The Prod Box Podcast

Creating a product strategy is essential for any successful business. It allows you to focus the companies efforts and resources on the most important aspects of the product and helps ensure that you meet the needs of your customers.In this episode Henry and I dive into how you can create a new product strategy or pivot your existing one to start you off on the right footing in creating value but also touching on some of the pitfalls to avoid when creating a product strategy!

'Start with the why?' When creating a digital product, we usually focus on a specific problem or opportunity space in order to create a solution to achieve a desired outcome or solve a problem. If only it were so straightforward! In reality, products go through many iterations; more data provides insight, the product strategy evolves, assumptions are tested and hypothesises are proven or disproven. Whether working on the first version or further iterations of a product, it is important to keep focused on the direction of travel in order to keep on the desired path to success. In this episode I am joined by Roman Pichler, Author and renowned Product Expert  and we deep dive into how you can create a captivating vision for your product to start you off on the right footing but also touching on some of the pitfalls to avoid when creating vision.

Core to implementing the right pricing strategy is understanding what the perceived value the product holds for the customer; this indicates what customers value and what price they are willing to pay for it. If you learn this before implementing new features or launching a new product this is sure to increase the chances of product success!In this episode, I am joined by Dan Balcauski, Principal Consultant for Product Tranquillity deep dive into how important pricing and understanding value and how important it is for achieving product success.

There are many key elements of product discovery and although there is a focus on the customer problem, we should also focus on the opportunity space to explore and unlock value by working collaboratively to test the viability of opportunities using a number of different discovery techniques.In this episode I am joined by Teresa Torres, internationally acclaimed author, speaker and coach. Teresa and I will explore how to approach continuous product discovery in order to help you embed this thinking into your product management practices, enabling you to achieve product success by creating value for your customer and for your business.

Product Managers sit at the heart of any technology or software development organisation, meaning our work is never done in isolation. Therefore creating connection and alignment with stakeholders is extremely important; but, of course not all stakeholders are the same and this can prove challenging when trying to gain alignment around the product vision, strategy and outcomes for the product. It begs the question:How can we understand the different types of stakeholders in our organisation in order to help map and prioritise them? In this episode I am joined by Shardul Mehta, SVP of Product @ Current Health, and we  explore some of the ways Product Managers can engage, understand and prioritise different types of stakeholders, by diving into some of the common scenarios in order to help you navigate them.

If we choose not to define a product vision and/or strategy but rather opt for a "wing it" approach then it is safe to say, our product might be likely (very likely) to fail. But, even when we do develop a strategy, if it is not very well defined or if it is vague, then this also increases the likelihood of failure. In this episode I am joined by Shardul Mehta, SVP of Product @ Current Health, and we explore all elements of defining a successful product strategy. We talk about the importance of having one, and what the essential steps are to get started on developing a strategy for your product; whether you are inheriting a product or starting from ideation, setting you, your teams and the business up for product success. 

When embarking on a new product management or product leadership role it is an exciting time! New problems to solve, new solutions to define and products to launch! Although an exciting time, it can be quite daunting if it’s your first role in product, a very different type of business or your first senior / leadership role.  In this episode “The First 90 days in Product Management” I wanted to talk about some of the action items I consider when starting a new role, also sharing some of my lessons learned and what I use going forward to help to readily prepare you (hopefully!) for the role you are about to embark on!

There are many definitions of what a product leader is and what a product leader does and there tends to be a heavy theme of strategy, building the product team and having that team rally around a common goal or vision and essentially owning the success of the product/portfolio of products for the organisation. I’d agree that these themes play a large part in successful product leadership, but there are so many other factors that drive the success of a product leader. In this episode I am joined by Henry Latham, Founder and Lead Mentor @ ProdMBA and author of “Why your startup is failing”  and we  explore the concept of product leadership and our thoughts and experiences of it, In order to identify different approaches and what some of the core principles are in order to help you to think about that next step to product leadership in order to help you define who are and want to be as a product leader!Linkedin: Henry Latham Book Mentioned:Marty Cagan, "Inspired"Chip and Dan Heath "Switch"

A key part of a product management role requires wearing different hats and sometimes quite a few at the same time! This can sometimes bring about feelings of ‘Imposter Syndrome’,  which can mean  feeling as though you 'can do much better' or feelings of failure.In this episode I am joined by Ramat  Tejani, Chief Encouragement Officer at The Inspiration Box and D&I Programme Lead at AWS; as we explore the different types of imposter syndrome , we discuss some of the ways which you can combat those feelings; also talking about our experiences, some of the scenarios and type of environments that may bring on Imposter Syndrome.This should help identify and address those feelings to allow your awesome-ness to shine!  because you are already awesome of course!

In this episode  I am joined by a panel of 6 product professionals from Product Coaches, Product Owners to Product Managers sharing their lessons learned, to help you avoid having to learn these lessons first hand,  to get ahead of the game or to help you get out of these pitfalls if you happen to be in one!Some of the lessons we explore are from “knowing your why”, the importance of having a clear vision and cutting down the scope to knowing when to move on and knowing what works for you in a Product role and why feedback and product discovery are important, just to name a few!