Kristy Fenton

At Interflora, we are in the process of renewing the Product Vision of some of our digital products. Now that we are carrying out this process that, for every single Digital Product, takes place every few years, I have taken the opportunity to write about the Product Vision and how we do it at Interflora. I hope you like it: #productvision #productmanagement #productstrategy‍‍‍‍‍‍‍

33

4 commentaren

When it comes to product feedback, people often behave differently than they say they will. A couple of weeks ago, I went to the supermarket with my daughter. She asked me to buy her a special cracker, promising how tasty it would be. She was so excited, describing what we could do with it and insisting that I had to try it myself. An enormous build-up. A few weeks went by, and we never opened the cracker. Disappointment? Not quite. Being in the product space, I know that people often say one thing and do another when it comes to usage. That's why you shouldn't rely solely on questions that try to predict future behavior—they often mean nothing. Instead, focus on how your users are currently behaving and try to understand their potential actions from that. Product management is the art of changing people's behavior. But changing behavior isn’t about getting their commitment to do something—it's about getting them to actually do it. #productmanagement #userbehavior

19

2 commentaren

Question for the Product Managers out there ❗ Share your story.. How do you build a Product in a Tech Scale Up?? Head of Product at JEX, Esther Kuijpers-Bastein will tell you about her experience on how to build a product in a tech scale-up. 👉 How this can affect your product strategy, what we have learned from it. 👉 How we stay on track despite making major changes, but always with the end goal in mind. #productmanagement #productmanager #software #product #devworld #devworldconference

34

📅 Mark your calendars for June 12th! Ruben will show how to boost profitability and reduce returns in our second edition of Next Level eCommerce 🛒🚀

2

2 commentaren

Last night’s Product Group London saw the group engage in a lively discussion on the topic of the night: Product Culture alongside a great conversation with James Gunaca, Product Management Career Coach (ex-Amazon, ExpressVPN). • Product Culture – the multi-faceted part of the organization that matters to many product people, but is missing or not in great shape for just as many. Some of the features of a great culture were listed as having a clear vision, the why, common goals, guiding principles, communication, leadership, curiosity, shared responsibility, empowered people, trust. In terms of creating a great culture, starting small, making it fun, changing the language used, leadership support, winning hearts and minds and proving the value were all stated as good places to start. • James Gunaca - following the topic of the night, James talked about his experiences in product management. Going from working in marketing agencies to landing roles at Amazon and ExpressVPN, James talked about topics such as how he made the transition, the products he’s worked on (incl. Amazon Echo), being an ‘Interview Bar Raiser’ at Amazon, and how he Is now focused on helping product people achieve their goals as a PM Career Coach. Thank you James Gunaca 🙏. Thanks to everyone who came and engaged in the discussions incl. 3 who passed by on trips from Egypt, Tokyo and Australia 🙏. Thanks to Preqin 🙏 for hosting us and providing the pizza and drinks. See you on 6th June! #tpglondon #prodmgmt #productmanagement #startups #bigcompanies

70

12 commentaren

Highlights from 2024 Google I/O: Google is fully in our Gemini Era. So many exciting new announcements from Google I/O this year - I will share some of my personal highlights from now for 7 Days! #2: Gemini 1.5 Pro available now in Workspace Labs Gemini becomes the connective tissue across multiple applications with AI-powered workflows. Why this is relevant to you? Bring the capability of generative AI to the full scale with Google Gemini 1.5 Pro and Workspace. Features I've used on a daily basis to help me improve my productivity: - Gmail: summary from the chains of discussions (etc. the coming trips) and main points of a meeting recording - Google Docs: summary of the contents and re-write prompts - Google Slides: summary for the full deck (very helpful in preparing executive summary :)), useful prompts or help to generate relevant images Reply: https://io.google/2024/ Google Workspace: https://lnkd.in/gq9BgJJ6

