15 - Start planning from the end/back
- 30:30 - User story mapping or customer journey mapping?
- 35:05 - Christian’s key takeaways & summary
Connect with Christian:
- Website: www.christianstrunk.com
- Linkedin: @christianstrunk
- Twitter: @strunkchristian
✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩
👨💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery
📸 Instagram: @productbakery
🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20
🌍Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/
Meet your hosts Christian Strunk and Alex Dapunt as they introduce you to their new Podcast Format 'The Product Bakery Podcast'.
✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩
👨💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery
📸 Instagram: @productbakery
🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20
🌍Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/