Doing product management isn't easy. Even though, with gazillions of books that people have read, they can sometimes not execute the knowledge. In this episode, Christian and Alex took a deeper look at why that's the case. Table of content: 00:30 - Why is product management so hard? 02:40 - Chicken & egg problem 03:30 - Collaboration & soft skills are essential 06:50 - Regular reminders 08:15 - Making a change as an individual 10:55 - Making compromises ✩ Follow The Product B...
Nov 15, 2021•15 min•Transcript available on Metacast Asking great questions is a real-life superpower! Sometimes though, it's important to take a step back and ask (powerful) stupid questions, especially when you are new in a role as a product person. In this episode, the Product Bakers talked to Paul about coaching CEOs to develop a product mindset. Despite that, they've talked about what product people can do to establish more product thinking. Table of content: 00:30 - Episode Intro 01:50 - Intro Paul 04:45 - The ego of founders 10:50 - W...
Nov 07, 2021•36 min•Ep 77•Transcript available on Metacast Public roadmaps became a hot topic in the past. Christian & Alex decided to speak about the benefits of sharing your roadmap with your customers and how to define it in a way that they will understand your future plans. Table of content: 00:30 - Intro & chit chat 02:35 - Transparency is key 03:20 - The idea of "open startup" 05:50 - Customers love knowing your plans 07:15 - Using good terminology 11:25 - Getting feedback from your customers 13:30 - What you should not share publicly 16:0...
Oct 25, 2021•20 min•Transcript available on Metacast The Product Bakery podcast was started on the 10th of September 2020. After one year of podcasting and many interviews, Christian and Alex sat down to take a couple of looks back... ✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩ 👨💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery 📸 Instagram: @productbakery 🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20 🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/...
Oct 04, 2021•11 min•Transcript available on Metacast The whole insurance space is very slow. At least it used to be! Konrad Heipmel's mission @Getsafe is to disrupt the insurance market. As VP of Data & Product, he shared with the Product Bakers how they focus on data to build a product that fits the market needs and solves the customer pain points. Table of content: 00:30 - Episode Intro 02:20 - Intro of Konrad & the insurance space 07:00 - The biggest challenges of the industry 10:40 - Working with product principles 13:45 - How to scale...
Sep 26, 2021•35 min•Ep 74•Transcript available on Metacast Many companies and teams want to become faster and speed up projects. That's a topic Christian & Alex are regularly faced with. This time they spoke about the concept of project-specific teams (task forces) and how to form them as well as their pros & cons. Table of content: 00:30 - Example: Redesigning an app 02:45 - The concept of a task force 05:10 - How to form a task force 08:00 - Good project management is key 12:40 - Outsourcing projects to agencies 16:35 - Estimating scope a...
Sep 16, 2021•20 min•Transcript available on Metacast Alex and Christian did manage for a long time to meet and record in person again. Therefore, they picked up the topic of working remove vs. being onsite. How can and should teams decide what's best in terms of tooling and location? Tune in to learn more! Table of content: 00:30 - Meeting in person 05:05 - What's best to be creative? 08:40 - 1:1s vs team meetings 12:25 - Industry and professions are relevant 17:25 - Cross-functional teams onsite vs. remote ✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podca...
Sep 09, 2021•21 min•Transcript available on Metacast Communication can be the hardest work sometimes. Due to the fact that a lot of companies moved to remote work, it's not getting easier. This time Christian and Alex picked up the whole topic of stakeholder management and what product people can do to bond and keep up alignment. Table of content: 00:30 - Is communicating getting harder? 02:45 - Different people with different agendas 06:35 - Stakeholder awareness 09:40 - The first step to good stakeholder management 11:45 - Being proactive instea...
Aug 30, 2021•18 min•Ep 69•Transcript available on Metacast Alex is close to going on vacation. Therefore, he and Christian caught up on the whole topic of work-life balance and discussed what it needs to maintain a healthy balance. Table of content: 00:30 - Alex going on vacation 02:50 - The importance of work-life balance 05:25 - Working on vacation 07:00 - Taking care of your employees ✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩ 👨💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery 📸 Instagram: @productbakery 🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20 🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.co...
Aug 23, 2021•10 min•Ep 68•Transcript available on Metacast Sometimes, the products we use seem to become more complex than easier. The product bakers discussed why that happens and the reasons. Table of content: 00:30 - iOS 15 and the safari URL bar 07:20 - Strategy & big picture vs. UX 09:30 - Designing against the customer 13:00 - The danger of copying trends ✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩ 👨💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery 📸 Instagram: @productbakery 🐦 Twitter: @productbaker...