10

Uncertainty in your business? The solution: Turn doubt into hypotheses 🧪 + validate through experimentation 🔬 + use AI to speed up 🚀. Start with a hypothesis. Let's use this Spotify example I've seen before 👇: "𝗪𝗲 𝗯𝗲𝗹𝗶𝗲𝘃𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗻𝗲𝘄 𝗰𝘂𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗺𝗲𝗿𝘀 𝘁𝗿𝘆 𝘁𝗼 𝗲𝘅𝗽𝗹𝗼𝗿𝗲 𝗺𝘂𝘀𝗶𝗰 𝗲𝗮𝗰𝗵 𝘄𝗲𝗲𝗸, 𝗯𝘂𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝘆 𝘀𝘁𝗿𝘂𝗴𝗴𝗹𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗱𝗶𝘀𝗰𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗿 𝗻𝗲𝘄 𝘀𝗼𝗻𝗴𝘀." 🎵 Add some concrete data. Data is your intuition's best friend. Always include data in your decisions 👇: "𝟳𝟬% 𝗼𝗳 𝗰𝗵𝘂𝗿𝗻𝗲𝗱 𝗰𝘂𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗺𝗲𝗿𝘀 𝘀𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗰𝗵𝗲𝗱 𝗯𝗲𝘁𝘄𝗲𝗲𝗻 𝟱 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝟳 𝘁𝗶𝗺𝗲𝘀 𝗯𝗲𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝘆 𝗰𝗼𝘂𝗹𝗱 𝗽𝗹𝗮𝘆 𝗮 𝘀𝗼𝗻𝗴." 📊 These facts are your compass, guiding you through the turbulent waters of business decisions. Now, create a prediction that is a key part of the hypothesis. This is basically what we plan to use to test if the hypothesis is true 👇: "𝗜𝗳 𝘄𝗲 𝗶𝗺𝗽𝗿𝗼𝘃𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘀𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗰𝗵 𝗳𝗲𝗮𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗻𝗲𝘄 𝗰𝘂𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗺𝗲𝗿𝘀 𝗯𝘆 𝗵𝗮𝘃𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗺 𝗮𝗻𝘀𝘄𝗲𝗿 𝗮 𝗾𝘂𝗶𝗰𝗸 𝟯𝟬-𝘀𝗲𝗰𝗼𝗻𝗱 𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗺 𝗱𝘂𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗼𝗻𝗯𝗼𝗮𝗿𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗮𝗱𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗿𝗲𝘀𝗽𝗼𝗻𝘀𝗲𝘀 𝗮𝘀 𝗳𝗶𝗹𝘁𝗲𝗿𝘀 𝗶𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗲𝘅𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗺𝘂𝘀𝗶𝗰 𝘀𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗰𝗵 𝗳𝘂𝗻𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻, 𝘄𝗲 𝘄𝗶𝗹𝗹 𝗱𝗲𝗰𝗿𝗲𝗮𝘀𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘁𝗶𝗺𝗲 𝗶𝘁 𝘁𝗮𝗸𝗲𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗺 𝘁𝗼 𝗱𝗶𝘀𝗰𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗿 𝗻𝗲𝘄 𝘀𝗼𝗻𝗴𝘀 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲𝗯𝘆 𝗿𝗲𝗱𝘂𝗰𝗲 𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗰𝗵𝘂𝗿𝗻 𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗲." ⏳ This prediction is your lighthouse, guiding the direction of your work. So, how does AI fit into all this 🤔? Picture AI as your trusty co-captain, helping you at every stage of this journey 🚢. Even in formulating the hypothesis. Imagine having a conversation with your AI assistant. You're discussing churn rates, and the assistant suggests, "Perhaps the search function isn't user-friendly for newly onboarded customers." Eureka! You have a hypothesis 🌟. When it's time to build your MVP, this will be our mechanism for experimentation, AI can also help. Let's say the MVP is a simplified music search feature. AI can help you design this feature by analyzing user behavior and offering insights into what works and what doesn't. AI can even assist with hypothesis testing and refining your MVP, A/B testing, metrics, and tracking whether changes lead to a decrease in churn rates. So, if you're ready to take the plunge and navigate the sea of business decisions, why not try this approach? Trust in the power of a clear hypothesis and the capabilities of AI to get you to the other side 🌊🚀.

4

What I learned from that amazing CTO Stephan 🚀 Schmidt for an engineer, it’s rather good old ROI (e.g. value created per engineer month). I typically argue that an engineer has to capture 10-20x the value minimum within a year, at least as a goal. Why? Engineers are multipliers. You hire them to scale an org. It’s not scaling if you earn 1$ on the $. You have to aim at at least 1 or 2 orders of magnitude more as a goal. If you manage to do that consistently (obv not always in the first year), then time to market is a vanity metric. Time to value can still be a survival metric though, because it might matter for the next funding round, PR event or sales cycle.

