Does your company have a product management capability framework or career ladder? As a leader have you built or contributed to one? As a product manager, how do you know if you’re doing a great job or ready for the next step?
Our SpeakerAaron Hardy, VP of Product at PageUp, will share his experience of creating a company-specific framework for evaluating the capabilities of a product management team at various levels. He will explore publicly available resources and provide examples of how to apply the framework. Additionally, he’ll talk about how individuals can create a framework & take initiative in their own professional development.
Think of us as a strategic product development partner. At Propel, we know that building a successful product is more than just a technical and functional feat, it takes skillful and purposeful strategy and implementation to ensure users love it and your business profits from it. That’s why, unlike other development partners, we truly partner with our clients, helping them focus on discovering and building the right product for the right market. Our depth of experience in determining product-market fit, validating development progress with user testing and feedback, and supporting ongoing growth make us the ideal strategic partner for developing a commercially successful product. Propel’s services include product strategy, product management, product development, UX & UI design, go-to-market and product scaling.They are always keen to work with great people so if you’re looking check out more about them.
Starting from their grad program, and soon proliferating throughout the rest of their teams, new Reece employees are given an induction like no other. They are sent to one of the 644 Australian branches to immerse themselves in the business.
It’s back to apprentice mode, as you get first hand experience of the customer sites. The 7am morning rush, helping setup customers, picking and packing orders which come in from all areas (overnight orders, phone, app and in-person), receiving stock, organising deliveries, reporting back when things don’t go quite right. And seeing Reece’s customer obsession service standard for yourself.
Not just for research purposes, or standing on the sidelines taking notes. But by working side by side with the branch staff, serving customers.
Everyone has done Branch Time.
Even the CEO.
How long can vary for different areas, depending on their needs. But the standard stint for a Product Manager is around 6 weeks.
The Pros and… More Pros
But sending every new hire to Branch Time is a serious commitment – in both time and dollars.
So what’s the upside?
Firstly, accelerating your understanding of the business, and building a strong foundation to make decisions in the future. This is not always tangible or measurable by reporting, but what better way to fast-track your decision making capability?
Also, forming connections and relationships with the branches, and understanding the mayhem of retail. You even get direct experience with using Reece’s internal systems, such as TRS. You always have access to feedback, as you’re constantly in contact with branches.
And, of course, establishing deep empathy with your customers, the majority who are tradies. Understanding and becoming intimate with their customer problems, so you can ensure the right solutions are developed to deliver the right outcomes. Knowing their world also enables you to contribute and create meaningful OKRs (targets).
But it doesn’t stop there:
Branch managers and staff also benefit from building relationships with somebody in head office.
After Branch Time, you have ongoing access to the branch network, to continue to foster relationships, to interview or to validate ideas and concepts with staff or customers.
New team members also go through the same Branch Time experience, so there is a shared understanding and common ground established.
Lexicon recently created an NFT marketplace with a global sporting brand and will share their experience including:
1. Designing with NFT utility 2. Flexibility, scalability and experimentation 3. The importance of speed to market in a constantly evolving landscape
Our speakers:
Lexicon folks who worked on this project – Jan Erasmus – Principal Delivery Consultant and Oliver Newberry – Lead Product and UX Designer
Our hosts:
reecetech is building a world-class engineering culture – designing and building products our customers and staff love, and solving hard problems using the latest technology. We pride ourselves on being entrepreneurial, non-hierarchical, fast (you can be deploying code to production on your second day here!) and creating massive impact by powering the Reece Group.
What was your most embarrassing moment in product?
Pearly: I haven’t had many embarrassing moments… When you galvanise the team towards a direction. You’re bold, and push the boundaries. But then after you launch, things don’t work out as planned, and you need to acknowledge the fact with the team, and then try to pull them in a different direction. It can definitely feel embarrassing in the moment, but you also learn a lot from it too.
Tom: Early in his career, while working at a startup, Tom was encouraged by his Head of Experience to hit the street and interview people. After buying around $300 of prepaid coffees from a local cafe, and approaching people with a coffee for their thoughts, people were so preoccupied and busy, Tom couldn’t even give away the coffee cards.
