Masters of Product Management

If you’re familiar with the game of baseball, you know the saying “batting a thousand”. It means getting a hit every single time you go up to bat. And no one bats a thousand - at least over the course of any real number of at-bats. Here’s the truth about product management - no one bats a thousand here either. Many products fail - or at least fail to fully meet their goals. And while we may not be able to “bat a thousand”, many companies - and product managers - are embracing techniques and practices that will help them “get a hit” more often than not. In this episode, Justin Bauer, Head of Product at Amplitude, shares insights and advice for product managers and product teams on how to optimize for product success.

Understanding customers is a bedrock of successful product management. But it is a lot easier to say than do. Truly understanding customers entails a deep knowledge of their motivations and behaviors. And, frankly, many product managers are not properly equipped to keenly grasp the nuances of customer behavior. On this episode Kristen Berman, CEO and co-founder of Irrational Labs, discusses ways that product managers can use use behavioral design to develop and design solutions that change behavior.

We, in product management, live in complex worlds. We are often solving complicated problems. We are often using sophisticated, complex technologies or engineering solutions to solve those problems. We have various audiences to which we must communicate. Effectively communicating to these various audiences and especially making complex situations understandable and relevant to each is one of the most important skills a product manager has in their professional toolbox. Deepti Tadala, Senior Product Manager for Paypal, joins us on this episode to share her experiences in how to best communicate complex issues with various stakeholders. Deepti Tadala is Senior Product Manager for Paypal.

Anyone who has been in product management knows that a timeline is part of everyday life. Frankly, it’s hard for a lot of people to imagine not living in this timeline-driven world. But why are timelines so important? More often than not, they are arbitrary and not tied to any real customer or market need. It’s not to say we should just take our sweet time and be lackadaisical, we still need to meet customer needs in a timely manner and beat the competition in providing value. But are timelines in their traditional sense the proper means to that end? In this episode, Janna Bastow, co-founder of Mind the Product and CEO of ProdPad, shares her wisdom on how organizations can move away from timeline driven focus and create more value along the way.

In this episode, JJ Rorie, VP of Sequent Learning Networks and Carlos Gonzalez de Villaumbrosia, CEO and Founder of Product School, discuss how product managers can move from *bad* - to good - to great!, and how the product community can help us all on this lifelong learning journey.