2

I wrote a short letter about Juttu, the product we are building. Who still writes letters? Me - it helps me condense mission/vision and GTM strategy into one. Amazon has their press release method. Why? Because slides are cheap to produce and hard to criticise. They are inherently imprecise. Writing requires precision of thought. To get your message across. Jason Fried writes a letter before every product launch. Why? Because he is big on the WHY of product. And the train of thought that leads them to build it in the first place. He briefs you on their product strategy. So you can get onboard. So here you go, here's my letter for Juttu, our upcoming SaaS product. Feel free to roast it in the comments 😄 Try writing a letter yourself for an upcoming product launch. I believe it will make all the difference for you. ------- Hello, let’s talk about Product Discovery. Product Discovery is about figuring out what to build - where opportunities lie for your business. And if you’ve ever worked on a product where regular user input guided decision making, you probably had a lot of fun. To solve users’ problems and see your business thrive is wonderful. It’s energizing - invigorating. But many teams never get to experience that joy. Finding the time for Product Discovery is hard for many reasons. One thing that shouldn’t be hard is setting up regular user interviews. That shit should be automated by now! Which users should you reach out to? What do you write in your email? Who can help interviewing? Who did you already reach out to last week? And who makes sure we have interviews scheduled next week? To rediscover the joy of building products in tandem with our users, we need make regular user interviews an effortless default. With Juttu we’ve done just that. We made talking to users more simple, straight forward. We automated the tedious parts of recruiting and scheduling. So your team can experience the joy of doing Discovery, continuously. And we couldn’t be more excited to share Juttu with you. Stay tuned. Pauline, Yelko & Niko Founders at Juttu ------

32

14 commentaren

The Complexities of Optimizing Interfaces and Search Algorithms in Product Development Imagine trying to find a needle in a haystack. Now, imagine that the haystack keeps growing, and you need to find the needle faster each time. This is the challenge many product managers face when optimizing search algorithms and user interfaces for e-commerce platforms. Search is becoming increasingly popular in online stores, especially with the rise of mobile platforms. On mobile devices, it's often easier to enter a search query than to browse categories. As content grows rapidly, users need to solve tasks quickly. With millions relying on seamless and intuitive search experiences, optimization is crucial. Having spent years optimizing search engines and interfaces for platforms with millions of users, I can confidently say that robust search functionality is essential for user satisfaction and conversion rates. Here is my recipe for success: 1. Optimizing search for a large audience requires a powerful platform and robust services. It needs to be a resilient, flexible system that supports various tests, including cross A/B testing, and is equipped with advanced mechanisms for big data collection and data model utilization. 2. Understanding the specifics of search within your product is critical. For instance, in a DIY online store, ordinary customers may not know specialized construction terms. Identifying these problems can be greatly aided by speaking directly with users and conducting in-depth interviews. Relying on big data is essential, as content search is highly specific where the interface greatly influences user behavior and expectations. These connections and patterns are difficult to uncover through UX tests or interviews alone. 3. Search is always tied to relevance. To improve your algorithms, you must understand what relevance means for your users. For some, relevance means showing content whose semantics closely match the search query. For others, it's about recommendations. Understanding and measuring relevance through big data is crucial to improving your algorithms effectively. 4. Conducting numerous tests, including A/B, cross tests, and UX tests, is vital for any part of product development. In search optimization, regular testing is crucial since user expectations can change rapidly due to factors like seasonality and trends. For example, during the popularity of Marvel movies, many users in an online clothing store may expect to see superhero-themed apparel when searching for "superhero." If your product requires search optimization but there are no "low-hanging fruits," start by assessing your current platform: how well it supports rapid development, handles large data volumes, and facilitates extensive testing. Then, understand what users expect, why they use (or don’t use) the search feature, and measure their satisfaction with the search results. Only then can you make thoughtful changes and test them on large audiences.