Brendan: Similar to Tom, an early experience for Brendan involved canvassing a local university to survey students about healthy habits… for Breast Cancer Awareness week.
Advice for Product Managers early in their career to accelerate their learning?
Tom: There is no perfect way to do product. Holding a (‘right’ way to do product) view usually does not lead to a productive outcome, and instead can prove divisive with your team and/or management. As an alternative, focus on how you can help the company fill the gaps that it may have.
Pearly: You can also create a capability map, plotting competencies from tactical to strategic, and skills from technical to sales and marketing. Then you can assess where you are, and identify which areas need development.
Brendan: Find a mentor who can help you identify where you need to grow.
When should you seek a mentor, and what should you look for?
Liz: As soon as you start in product!
Brendan: Or even before you get into product.
Tom: Tom approaches mentorship differently, more transactional rather than a relationship. He has around 15 mentors, who have different experiences and expertise. So depending on what specific advice Tom is after, he will access his most appropriate mentor.
Are certifications such as CSPO or Pragmatic important?
Pearly & Tom: Can they make you better? Sure, they can help. Especially for interviews. However, are they essential? Probably not. They shouldn’t be definitive. They may, however become the new benchmark in future.
Tom: For individuals, you can mash up information from a variety of sources to get what’s needed. From a corporate (or team) perspective, it can also help to form a common language.
Brendan: The less dogmatic about how you are certified, the better. If a recruiter has agile or product certification as requirements, then that in itself may be a red flag, as they may value the certification so much.
What’s a reasonable 90 day plan for a Product Manager who just joined your team?
Pearly: It usually takes substantial time (eg, 6-12 months) before getting a return from a new product manager. You shouldn’t rush in to make changes. Spend the first month observing, and formulating your plans. Don’t fall into the trap of making decisions without any information.
Tom: The best product people are those who have good relationships with their co-workers, as there will be plenty of communication and negotiation ahead. So meet your co-workers.
Also, get closer to the product. Use the product. Sit in with the customer service team. Use the systems that your support team are using.
Brendan: When you start a new product role, begin with a fact finding mission. What data is available. What are the strategies?
How do you convince senior execs or founders that not everything needs to be in JIRA?
Pearly: I had previously been really strong about not believing in templates. It’s not about templates, but the thinking behind it.
When people don’t know how to communicate effectively with each other, sometimes tooling can reduce collaboration, eg, I work on my tickets, and reassign them instead of communicating. However, standardisation can help create a shared understanding and common language.
Tom: Using Jira, and not fighting the structure can also be freeing. Instead of spending your energy on continuously striving for the perfect template, you can instead focus on actually making better software.
Brendan: As an agile coach, I do not want people to blindly use the tool or follow a process, without understanding the intent behind it.
When was a time you killed a product or initiative?
Brendan: Sometimes the strategy evolves, and products (which may have been loved) are no longer aligned with the new direction. Decommissioning can be necessary, and also freeing. It definitely made our developers happier, so they had one less thing to support.
Tom: At one client, we explored a bill scanning feature – scan a bill, use OCR to read the details, and feed into a rules based engine to derive a comparison. What started as a two week block of development quickly became 6 months of trying to get it to work. But it never worked. There was 0% conversion. It was not only about the time and money spent on this feature, but also the opportunity cost of all the things we were not building, because we were focused on this feature.
Pearly: When I worked in publishing, one of our products, the Business Review Weekly, was well regarded, however not making any money so we had to decommission the brand and product and created a new Leadership Section to the AFR. It was a great experience because of the amount of work required to decommission such a legacy.
Why did you get into consulting?
Tom: For me it was about the scope of work, and exposure to so many different companies and industries. Lots of other varieties.
Pearly: I like change, and a way to learn different things. I have the opportunity to observe how product is practised in different ways across different organisations, but also see similar problems.
Brendan: Like the others have mentioned, the variety. But also, personally, it was a lifestyle choice. Being a contractor or permanent employee can sometimes be all encompassing. Whereas consulting allows the freedom to go off the grid and volunteer for a week.
Where do you see the future of Product Management in 10-15 years?
Brendan: Hopefully there will be much more empowerment. What’s the point of people spending so much time and energy to get close to the problems, and get insights, but are then not empowered to make the decisions? They need to be trusted and empowered to make the decisions.