Aug 23, 2021•17 min•Transcript available on Metacast This time, Christian and Alex talked about the development of artificial intelligence (AI) and its advantages and potential downsides. Table of Content: 00:30 - Turn off your notification 01:55 - What AIs do already these days 04:50 - Strong vs. weak AI 08:00 - Losing human interactions 11:50 - Good data & diverse teams Book recommendation: Competing in the Age of AI ✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩ 👨💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery 📸 Instagram: @productbakery 🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20...
Aug 09, 2021•15 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode, Christian and Alex talked about how they organize their time and todos. Table of content: 00:30 - Episode Intro 02:30 - Using spare time to be productive 04:10 - Color coding the calendar 05:10 - Blocking time in the calendar 07:45 - Declining meetings 09:45 - Manage the stakeholders 12:10 - Documentation & tooling Christian's Meeting Course: https://www.christianstrunk.com/courses/meeting-facilitation ✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩ &n...
Aug 03, 2021•15 min•Transcript available on Metacast Christian Idiodi is a partner at the Silicon Valley Product Group. With his experience, he helps product and leadership teams across the globe to solve their customer problems. In this episode, he shares the biggest challenges that product teams have and how especially leaders can help and empower product people to solve those. Table of content: 00:30 - Episode Intro 02:10 - Intro Christian Idiodi 03:50 - The biggest challenges product people have 08:25 - Missing empowerment from le...
Jul 27, 2021•36 min•Transcript available on Metacast This time Alex and Christian focused on a topic that they haven't talked about at all. Ethics! Both discuss how current products tempt to become more unethical and what to do about it. Table of content: 00:30 - Episode intro 02:10 - Dominated by white people 06:40 - Ignoring minorities 08:55 - Balancing ethics in your organization 09:50 - Are product principles a solution? 11:30 - No regulations in tech 14:25 - Discrimination on Twitter Books links: Technically Wrong Rui...
Jul 19, 2021•17 min•Transcript available on Metacast Christian recently read the book "The One Thing" which reminded him how important it is to focus only on one thing. Together with Alex, they've discussed the key learning of the book and how to apply it to your day-to-day product life. Table of content: 00:30 - Intro 01:15 - Multi-tasking & context switching 05:50 - Identifying your own one thing 08:05 - Focusing on only one thing 09:30 - Tips to get started Book link: The One Thing ✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩ ...
Jul 08, 2021•11 min•Ep 65•Transcript available on Metacast The Product Bakers touched a couple of times on the topic of case studies as part of the hiring process. Alex has a very strong opinion when it comes to overall candidate experience. Therefore, they've decided to dedicate this episode to talk about the downsides of case studies and why it makes good candidates not start working for your company. Table of content: 00:30 - Small talk 01:30 - The downsides of case studies 05:40 - Understanding how candidates think 07:50 - Why compa...
Jul 01, 2021•16 min•Ep 64•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode, the Product Bakers discussed their experiences around structuring organizations in hyper-growth and what mistakes leadership teams should avoid doing. Table of content: 00:30 - Intro episode 02:40 - Basics to structure an organization 04:40 - The Spotify model 06:45 - Why copying models don't work 08:35 - Taking a look at the company culture 10:25 - Mistakes to avoid 11:15 - Autonomy vs. anarchy 16:05 - Summary Article & book recommendations: https://www.christi...
Jun 24, 2021•18 min•Transcript available on Metacast Jill is a strategic and visionary ex-Experience Director with over 12 years of experience. She currently works for Bain & Company as one of their most senior Designers in EMEA. Throughout her career, she has led and helped international companies and start-ups to innovate, to instill a human-centric design approach, and to grow. She designs interactions at the intersection of people, products, and environments, and brings out incremental and revolutionary changes for the people she designs f...
Jun 17, 2021•39 min•Transcript available on Metacast Biases are part of human nature. In this episode, Alex discussed with Christian the importance of understanding and identifying your own bias. 👉 Episode feedback survey ✍️ Table of content: 00:30 - Intro & small talk 02:10 - Asking biased question during interviews 04:10 - Common "biased" mistakes 05:50 - Stereotypes 07:05 - Being over-excited 09:25 - Disproving your biased opinion 11:50 - Understanding the most relevant biases Article about biases: ht...
