Afleveringen
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My guest today is one of my favorite product thinkers: John Cutler
John is an absolute legend in the product community, and one thing I love about John is his dedication to sharing the messiness and contextual nuances in the world of building products.
John has worked in Product with some of the most exciting tech companies around the globe and is the author of one of the most-read Product newsletters in the world: The Beautiful Mess.
Everyone wants to work like the "best" product organizations. But what does "best" even mean? The "best" according to what, precisely? And how important is it to contextualize this advice? What role does culture play in subscribing to these principles, and implementing them?
As I expected, John went deep on some of these things:
* What does it mean to work in the "best" organizations
* The nuances of categorizing an organization as the "best" and the importance of context
* Reflections on implementing the principles of the product operating model and how messy it can get given different contexts
* The importance of start starting, and being good at continuous improvement
* Some patterns and antipatterns of high-performing teams and organizations
* Foundational steps and reflections on prioritization
* Approaching setting Strategy from scratch
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit afonsofranco.substack.com -
My guest today is the one and only Bob Moesta.
Have you heard about Jobs to be Done theory? Bob was the one creating it together with Clayton Christensen - who's for many the Father of Disruptive Innovation.
Bob is the Founder and CEO of the Re-wired Group. He has worked on & helped launch more than 3,500 new products so far, is a guest lecturer at Harvard Business School, and started his career by being a mentee of Dr Deming himself - the father of the Toyota Production System.
He’s also the author of several bestselling books, including Learning to Build.
Bob is an absolute legend and I am so grateful he took the time to join me in this insightful conversation. We covered:
* Why 10-12 interviews are enough to uncover patterns
* Jobs to be Done as a way to understand people’s lives
* Why JTBD is not a framework to understand the customers’ functional “jobs” today, but their context and outcomes (the “progress” they want to make)
* Why Bob doesn’t use interview guides
* Changing how you approach competitive analysis and market sizing by seeing the world through a Jobs to be Done lenses
* Why JTBD is such a powerful way to align Product/Design/Engineering, with Marketing and Sales
* How to approach prioritization using interrelationship diagrams
* How to visualize your user research using the Forces of Progress
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit afonsofranco.substack.com -
Zijn er afleveringen die ontbreken?
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My guest today is Niko Noll. Niko is a software engineer turned product manager turned product discovery coach.
He has learned Product at scale - shipping value to 18 million monthly active users - and spends most of his time coaching teams and being a founder at Juttu, a tool that helps product teams talk to users every week.
Niko is very dedicated and passionate about helping product teams discover value sooner - and so it was a bit of a no-brainer for us to get together and talk about all this discovery.
In our chat, we covered:
* The ingredients to get started with continuous discovery
* The pros and cons of product trios
* The dynamics of trios and bringing user research onboard
* Practical tips to foster collaboration within product trios
* Treating a product trio like a team of co-founders
* Testing assumptions rather than features
* Creating an environment to foster continuous discovery habits
* And more
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit afonsofranco.substack.com -
My guest today is my friend Carlo Mahfouz. He's the Vice President of Strategic Technology Partnerships at Laerdal Medical and the author of the book Reality Check.
Carlo is such a well-articulated thinker. I love how he breaks things down and I really miss working with him.
We talked about:
* How to become a better listener
* How to let go of your ego, and why this is key in great leadership
* How to foster collaboration between Engineering, Product and Design
* Why Engineers should be highly involved in Discovery and practical tips to foster that culture
* Why intense debate and “fighting” is a healthy sign of strong product teams
* Characteristics of great Tech Leads and differences between just a “senior” engineer
* Dangerous false assumptions that Product tends to make about engineering
* The impact of AI in society
* And more
Carlo is writing his new book “The Culture of Why and the Rise of AI” and you can follow his journey here, so you don’t miss out!
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit afonsofranco.substack.com -
My guest today is Gabriele Bufrem - one of the product coaches featured in Marty Cagan's new book Transformed.
I met Gabi last year and love talking with her. She's both a superstar product coach and a great human being.
Today's episode is like a mini masterclass for product leaders and managers, where Gabi shares practical tips and advice from her experience coaching strong product leaders and teams in companies that we have all heard about.
We covered:
* The 4 biggest challenges product leaders face
* How to craft an inspiring and clear product vision
* What does a great product strategy look like
* The importance of collaboration, listening, and facilitation in order for product leaders to craft a good product strategy
* Workshops and techniques to surface insights and foster strategic alignment
* How to communicate strategic context to product teams
* Product Principles and OKRs
* Why product leaders should spend most of their time coaching their teams
* And more
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit afonsofranco.substack.com -
My guest today is Marty Cagan.