Pearly: Product Management will become more ingrained at the upper levels. More people will be able to recognise what good product management looks like, and understand the value of being product-led.
With the ever increasing focus on Environmental Social Governance (ESG), organisations are tasked with developing strategies to create long-term and sustainable value. Rarely a simple task in our rapidly changing world, needing to balance a broad range of stakeholders, from employees and customers to investors, suppliers, community groups, and our societal and environmental obligations at large.
Extending beyond ‘because it is the right thing to do for our environment and planet’, there are various commercial risks for not taking ESG seriously:
Growing focus on the Environmental part of ESG policy;
Supply chain volatility;
Evolving legislation;
Investor priorities;
Attracting talent; and
Brand association.
But remember, where there are risks, there are also opportunities, where you can use these attributes to differentiate yourself from the rest of the market.
Where to start?
The transition to sustainability can feel overwhelming at first. The task can seem insurmountable. So where should you start?
Begin with monitoring and tracking your emissions.
There are many software options available for emissions monitoring, data collection, and sustainability reporting. Many can also help in strategic planning and decision-making by analysing historical data to provide insights and predict the future.
Make it bite size.
Like most things, break down the problem. Begin with small steps to build some momentum. Canvas opinions from others, and find internal partners to gain support, working your way up the chain (ie, don’t go straight to the CEO).
Work with your timelines.
There can be many challenges in a corporate setting, such as having contracts with existing suppliers. But rather than fight against the system, look for a path of less resistance. When is the contract due to expire? A month before the expiry date, conduct a review for alternative options.
Keep climbing the ladder.
Change won’t happen overnight. As you start to make some progress, keep going. There is always more than can be done.
You don’t have to work on a climate tech product to make a difference with the environment.
Additional Overlooked Opportunities
There are many opportunities to improve, and move towards a circular economy. Try not to only look at the obvious things. Widen your view and look beyond what is just in front of you.
A few things to consider:
Data storage: storing information, emails and backups all require servers and the energy to power them. Is it time for that retention policy to be reviewed?
Reverse logistics: Instead of products ending up in landfill, can they be re-acquired, refurbished, and resold? Not only does this reduce our waste, but it can also generate an additional revenue stream.
Waste management: Companies spend money to deal with their waste. However, reducing the amount of waste also provides an opportunity to alleviate that cost.
As a Business or Product Analyst? Product Owner? Or Product Manager?
We all start from different places, and our paths for growth are varied.
In July, Adam Wensor, Craig Brown and the crew from EverestEngineering joined us to run an interactive Career Development Workshop, where we co-created a development framework.
The challenge
For many of us, we stumbled our way into product. Our early days spent trying to work out what we’re supposed to be doing. Slowly building in some reps, and some muscle over time. Eventually feeling more comfortable with the work.
But how can we objectively assess ourselves?
And what sort of things should we work on to improve, and level up?
How might we build a roadmap for ourselves?
Product Management Competencies
What are the core competencies for product management?
This can be workshopped with your team. Alternatively, we leveraged a few experts in the field:
Roman Pilcher;
Marty Cagan’s Silicon Valley Product Group; and
John Cutler
Next, we grouped the competencies into themes.
Then, we considered what different levels of mastery may look like?
Like many workshops, it was as much about the journey rather than the destination. However, with a broad mix of tenure in the room, it was a great opportunity to reflect how things can feel earlier on in our careers, and to gain some insights from those who may have more experience.
In product, much of our time involves understanding our customer needs, and becoming deeply intimate with their problems, so that we can build innovative and sustainable solutions. But what happens when your solution is no longer hitting the mark, and it’s time to retire them? In June, Ana Rowe from Thoughtworks joined us to share some industry examples, as well as her own experiences and with sunsetting different products.
Why sunset your product?
Do we know what stage our product is in? Are we still in the growth stage? Have we started to decline? It’s important to appreciate where our product sits within the product lifecycle, so that we can make the appropriate plans. However, as product people, we’re often optimistic, which can sometimes cloud our judgement. We often don’t recognise (or accept) where we are.