5

My most favorite articles (and maybe the only ones??) on how to find the Aha-moment in your product: In no specific order 👉 How to Discover Your App’s ‘Aha Moment’ by Parsa Saljoughian https://lnkd.in/eBAcNpen 👉 Facebook's "Aha" Moment Was Simpler Than You Think By Benn Stancil https://lnkd.in/gMBmVAQ3 👉 A-ha moments in the product: a systematic approach to search By Paul Levchuk https://lnkd.in/gRcPfEpk This one is in Russian, I read it with the help of browser translation into English. There is SO LITTLE writing about hands-on approaches and how to ACTUALLY find the Aha-moment, if you have more resources please share them in the comments. I'd love to add them to my Notion knowledge base. #productmanagement #BCnoBSprodmgmt #productAnalytics #productMetrics  

34

15 commentaren

🎯 The Product Success Scorecard: Measuring What Really Matters Real product success is about nailing the fundamentals, then doing them again. And Again. After 20 years leading product at loads of recognisable brands, and after interveiewing nearly 100 of the top Product Leaders in Europe, I've distilled success down to five core competencies - all measurable, all improvable. Too many PMs get lost in flashy frameworks and forget the basics. (I've seen the top 100 Frameworks for Product type of docs. Who has the time to read it ? Let alone try put them into practice) 🔧 The Product Success Scorecard: 1️⃣ User-Centric Thinking • e.g. Measure: # of user interviews/month 2️⃣ Data-Driven Decision Making • e.g. Measure: % of decisions backed by data 3️⃣ Stakeholder Management • e.g. Measure: Stakeholder satisfaction score (1-10) 4️⃣ Execution & Delivery • e.g. Measure: On-time feature delivery rate 5️⃣ Business Acumen • e.g. Measure: Revenue impact of your products Every major win in my career came from relentlessly focusing on these fundamentals and tracking my progress. So...Implement your own Product Success Scorecard. Set concrete goals for each competency based on your current role and aspirations. Review weekly with an accountability partner (ask me if you need help with this). Put in the reps. Watch your impact grow. In product management, success isn't about knowing the latest buzzwords - it's about consistent improvement in what truly matters. #ProductManagement #ProductSuccessScorecard #MeasurableGrowth

7

2 commentaren

I’ve been thinking about process lately, and since good process is an expression of an organization’s values, let’s talk about product values. Strategy before execution: To reach the highest peak, we can’t just close our eyes and walk uphill. The biggest waste of resources is time spent building the wrong thing. Taking the time to create a hypothesis for how we win, describing how we’d measure sufficient progress, and capturing that as OKRs is how we create the shortest path between today and our goal. Outcomes over outputs: We can’t reliably know in advance if a particular feature will successfully deliver value to our users and our business. By setting goals around the delivery of value instead of the delivery of work, we can make room for those who are closest to the data and to users to discover the best solution that creates the most value. Autonomy, earned through accountability, increases velocity: Discovering the best solution requires rapid iteration and testing of various ideas. To move quickly, teams need to be able to cycle through these ideas without having each and every one approved by the chain of command. Earning the trust to do so requires the team holding itself accountable to delivering on their committed outcomes. ——— Using these values, we can construct a Product Operating System that captures the quarterly strategic planning process, the product development process within a 2-week sprint, and the space in between. I don’t have room to write it all out here, but if you want to read it, check out today’s newsletter: https://lnkd.in/gMBQybBQ

13

Two years ago, I quit my beloved job on an amazing team at Amazon Web Services (AWS) and founded Abstract Money alongside Robin Bisschop. Read why here: https://lnkd.in/ebqvWpja Or TL;DR here: Prior to entering big corporate, I had been building in Web3, a space dedicated to the decentralization of finance, governance, and compute. In Ethereum, I'd participated in multiple hackathons, worked on research papers, but ultimately come to the conclusion that a global decentralized computer would never work, even with scaling solutions like rollups and layer-2s. At AWS, I confirmed firsthand that these monolithic systems cannot scale. Modularity and microservice based architectures are key to scaling to billions of users for platforms the size of Amazon. Seeing how AWS worked actually lead me to find the Cosmos ecosystem where different blockchains can interoperate using Inter Blockchain Communication (IBC). Sound familiar? It should. Similarly, your computer uses TCP/IP every day to connect with other computers. I knew that this "Internet of Blockchains" was the best solution to scaling decentralized tech. I felt like I'd discovered the Internet before anyone else. While networked systems might *technically* scale better, the user and developer experiences certainly do not. Decentralized apps (dApps) are fragmented across multiple chains, leading to terrible onboarding and UX, ultimately hindering adoption. So, most users (and value) remain in Ethereum or other monolithic systems. Developers are then forced to choose to leverage this tech, regardless of its effectiveness - or lack thereof - in building their application, because *it's where the users are*. This limits the scalability and extensibility of dApps, hindering adoption even further. We seek to solve these problems with Abstract Money, bringing together users and developers in one unified app platform. Using our tooling, developers can build apps agnostic of the underlying chains, meaning that they're fully portable, interoperable, and yes, they're modular. Backed by our on-chain infrastructure and chain-abstracted wallet, our app platform allows users discover and interact with dApps on *any* chain, regardless of the tech. No more switching chains, paying for gas, bridging tokens, or even new tabs. Abstraction is the key to adoption. Users care about the experience, not the tech. If this is something you believe in as well, we're hiring! Check the comment for the link.

