One Knight in Product

The Role of Product Management on Truly Agile Development Teams (with Allen Holub, Software Architect, Consultant & Outspoken Twitter Agilist)

Allen Holub is a software development and agile consultant who wants to help you build better software and build software better. He's also not shy when it comes to telling the world what he thinks about product development via Twitter.
Here are some of Allen's spicy takes:
Making true organisational change requires C-level buy-in
It's easy to get hired by the engineering team to help them learn how to make sausages better but the better goal is to work out if you want to make sausages, and you need top-level buy in for this
There are too many people walking on eggshells on Twitter
You should be able to share your version of the truth in an open, direct way. If people don't like it, they can listen to someone else! Context is important, but it's not ivory tower thinking to try to change a system.
Empowering people to be agile doesn't mean leaving them to it
Removing organisational blockers and waterfall thinking is important, but you can't just leave them to it and not support them. They need support to become a learning organisation.
Scrum is, at best, mostly harmless, but only in good teams
You don't need backlogs, you don't need scrum masters, you don't need Sprints. You don't need any of it. Scrum was just a way to make agile acceptable to bureaucratic micromanagers. But all frameworks fly against agile thinking.
Product managers do essential work that developers won't do if left to their own devices, but..
It's important that they're part of the development team, that they're not a silo, they aren't the boss or decision maker for the team & they aren't a replacement for the customer
JIRA is actively contributing to poor development behaviours
We don't need big long complicated specs, we don't need backlogs, estimates, story points or velocity charts. We'd be better off with index cards stuck to a wall (or Miro!)
Listen to the episode for this and more!
 
Follow the progress of Allen's book:
Allen is writing a book! Check out the progress of the book here.
Go to Allen's User Story workshop
If you want to go to Allen's upcoming class on User Stories, check out the details here.
Contact Allen
You can reach out to Allen on Twitter, or book a chat with him.

Banishing Cynicism and Empowering Yourself as a Product Leader (with Claire Vo, CPO @ Color & Impending TikTok Influencer)

Claire Vo is a product & technology executive leader, startup founder and future Queen of TechTok, who believes that cynicism and a negative mindset is product and career-limiting, and that people need to stop asking permission to do their jobs.
Here are some of Claire's insights about her career and approach to work:
A worthy mission is attractive, but an exceptional team is important
Claire moved to HealthTech because the opportunity was right. It's great to join a worthy company but you need a team you can work with, a problem you can contribute to & a company that needs your skills.
CPTOs can work well in the right context
There are a lot of benefits of having clear, joined up leadership between tech & product but it has to work for your organisation & you need a strong leader that ultimately supports the business and not one or other of the functions.
Frameworks alone aren't going to build a great product
Use frameworks as conversation starters and mechanisms to help you along but you still need to do the hard work of product management to actually make a difference in the world. Frameworks won't help you win on their own.
You can bring your whole self to the table & still be credible
It's possible for leaders to be credible & professional and have a sense of humour. It's important to bring your full self to work & to social media as long as you are respectful to your colleagues and customers.
Optimism trumps cynicism every time
Just because work can be hard doesn't mean you should have a negative mindset. It's important to be realistic & critical but mix this with a sense of optimism, "how might we" attitude and empower yourself as a product manager or leader.
There's still a lot to do to get proper inclusion at work
There continues to be bias against women & mothers at work. Women have to live up to expectations that men don't. Claire beat the system by refusing to ask for permission to do her job, and you should too.
Listen to the episode for this and more!
Contact Claire
You can reach out to Claire on Twitter, find her on LinkedIn, or most importantly on TikTok!

From Product Leadership to CEO and Saving the World from Stupid Smart Stuff (with Yana Welinder, CEO & Co-Founder @ Kraftful)

About the Episode
Whatever her job, Yana Welinder has always had a passion for improving broken experiences. She did this as Product Lead at Wikimedia, she did this as Head of Product at If This Then That, and now she's here as CEO of her own IoT firm, Kraftful.
Here are some of Yana's insights on IoT & startups:
Usability in IoT is broken & someone needed to fix it
Yana was Head of Product at IFTTT & they have an important mission - to make IoT devices interoperable. Yana wanted to solve an even greater pain - how to make them work well at all. She started a company to do this
The IoT space is full of passionate early adopters & moving to the mainstream is hard
Early adopters have very technical needs & want more features. Mainstream users want good quality & ease of use. Early adopters are your biggest champions but you need a plan to scale past them
Fundraising for IoT was hard, even more so because she's a woman
Many investors have been burned by hardware projects and people want to knock you down. Also, not everyone is Adam Neumann - underrepresented founders can barely raise off the back of successes, let alone failures.
It's important to have an eye on product misuse
AirTags have been in the news for stalking, but Apple have at least made an effort to fix that. Not everyone has their resources, but it's important to at least keep an eye on digital rights groups and try to stay clean
The most important thing as a founder is to validate you have an actual problem
Don't just throw yourself into something cool - make sure there's appetite for what you're building, go as lean as possible to start with and leverage No Code tools to help you get started quick
Listen to the episode for this and more!
Contact Yana
You can reach out to Yana on Twitter.