If we understand where we are in the Product Lifecycle, then it can make it easier to decide which way we go.
When to sunset your product?
There are many reasons why you may need to sunset your product, including:
Low performing products: When Netflix developed Netflix Friends, they set a 20% growth target as an indication of success. However, over what time period? Do you spend a month, a quarter, a year before you change direction?
Change in needs: Over time, both the environment and our customer’s needs will evolve. What was once cutting edge may no longer be hitting the mark, or possibly superseded or incorporated into other solutions, like the Apple iPod. Is it still a problem (or the right problem) that needs to be solved?
Unsustainable: Is our product too expensive to maintain? Perhaps the margins are too small, or even negative, which we cannot support in the long term. Revolv customers were frustrated when they found themselves on the other end of this equation after Revolv was acquired by Nest (a Google/Alphabet company) and then subsequently shut down about 18 months later.
Diluting your core value prop: Home Ideas (REA) started out as an idea during an internal hackathon. Unfortunately, it always remained an idea, without a true owner, and never quite aligning to the company strategy.
Changes in strategic direction: When A Cloud Guru acquired Linux Academy, they decided to migrate their new customers and consolidate them onto their existing platform, which also meant stopping support and sunsetting the existing Linux Academy mobile app.
How to sunset your product
Once you’ve made the decision to decommission your product, what next?
Ana shared some of the challenges they experienced with Linux Academy. As an education and training platform, customers enrolled in courses to learn about a variety of topics, often in preparation for formal assessments or certifications, some of which were still part way through that process. Many had invested significant time on the platform, which also maintained their learning history. Furthermore, the Linux customers liked the platform they had joined and were using.
Some other questions that needed to be addressed:
How do the products compare?
Should both platforms be maintained?
Are the pricing strategies aligned?
So it was a difficult decision to migrate all these users to the core A Cloud Guru platform, and to eventually retire the existing Linux Academy mobile app.
However, migration plans can also take significant time to develop.
Meanwhile, this change in priorities meant no more development on the old app, therefore no more addressing bugs, which caused the app store rating to tank. This also created a flow on effect with support issues raised by customers.
Also, customers couldn’t just sign up to A Cloud Guru. They needed to wait for their profile to be migrated to allow for the learning history to be transferred.
What were the key learnings?
Planned well… for the happy path;
Didn’t take customers on our journey;
Communication was confusing and sometimes conflicting;
Lack of Tripwire metrics, to get early indication that things were not going as planned.
Slow to act.
If you find yourself needing to sunset a product in future, you may want to consider a Go From Market approach:
As product managers, we spend a lot of time on understanding customer problems, assessing ideas and opportunities and focusing on getting that new product delivery process just right. We follow up with launch parties, launch emails and celebrations. New things are always exciting, right? Look at us delivering great stuff to our customers!
But sometimes, delivering great value to customers or business, actually means sunsetting a product or a feature. So:
how do you approach such a task?
how should you even make that decision?
once the decision is made, what needs to happen?
There are different reasons to sunset a product & Ana’s talk, will have something for everyone. Ana will take us through her experiences of sunsetting different products, as well as look at some industry examples, and share her learnings.
Ana Rowe is a Lead Consultant in Product Management at Thoughtworks, in their Customer Experience Service Line.
She has a great passion for customers. So much that she had a short career in market research and has a Masters degree in Marketing – and then realised that research alone is not enough to deliver great customer experiences.
Ana was one of the first Product Managers at SEEK, and has been working in product for over 15 years across Australia’s leading digital organisations of all shapes and sizes, such as SEEK, REA, A Cloud Guru and more. You can follow her at @anarowe
Our Host:
Kogan.com is a pioneer of Australian eCommerce. We are a dynamic and rapidly growing business. Our team believes in using & building technology to improve the online shopping experience for our customers. We are pragmatic, intelligent, fast paced and driven by seeing our software shipped to production daily. The software we build – including www.kogan.com – is used by millions of customers. Check out our pride and joy https://devblog.kogan.com/ to learn more about us and how we deliver amazing products and software!”
As the environment continues to evolve, so does Product Anonymous, with our first hybrid event.
