PITA 028
ICEBREAKER: Team treasure hunt!
TOPIC 1: How do you organise your products and people? What works well and not well for grouping/ aligning products?
Value-Chain mapping - align teams to these areas, KPIs should map well to this
Can be complicated if the biz is not well defined
Map value from the user’s perspective, not the business’
What is the problem you’re solving for?
Foundation (HR, Authentication, infrastructure), Core (Service Delivery, etc) and Growth (opportunities - things that break pillars) lenses
https://www.productboard.com/blog/4-ways-to-structure-scaling-product-organization/
TOPIC 2: How do I handle a Senior Managemet Team that ‘don’t believe in User Research’?
Just do it anyway (guerilla research) and use the result to leverage more
Why do we need this when we have Google Analytics?
Get people on the team to consistently disagree to get to the point where frustration drives research
“If we have data, let’s look at adata. If all we have are opinions, lets; go with mine “ - Jim Barksdale
Find allies in other stakeholders
Plant seeds - sharing resources and examples where user research has worked and given unexpected and/or useful insights
TOPIC 3: How dio I spot when an interesting role is actually in a secretly toxic org?
Look at the backgrounds of people on the product team - do they get what the job actually is?
Look for well-formed role descriptions
Avoid Ninjas, Rockstars, etc
Ask friends and friends of friends who do - or have - worked there. Reach out to the MTP slack to ask.
Ask how stuff actually gets done in the org during the interview
Open conversations during the hiring process
Ask about and see what has happened to previous people in the same role, or if the role is new - why it was created beyond the functional needs/scaling
Glassdoor can be useful or manipulated - treat it like an Amazon user review
LinkedIn snooping to get a feel for the org chart
if the company has any history of big changes such as changing an outsourcing/similar partner or big management changes, try to get in touch with “the other side” to learn what’s happened in the past
TOPIC 4: Can product managers coexist with program managers? Asking cos my company might be hiring both for a team and I’m not sure what the difference is between the roles.
Delivery managers are great
Definition of roles & relationship is hard and needs to be open, honest and handled well
Definition of Product (for Product Manager) and How to Deliver it (for Programme) can work well
So:very much depends on the relationship