Closing the Gender Pay Gap and Hiring Diverse Product Teams (with Chris Mason, Co-Founder @ Intelligent People)

An interview with Chris Mason. Chris is an executive recruitment consultant who started his agency Intelligent People over 20 years ago. Chris is passionate about diversity & inclusion in recruitment, as well as helping product leaders in general land their next job.
We speak about a lot, including:
The state of the product hiring market today and how product management recruitment has changed over the last 20 years
How product management has moved from IT to a strategic partner for product-led companies and when companies should hire a CPO
Whether we're seeing more product practitioners getting a seat at the top table and how there are two main types of product leadership job
Why you should be careful which job you wish for, and how to know when to stop trying to climb the career ladder
Whether product job titles are getting more consistent and whether it's true that job titles don't matter
Why women should consider not divulging their current salary as it can help to perpetuate gender biased salary and whether the gender pay gap is getting better or worse
What hiring companies can do to make sure they're developing a diverse talent pipeline and the importance of hiring for "not fit" rather than culture fit
And much more!
Contact Chris
You can find Chris at Intelligent People or check him out on LinkedIn.

Treating Your Career as a Product and Landing that Next Big Job (with Sarah Doody, founder @ Career Strategy Lab)

An interview with Sarah Doody. Sarah is a former UX practitioner and leader who started out trying to help UX pros with their portfolios before realising there's an even bigger problem to solve; how to help designers & product managers optimise for success and give themselves the best chance of getting that next career move.
We speak about a lot, including:
The origin story behind Career Strategy Lab, how they can help you get a new job, and whether it's just designers or everyone in the product trio
That chicken & egg scenario when you can't get a job without experience, but you can't get experience without a job, and whether this is just something that affects PMs or hits designers too
Whether UX job descriptions are any better than Product Management job descriptions and some of the reasons we have poor job specs and poor interviewing process
How job specs are really just wish lists and the importance of actually reading them rather than just clicking "Quick Apply" to anything with a matching job title
The importance of customising resumes, CVs and cover letters, why this sounds controversial, and how to make it scale
Why it might be OK to interview for jobs that you don't actually want to get some practice, and the benefits of taking an MVP approach to your job application
Whether ATS systems are really the gatekeeping problem that some people make them out to be, and the importance of making personal connections where you can
And much more!
A brief interruption from my sponsor - me!
I'm terrible at asking for money but if you would like to throw any spare change at me to prevent me having to read out tiresome generic podcast ads, you can buy me a coffee. If not, I love you all anyway!
Contact Sarah
You can find Sarah on her personal website or check out Career Strategy Lab. Sarah is also active on Twitter.

Measurably Improving Managers to Help People do Great Work... and be Totally Psyched Doing It (with Russ Laraway, author ”When They Win, You Win”)

An interview with Russ Laraway. Russ was a Company Commander in the US Marines before entering Big Tech at Google, Twitter & Qualtrics. He also co-founded Radical Candor LLC with Kim Scott, and believes that anyone can be trained to be a good manager with the right approach. He wrote about this approach in his new book "When They Win, You Win".
We speak about a lot, including:
Why the world needs doesn't need another person's opinion on what makes a good manager, and how he wants to move away from opinions and move to data driven, measurable results
How the US Marines set the stage for him to be a good manager, what moving to Big Tech taught him about focusing on results, and how the military can teach Big Tech a thing or two about Commander's Intent
Why it was important to simplify the mission to make managers better, because most people aren't getting better and some are getting worse because there's so much conflicting information out there
Why companies are so bad at developing managers, and how his STAC (Select, Teach, Assess, Coach) approach might help get us away from the best Individual Contributor getting thrown into the pit with no support
How everyone wants to do great work & be totally psyched whilst doing it, and why people's direct managers are ultimately the key to making that happen
The big three of Direction, Coaching, Career, how they can help managers thrive and the importance of helping managers not just concentrating on the stuff they're best at
Whether managers are born or bred, and whether introverts or extrovert make the best managers
And much more!
A brief interruption from my sponsor - me!
I'm terrible at asking for money but if you would like to throw any spare change at me to prevent me having to read out tiresome generic podcast ads, you can buy me a coffee. If not, I love you all anyway!
Buy "When They Win, You Win"
"Businesses everywhere are plagued by managers who seem to think that keeping their staff miserable is the best way to deliver profits. This is a failure of leadership that also hurts the bottom line; research has shown that maintaining a happy, engaged workforce consistently drives measurably better business results across the board."
 