Over the past couple of years, many companies had to go into survival mode: pivot business models, apply recruitment freezes and even let people go. However, as the environment began to improve, and business confidence started to return, the (jobs) market reopened, with a lot of companies beginning to recruit again, seemingly all at the same time.
With so many other opportunities being so visible, the power dynamic between the candidate and recruiter has changed, and candidates know it.
Megan: Recruiters and hirers are now much more in sales pitch mode – ‘why you should want to work for us?’
James: It’s important to try to differentiate, and showcase the benefits of joining your company.
Megan: In the past, when working with both internal Talent Partners and external recruiters, both would often come back with many of the same candidates. Now, not so much.
How has the recruitment process changed?
James: Because Product Management is a mix of art and science, it can be difficult for a recruiter to recognise what makes a good product manager. Therefore it is as important as ever for Talent Partners and Recruiters to work closely with the hirers (ie, Internal Product Managers) to really understand their must haves. In the current environment, the nice to haves have become a luxury.
The candidate experience has also become incredibly important, which includes being responsive to queries, and the speed to progress through the process.
Shiyu: Zendesk adapted their approach. Rather than individual interviews with engineering, product, design and a VP, they started to combine some of them. As there was always some crossover, this allowed the to trim some of the fat.
Also, their take-home assignment became an in-interview case study to help understand how the candidate thinks and approaches business problems.
Megan: World Vision Australia have taken a more holistic view, not just focussing on recruiting, but extending to the onboarding process. They want to avoid candidates having post-purchase dissonance and regrets about not working somewhere else.
But are compressed interview processes all good?
James: Can the process be too short? Yes. With engineering, they went down to 3 stages, and some candidates said it was too fast, so they went elsewhere. Have empathy for the candidate, and check in with them around the process. Ensure they have adequate opportunity to tell you what they can bring, and why they are right for the job.
Shiyu: To remove people who are just good at interviews, and who may have practised the perfect answer to behavioural questions (such as, describe a time you dealt with conflict), Zendesk use case studies and business examples instead. This way they can get an insight to how the candidate thinks.
How can smaller companies compete with the finances of bigger players?
Shiyu: What is your value prop as an employer? How are you different? What can you offer? It doesn’t necessarily need to be monetary.
Megan: Consider how you invest in your people. Don’t limit your thinking to just what they need to do a good job, but also how they can grow their career.
Hiring is the easy part, how do you keep the talent you have?
James: There are many different aspects here:
Onboarding: set the right expectations of the role.
Recruiter handover: during the recruitment process, more than likely, the recruiter will be the one who has spoken to the candidate the most often and knows them best. So handing over any recruitment knowledge to the new manager, such as their motivation and goals, can help set them up for success.
Impact: Allow candidates to understand what impact they can make.
Exit process: When things don’t work out, the exit process is important, to learn why people are leaving, so you can identify what things may need to be changed.
Shiyu: A common misconception about a person changing jobs is that they will just be getting more money elsewhere. However, different people have different motivations:
Title;
Responsibilities;
Visibility; or
Earning more.
As a manager, give your team members the opportunity to be able to win. Set them up on their winning ways.
What areas do they want to develop? Have them do a self-assessment, and then start the conversation and create actionable items that they can use to progress. Giving them a goal, how they want to grow, and then continuously revisiting can help them see where’s next.
Megan: We’ve seen a higher proportion of people moving sideways internally. Attitudes are important, and you don’t necessarily need all the technical skills, those can be learnt.
What advice do you have for applicants?
James: Usually the first touch point will be with somebody in recruitment, and they won’t be able to understand how good you are at Product, as you need a Product Manager to be able to assess that. So, demonstrate to the recruiter how you are good (eg, display you’ve done your research, about the company, the roles, the industry, the products). You can also show in depth thought and knowledge through your cover letter.
Megan: Ask the smart questions, not just the short term and immediate outputs.
Shiyu: Some of the attributes that Zendesk looks for include a can-do attitude, the desire to build awesome products, and also a willingness to learn. And it is not just about hard skills, like defining a vision. Soft skills are just as important, like how you structure your responses in a logical manner, so that somebody can follow your thinking.
With the current market, are lots of short term roles a red flag still?