Marty has probably observed and advised more product teams and leaders than anyone in the world.
For many, he's the Godfather of Product Management. Bestselling author of some of the most iconic books in our industry (Inspired, Empowered, and recently launched Transformed). Probably the world's most requested speaker in Product development conferences. And founder and partner at Silicon Valley Product Group - for many, the most credible and highest-quality product advisory group out there.
If you work in Product in Europe, lead product organizations as a product leader, or are a founder / CxO that wants to create a truly innovative company, don't miss this spicy episode.
Marty and I discussed:
* Moving from Projects to Products
* Why Agile can only help with 1/3 of transformations (and why it's also the easiest part)
* Why Product Leadership is the key to enable transformation
* Examples of successful transformation cases in Europe
* The importance of product coaches in driving transformation
* How Europe took Agile in a different direction: process and governance
* Product Ops: good or bad?
* "Product Owners", as we sadly often see in many Scandinavian/European companies, and the risk of obsoletion or replacement
* How AI will impact how we build
* And more
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit afonsofranco.substack.com -
My guest today is the one and only Hope Gurion.
Hope works together with Teresa Torres teaching and coaching product teams on all things continuous discovery, is the founder of Fearless Product, and is one of the featured product coaches in Marty Cagan’s new book Transformed.
Sometimes we meet people that we immediately know are special.
Hope is one of them :)
And this conversation is the evidence of why I’ve been such a big fan of Hope’s work for a few years now.
We discussed,
* Why is continuous discovery so important
* How to move from leading with outputs to outcomes
* Why shifting to outcomes requires both an upskilling in leadership and teams
* Why most transformations require bringing in strong product leaders
* What can product teams do to drive transformation
* Different types of outcomes and how to formulate them
* How product teams should approach business outcomes
* How to share outcomes with other areas of the business (e.g. Marketing, Sales)
* Why formulating and deciding on outcomes is a two-way negotiation between teams and leaders
* And more
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit afonsofranco.substack.com -
My guest today is the roadmap sensei Phil Hornby.
Phil is probably one of the few people in the world that has seen hundreds of Product roadmaps.
He’s the co-creator of the renowned show “Talking Roadmaps” where he regularly interviews thought leaders like Teresa Torres, Marty Cagan, April Dunford, and John Cutler.
Phill works together with the one and only Bruce McCarthy as a Product Coach at Product Culture, and is the founder of For Product People.
We could have talked about anything Product, but in today's episode we talked about all things roadmaps:
* Why some people hate roadmaps
* Common misunderstandings
* Different types of roadmaps
* How to navigate Now / Next / Later roadmaps and tweak it according to your context
* How can roadmapping - when done well - help us transform our organizations to become more outcome-oriented
* What roadmaps are really for
* How to create different views from your roadmap to communicate with different audiences
* Tips and tricks on all things roadmapping
* And more.
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit afonsofranco.substack.com -
My guest today is Ida Aalen.
Ida is both a good friend and a great product mind from Norway.
If you are a Product Manager or leader in Norway, I bet you have heard about Ida’s work. She’s the author of the first Norwegian Product Management book called “Bedre produkter”, which directly translates to Better Products.
She’s been a product coach for the past year before joining NAV recently as a Product Lead.
Ida and I talked about:
* How writing helps us think
* How to find a balance between the build trap and analysis paralysis
* How to use assumption mapping to avoid getting stuck
* A few characteristics of high-performing teams
* Using health metrics and OKRs to help us stay focused on the most important things
* And more
Listen now 👇
Apple | Spotify | Youtube
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit afonsofranco.substack.com -
Today's guest is the one and only David Bland, author of the bestselling book Testing Business Ideas co-written with Alexander Osterwalder and part of Strategyzer's book series.
David is one of my biggest references in Product.
His work, combined with Teresa Torres, is such a potent cocktail for anyone wanting to build better products and discover value more effectively.
One of the things I love about David's work is his emphasis on evidence-based decision-making and how practical he made it for teams to adopt this mindset.
We talked about:
* How to map your assumptions and which risks to consider first
* Why working collaboratively and across various areas of the business is so important when testing desirability, viability, and feasibility
* Why you should start discovery with a small and 100% dedicated team, and expand as you generate evidence
* How desirability and viability are intertwined, and how to go about de-risking it
* How to frame hypotheses
* How to evolve your evidence from what customers say to what they do (going beyond interviews and surveys)
* How to sequence experiments and get the right balance between running 1 experiment and planning ahead
* How to test willingness to pay
* Characteristics of high-performing teams doing discovery
* The importance of time-boxing and connecting it with how the company makes decisions and approaches funding
* How leaders can foster a culture of discovery
* And more
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit afonsofranco.substack.com