One Knight in Product

Retail Product Management in a Global Pandemic (with Rhiana Matthew, Senior PM @ Publicis Sapient)

An interview with Rhiana Matthew. Rhiana is a Senior Product Manager at Publicis Sapient, a product consultancy that aims to help other companies build products better and set their teams up for success. She works in omnichannel retail product management, and saw her product strategy crumble to dust in the "new normal" of COVID-19.
We talk about a lot, including:
Her work with Publicis Sapient, what they do and how she looks to enable companies to get better at product management
Some of the things she's working on at the moment, what omnichannel retail solutions are, and what she's selling
How she got into product management and what gave her the spark, and how making an impact on real customers ticked all her boxes
The pros and cons of working for a consultancy and being "In and out" vs working directly for a product company
How the news of lockdown impacted her team and whether they took it in their stride or panicked
The approaches the product team took to work out where to play and get 120+ ideas down to 11
The spectre of timeline-based, hard deadline deliverables and whether it's possible to get away from this in retail
How operating under wartime conditions opened her eyes to the art of the possible, and how she thinks this will impact her approach in the future
Her passion for supporting mental health and some of the ways she learned to cope through the chaos
Her passion for using tech for good, and some of the ways she tries to contribute to making the world a better place
And much more!
The podcast is on Product Hunt!
This episode release coincides with the podcast hitting Product Hunt, the leading community where people rate new products and ideas. Would appreciate your support and feedback!
If you want more from Publicis Sapient
I spoke to Rhiana's colleague Jack Stevens a few months back. Jack spoke frankly of some of the mental health challenges of working under lockdown.
Contact Rhiana
If you want to catch up with Rhiana, you can reach her on LinkedIn or Rhiana's Medium page

Reducing Waste by Only Spending Time on Really Good Ideas (with Julia Shalet, author "The Really Good Idea Test")

An interview with Julia Shalet. Julia is a product consultant who hates the idea of wasted effort and wants to make sure that we all spend our time building things that matter. To support this goal, she wrote "The Really Good Idea Test", an already award-winning practical playbook to help put your ideas to the test.
We talk about a lot, including:
Why she decided to write the Really Good Idea Test and some surprising early feedback from a young reviewer
How the book came together from her years of teaching and refining her message and approach
The importance of practical learning, and not just reading stuff out of a book
How the book's 7 steps help you validate your hypothesis and whether these steps are linear
How to sell the concept of product discovery and evidence-based decision making to possibly sceptical leadership
The importance of assessing your company's risk appetite, and how much evidence you need to proceed with confidence
How to avoid survivorship bias and step away from the cliche of the inspired founder who does it all from their gut
How to remove bias in hypothesis creation and to avoid reinforcing those biases with leading questions
The importance of getting buy in up front to ensure that your Really Good Idea is in line with strategy
How to handle side quests and rabbit holes when you find something unexpected that might be a better idea than your original idea
And much more!
Buy The Really Good Idea Test
"Got an idea? Want an easy way to test, refine and validate your idea? Wondering whether it's worth investing your time, energy and money? Trying to work out your next step? Put it to The Really Good Idea Test!"
 
Visit the book website or check it out on Amazon or Goodreads.
Contact Julia
If you want to catch up with Julia, you can reach her on LinkedIn or her website productdoctor.co.uk

Maintaining Radical Focus and Staying on Strategy with OKRs (with Christina Wodtke, Author "Radical Focus" & "The Team That Managed Itself")

An interview with Christina Wodtke. Christina is the award-winning author of a variety of seminal books, including "The Team That Managed Itself" and "Radical Focus". Christina is passionate about creating empowered, high-performing organisations and helping them to focus on their most important strategic goals using OKRs (Objectives & Key Results).
We talk about a lot, including:
How "Radical Focus" came about in the first place, and why now is the time for the Second Edition
How her book differs from "Measure What Matters", whether John Doerr is riding on her coat tails and whether they talk at parties
How she set out to write a practical OKR playbook rather than a theoretical document, and why she felt the need to put tons and tons of examples in the second edition
The circumstances that led her to realise that OKRs were the way forward and why she became so passionate about teaching them
Why you shouldn't use OKRs to manage everything but use them as a strategic tool to focus on what's most important, and deciding what not to do
Why companies shouldn't just jump straight to OKRs without having some of the prerequisites and a culture to support them
The importance of empowered teams, letting go of micromanagement and thinking that your job is to tell people what to do
Why setting a good OKR review cadence is often more important than agonising over setting perfect OKRs
How the concept of a fixed mindset applies not to just people but companies too, and how companies have to be comfortable with failure
Where you shouldn't use OKRs, the types of team or companies where it just doesn't make sense, and why OKRs aren't just rebadged task lists
And much more!
Buy Radical Focus (2nd Edition)
"The award-winning author of The Team That Managed Itself and Pencil Me In returns with a new and expanded edition of her landmark book on OKRs. Struggling to adopt Objectives and Key Results? Radical Focus teaches you everything you need."
 
Visit the book website or check it out on Amazon or Goodreads.
Contact Christina
If you want to catch up with Christina, you can reach her on Twitter or her website wodtke.com.