Shiyu: In San Francisco, job swapping was common. However, maybe a better perspective to apply is, does your current job give you the satisfaction you need, and the room to grow. If you have a history of changing jobs, the recruiter or hirer may ask you about it, so you need to be able to answer it, hopefully with a compelling reason.
James: This has become more common in the current climate because of the abundance of opportunities available. The explanation could be as simple as ‘the market was hot, and you saw an opportunity that unfortunately didn’t pan out’.
Any tips to progress product careers, from product owner to product manager to senior product roles?
Shiyu: Make sure you talk to your manager, don’t expect them to know without you telling them. Work through it together, and look for opportunities. Sometimes those other opportunities may be in other areas of the company.
Also, get involved with Communities of Practice *cough*Product Anonymous*cough*.
If you are looking to change jobs or looking to hire, right now is an interesting time! We’ve been hearing ‘product is in demand’, there’s an impact on salaries and OMG! It’s the ‘great resignation’.
But what is really happening out there? We have a panel of folks in the thick of it to help understand what’s really happening.
Join us to hear what’s really affecting how they hire, what’s the same and what is changing and ask your questions! This is an Ask Me Anything (AMA) format. This is for both folks looking to hire and those looking for work or ‘open to opportunities’. We’ll be using slido for questions (#hiring) and it will be a hybrid session – so folk are welcome at our host location and online. RSVP now.
Our Speakers
Megan McDonald, Head of Product & Experience Design at World Vision Australia.
Megan has been working in Product roles for over 15 years, and over this time has experienced first-hand the exciting transformation of the role of product in organisations. She’s very ashamed to admit that in her early days as a fin services Product Manager she built products that were designed to extract revenue by limiting customer value .. yep, on purpose! But, in the years that followed, she’s also super proud to have been involved in the evolution of product into the truly human-centred practice it is now.
Megan is a passionate believer in the value that good Product Management can deliver to organisations and their customers, and is busy putting “my money where my mouth is” as a council member of the Association of Product Professionals, working hard to advance the product profession.
Day to day, Megan leads the Product & Experience Design function at World Vision Australia, and an amazing team focused on delivering Australia’s favourite charity experience. “I feel so lucky in this role because I get to solve real customer problems by building sh*t that works, all in the service of eliminating global poverty. And at the same time, I’m helping to create the next generation of product and design thinkers and practitioners.”
Georgia Hart, General Manager, Middleton Executive
Georgia moved to Melbourne roughly 5 years ago with just $200 in her pocket after spending her travelling budget way too soon (oops!). She found myself back in recruitment, learning the Australian landscape and quickly found that there are a lot of very cool start-ups and companies creating a big impact in the world. Georgia had traditionally always recruited Engineers with a little bit of Delivery & Product on the side but wanted more of it so joined Middleton Executive. Middleton Executive is a talent partner of choice for some of Australia’s most eminent tech and product companies and was founded to connect people in the product space. She’s had the pleasure of working with some awesome brands such as SEEK, Whispir, Papercut and is learning from some of the best product leaders in Australia. Big shout out to them for teaching her so much!
In her own words “There’s no denying that the last 2 years have been a rollercoaster. In March, all my clients stopped hiring, people were losing their jobs, it was sheer panic. I found myself out of a sales role and in more of a position to support people navigate through the unknown. 2 years on and here we are, in the busiest market I’ve ever found myself in and having to learn new skills to attract the most in demand talent.”
Shiyu is an experienced Product Manager with 5+ years of experience in building product roadmaps and shipping features in an agile environment. She is problem-driven and likes to take a customer centric approach in every product feature to make sure it has an impact and solves for a real customer problem. Currently hiring at Zendesk, Shiyu has some key learnings about how the organisation has had to make adjustments in their approach in the current climate.
Our Host Intelligence Bank
IntelligenceBank is the leading innovator in digital assets management and marketing operations. The company helps marketing teams seamlessly manage digital assets, creative content approvals, marketing compliance, and creative project management to ensure brands get to market quickly, stay on brand and ensure regulatory compliance. IntelligenceBank’s beautifully designed platform is used by over 400 brands with 500,000+ users in 55 countries. IntelligenceBank has offices in the U.S., Canada and Australia. Follow them on LinkedIn