80

4 commentaren

I've found a name! A name for the spontaneous conversations that I've been recording and sharing with you. No edits. (Almost) no cuts. No make up haha. And no prepared questions. Just open, genuine conversations that I keep having. 👉 I decided to call this "Product Nerds Uncut". Because that's exactly what it is. Two product people nerding on product management stuff. TYPICALLY it works like this: . I have a regular call with someone. Just because I like meeting new people and talking to friends. . We talk. In German or English. . When it gets interesting I scream "STOOOOP!" . I ask if they are ok if we record this so that I can share it with you folks. Because the conversation is sooo interesting. So far only 1 person said "better not". Everyone else said yes. I'm blessed to know so many great product people and leaders. People who do the actual work. And I am happy I can share the conversations with you that we have. So I have 6 recordings in the pipeline that I haven't shared with you yet. And now that I have a YouTube channel (yes! crazy isn't it?!) I will continue sharing them with you. Next week there will be a new...episode? No. It's not an episode. In the end it's not a podcast. How would you call it then? Anyways... Next week there will be a new one. The difference being that for THAT one we had scheduled a call because we wanted to talk about a specific topic. Stay tuned, get surprised. For those who don't know what I mean, here's one episode that I had recorded with Chris Compston when he explained to me what Product Ops does: https://lnkd.in/eyuWD2nN Enjoy! #productmanagement #BCnoBSprodmgmt #ProductOps #ProductNerdsUncut

31

3 commentaren

A team that ideates together thrives! How often do you see product managers and strategy & ops professionals getting caught up in day-to-day operations, leaving strategy and innovation on the backburner? Reflecting on my career, some of the most exciting moments have been those when managers and stakeholders stepped away from business as usual to brainstorm the next big thing. Recently, engaging in a fun late-night AI thread, I shared ideas on potential products, their impact, and how they could revolutionize the Walmart experience. We probably thought we were nuts imagining new ways to augment our AI experiences for our associates - well past midnight. But guess what, a week down the line, we see a meeting in our calendars to quite “seriously” discuss those ideas & vision. That’s the fun part about Product management. It is about more than just documentation, tasks and jira updates. It's about complimenting the day to day operations with vision, strategy, ideation, and roadmap management. How often do you ideate? #ProductManagement #Innovation #Ideation #Strategy #Walmart

61

2 commentaren

The last time I wrote an SQL statement was more than 15 years ago, yet I led data teams executing game-changing actions on multiple occasions. I had written zero PRDs before my first tenure as a CPO, yet I led product teams optimizing the entire organization on multiple occasions. You don’t have to master everything to lead a team, but you need to know one crucial thing: “What does a good result look like?” Yes, I haven’t worked with SQL for years, but I’ve done extensive number crunching with Excel for top-level management of large enterprises during my consulting days. I understand what kind of analysis will be impactful for business and what kind of logic and assumptions are acceptable. Yes, I haven’t written any PRDs, but I’ve read hundreds of FSDs when I was a coder. I know whether a document is readable for engineers or not, and I know how to measure a hypothesis from my consulting experience. Being proficient in technical skills does not necessarily translate to being good at leadership. At the end of the day, you won’t be the one performing the technical tasks, but you’ll always be responsible for the quality. When you reach a senior level in your career, your readiness to jump to a leadership position is no longer about how good your technical skills are, but about how well you can discern between good and bad outputs.

45

When you’re a millennial product manager, attempting to share her knowledge of product, with the wider community and one of the most successful artists in the world is currently on a mass tour of the UK, there’s only one question on your mind: What would the dangerous animals of product management be if they were Taylor Swift songs? If you've been asking yourself the same question then have I got a blog post for you! https://lnkd.in/dYxE_QDq #product #productmanagement #tech #UX

3