The Philosophy of Product Design (with Udhaya Kumar Padmanabhan, Global Strategic Design Director at Designit)

An interview with Udhaya Kumar Padmanabhan. Udhaya is Global Strategic Design Director at Designit, a global design firm working in all areas of design. Udhaya is a passionate advocate for good design principles, demystifying design practices and applying form to the formless.
We talk about a lot, including:
His work with Designit, and how the design community is flourishing in Bangalore (the Silicon Valley of India)
How he started out as a computer scientist & mathematician but somehow ended up in design and not data science
The difference between product management, product design and UX design and where it all sits in a good product company
Whether you need specific domain experience to be a product designer or whether any designer can get into product design
The importance of up front collaboration with UX & product design and ensuring you're not just throwing stuff over the wall
How easy it is to rescue bad design that you've inherited, when you need to start again, and what to do if you can't
The importance of stepping back and hearing people out and not just preaching at people, and how design is about being in the relationship business
The importance of "giving form to the formless" and applying good design principles outside of traditional user interfaces
Contact Udhaya
If you want to catch up with Udhaya, you can reach him on LinkedIn.

From Engineer to Product Leader & Getting Away from the "How" (with Rekha Venkatakrishnan, Senior Manager, Group PM @ Walmart)

An interview with Rekha Venkatakrishnan. Rekha is a Senior Manager in Group Product Management for Walmart Global Tech, supporting Walmart offices around the world in building great product experiences. She's also a passionate advocate for advancing women in data, tech & product and a chapter lead for Women in Product in San Francisco.
We speak about a lot, including:
What it's like working in product for a giant like Walmart, in a global, distributed product team
Whether an organisation like Walmart can be truly agile or whether it's stuck in the past
How a move from Walmart to Oracle went wrong and why she ended up back at Walmart
How she started as an engineer in India before starting to query the "What" and the "Why" naturally moved her towards product management
Some of the challenges of going from an engineering mindset to product mindset, and getting away from trying to specify the "How"
How she prioritised practical, hands on experience and hadn't even heard of places like Product School
How her passion for communication & education led her to ironically become a trainer for Product School
Her work with Women in Product and the initiatives she's working on to help support women in the product community
Why it's important to be able to make mistakes as long as you learn from them
And much more!
Contact Rekha
You can contact Rekha on LinkedIn.

Data-Driven Decisions & the Product Engagement Score (with Stephanie Tanzar, Director of PM @ Pendo)

An interview with Stephanie Tanzar, Director of Product Management at Pendo. Stephanie talks about her passion for product management and product analytics, the new Product Engagement Score metric and some great advice for becoming more data-driven.
We talk about a lot, including:
The differences between stages of companies, how she's lived them all and what she prefers now
Whether being in a hypergrowth company with a massive user base makes it easier to say no
What it's like being a product manager at a company that serves a user base of product managers
How a passion for human / computer interaction nearly led to a PhD but instead sparked a passion for product management
Why data is important and the role of gut feel in product management decisions
What the Product Engagement Score is, what it tells you, and whether it's actually useful or just something to get people to use Pendo
Whether Pendo are putting their money where their mouth is and using the score to drive their own decisions
Examples of good decisions that have been made so far using Product Engagement Score as a basis
Whether NPS's time is up or whether it's valuable alongside data such as the Product Engagement Score
Why you don't have to be perfect to be data-driven, and that just taking it one step at a time is still valuable
The different lagging and leading indicators that can be used to drive product decisions
About the Product Engagement Score
Stephanie wants you to start using the PES to measure your product engagement. Find out more about that on the Product Engagement Score website.
Contact Stephanie
If you want to catch up with Stephanie, you can reach her on LinkedIn or go and sign up for Pendo.
PS - If you want check whether Stephanie's answers match up with our previous Pendo guest, check out Christine Itwaru.

Is this Seriously Game Over for Scrum? (with David Pereira, Head of PM @ Virtual Identity, Editor @ Serious Scrum)

An interview with David Pereira. David is Head of Product Management at Virtual Identity, a product development agency. He's also a prolific author and educator, and contributing editor to Serious Scrum.
We talk about a lot, including:
The fun and games when working for a company transitioning from a project to product-led mindset
The importance of meeting in the middle and making iterative progress, not aiming for perfection on day one
How he got his first job as a product owner completely by mistake whilst studying on an English immersion course
How he developed his product skills on the job through making multiple mistakes and iterating
The debate between Product Owner and Product Manager as job titles, and the trend for Product Owners to be hired as order takers in feature factories
How he got into writing over 100 articles and becoming a contributing editor to Serious Scrum on Medium
What he means by "The Game Being Over" for Scrum and some of the problems with the framework
Some of the issues he sees with SAFe as a successor for Scrum, and how it's really waterfall in disguise
The importance of a solid growth mindset and not going stale, and some of the ways he tries to keep ahead of the crowd
Contact David
If you want to catch up with David, you can reach him on LinkedIn, Twitter or read his work on Medium.
 

From Physiotherapist to Product Manager (with Samuel Ogunkoya, Product Manager @ ProducteevTech)

An interview with Samuel Ogunkoya. Samuel is a product management intern at ProducteevTech, a product development agency. Samuel started his career as a physiotherapist before deciding to focus on a different type of user pain, and shares some of his learnings from his journey so far.
We talk about a lot, including:
How he serendipitously landed his first product management job
What made him decide to switch from physiotherapy into product management in the first place
How his passion for people and his broad interest in technology has affected both parts of his career
Whether his interest in product management was useful in his physiotherapy career, and how he treated his services as a product
How his experience with patients and patients' families helped him develop empathy that he now takes forward to his users & stakeholders
How he developed a strong dislike for micromanagement from past experience, and how he pushes against this in his product management career
The resources he used to skill up in product management, and how he prefers hands on sessions to book training
How he explained product management to his friends and family and how they reacted when he told them about the change
Advice for others following him into product management
Contact Samuel
You can find Samuel on Twitter, LinkedIn or Samuel's website.