Check the book out wherever you get your books, or check it out on Amazon or the book website.
Check out my interview with Kim Scott
I spoke to Russ's former colleague Kim Scott last year on the podcast about her book "Just Work" - it was a fantastic conversation and you can check it out here.
Contact Russ
You can find Russ on his website or check him out on LinkedIn or Twitter

Getting Customers to LOVE your Product with Great Product Marketing (with Martina Lauchengco, author ”Loved”)

About the Episode
An interview with Martina Lauchengco. Martina is a product marketing guru who once worked on MS Office before a glittering career in a variety of tech companies led her into partnerships with SVPG and Costanoa Ventures. She's recently released her new book, "Loved" to try to help product managers & founders get good at product marketing.
We speak about a lot, including:
Why she wanted to write a book to help early stage founders and product managers understand how to market their products to make sure they make a difference
How most tech companies are getting their marketing wrong, what it looks like when they do, and what they should be doing instead
The problems companies can have using traditional marketing approaches led by traditional market folks, and how any initial successes inevitably fade out
Whether you need to go all in and drink the Product Marketing Kool Aid or can iterate your way to product marketing success
Some of the traits of a good product marketer, how they are similar to product managers, whether you need specialised product marketers or it's just a mindset issue
How soon you need product marketers and whether there's value in fractional roles helping you out when you're early
Top tips for product managers who want to work effectively with their product marketing team, and treat them as equal partners in their product success
And much more!
A brief interruption from my sponsor - me!
I'm terrible at asking for money but if you would like to throw any spare change at me to prevent me having to read out tiresome generic podcast ads, you can buy me a coffee. If not, I love you all anyway!
Buy "Loved"
"The best products can still lose in the marketplace. Why? They are beaten by products with stronger product marketing. Good product marketing is the difference between “also-ran” products versus products that lead. And yet, product marketing is widely misunderstood. Although it includes segmenting customers, positioning your product, creating product collateral, and supporting sales teams, great product marketing achieves much more. It directs the best way to bring your product to market. It shapes what the world thinks about your product and category. It inspires others to tell your product’s story."
 
Check the book out wherever you get your books, or check it out on Amazon or the book website.
Contact Martina
You can find Martina on her personal website. Also, if you bought a copy of her book, you can send your receipt to info@svpg.com for a free chat!

Build Products Businesses Want with the Lean B2B Pyramid (with Étienne Garbugli, Author ”Lean B2B”, ”Find your Market” and ”Solving Product”)

An interview with Étienne Garbugli. Étienne is the lead instructor and CEO of Lean B2B, and a three-time startup founder. He's the author of three books: "Find your Market", "Solving Product" and "Lean B2B". The latter book is out for a second edition, and we decided to talk all about it.
We speak about a lot, including:
How the second edition has gone down, why there's a second edition at all and why this book matters to B2B entrepreneurs & product managers
How the book can help both non-technical, subject matter expert startup founders as well as tech-first founders with little to no B2B experience
The Lean B2B methodology, represented by its handy pyramid and key considerations at the various levels
Vision: How to systematise your product vision, where to get started, and whether you need a Eureka moment
Market: Working out who your target market is, the perils of going too wide, and how many people don't even really know what a market is
Jury: Getting your buyers, approvers, users and even veto-ers together to ensure there's a good reception for your proposition
Needs: The merits of good customer discovery and why we need to understand our buyers and sellers
Offer: How to factor in risks, associated costs to your value proposition, and why it's important to separate the value from the specific solution
Solution: How to get your MVP into the hands of early adopters, and whether all types of B2B customer are ready for MVPs
What happens after the pyramid once you've validated your solution, and what product/market fit really means in a B2B sense
And much more!
 
A brief interruption from my sponsor - me!
I'm terrible at asking for money but if you would like to throw any spare change at me to prevent me having to read out tiresome generic podcast ads, you can buy me a coffee. If not, I love you all anyway!
Buy "Lean B2B"
"The second edition of Lean B2B is the result of years of research into B2B entrepreneurship. It builds off the unique Lean B2B Methodology, which has already helped thousands of entrepreneurs and innovators around the world build successful businesses. "
 
Visit The Book Website for more info, and links to Étienne's other books.
Contact Étienne
You can find Étienne on LinkedIn, Twitter or visit his website.