Jun 11, 2021•15 min•Transcript available on Metacast I don't care who does the work; I do care that we solve the problem! That was one of the great quotes from Jonathon talking about what content design is and why it's so important to think about it. In this episode, the Product Bakers and Jonathon discussed how to establish content design in a company and what positive impact it has on the UX and success of a product/business. 👉 Episode feedback survey ✍️ Table of content: 00:30 - Episode Summary 01:40 - Intro Jonathon 02:55 - The d...
Jun 03, 2021•44 min•Transcript available on Metacast Based on questions from the community and general observations the Product Bakers decided to talk about how to land a job in product. They focused on topics such as searching for a job, preparing for an interview, as well as some dos and don'ts for the CV. Table of content: 00:30 - Small talk & intro 03:30 - Applying as junior vs. senior 04:15 - What makes a good CV stand out (and why) 09:25 - 1 to 5 ratings in CVs (spoiler: NO GO!) 13:20 - Mocked interviews & alternat...
May 31, 2021•21 min•Transcript available on Metacast Starting a new job as a Product Manager can be very challenging. Especially, if you don't have a mentor a someone who guides you through the process of becoming a PM. Shaun Russell made it to his mission to support people on that journey as a product coach. In this episode, the Product Bakers and Shaun discussed the challenges people are facing when starting a new PM position and how to overcome them. 👉 Episode feedback survey ✍️ Table of content: 00:30 - Episode Intro 02:30 ...
May 27, 2021•40 min•Ep 55•Transcript available on Metacast Nacho works for more than 12 years in Product Management. One of his key takeaways after more than a decade was, that the product strategy is the most undervalued tool to make a product company successful. He decided to structure and share all his knowledge in his recently launched book: Product Direction. In this episode, the Product Bakers and Nacho make a deep dive into how to define a product strategy and how to communicate and share it with the whole company to get full buy-in. 👉 Epi...
May 20, 2021•41 min•Transcript available on Metacast This time the Product Bakers picked up a frequently asked question from the community and talked about the agile frameworks Scrum and Kanban. Christian highlighted the differences and gave some tips on what framework you can get started with. Table of content: 00:30 - Episode intro 02:10 - Agile frameworks 03:35 - Scrum vs. Kanban 04:35 - Agile = not changing the plan all the time 07:25 - Velocity vs. throughput 09:00 - Planning & estimating 10:45 - Getting started with scrum 12...
May 17, 2021•14 min•Transcript available on Metacast Richard and Ben both love working with people and startups. It became their mission to help people with great ideas and minor to no technical knowledge to make their dreams come true. However, not every business idea is necessarily a good idea. Therefore they support founder teams with everything they need from product discovery, building the product to shipping it to their future customers. In this episode they've talked about the importance and the process of validating business ideas, setting...
May 13, 2021•48 min•Transcript available on Metacast After another dinner, the Product Bakers decided to do another product review. This they took a deeper look at Atlassian's product JIRA and how to set it up in the right way. 👉 Episode feedback survey ✍️ Table of content: 00:30 - Small talk 03:25 - Love it or hate it 06:10 - JIRA & working agile 07:00 - JIRA classic & its terrible UX 11:00 - Defining workflows and projects for success & scale 14:15 - Who should manage & own JIRA? 16:00 - Cross-team collaboration & repo...
May 10, 2021•21 min•Ep 51•Transcript available on Metacast The Product Bakers talked the first time to another Product Manager & Design "couple." Yoav (PM) and Tudor (PD) share their experience about working together on projects and how they split responsibilities and maintaining a trustful relationship. In this episode, they've caught up on topics such as design review, prioritization, and design sprints. 👉 Episode feedback survey ✍️ Table of content: 00:30 - Episode summary 02:35 - Intro Yoav & Tudor 05:00 - Their day...
May 06, 2021•41 min•Transcript available on Metacast During dinner, Alex and Christian had a discussion about personas and the common mistakes people do while working with them. They decided to continue this conversation in this episode and dive a bit deeper into the whole world of personas. 👉 Episode feedback survey ✍️ Table of content: 00:30 - Are personas the right way? 04:00 - Slicing personas instead of working with one 06:00 - Jobs to be done 07:30 - Understanding customer problems instead of assuming 13:10 - User vs. persona ...
May 03, 2021•16 min•Transcript available on Metacast Varya started her career as a Frontend Developer and was always passionate and engaged in working with design & frontend components before design systems were invented. At some point, she decided to use her knowledge and focusing on helping companies and the community on building design systems in the right way and understand the value. In this episode, Varya talks about how to manage a design project in the most structured way and how to convince senior leadership teams of its value based o...
Apr 28, 2021•36 min•Transcript available on Metacast Alex talked to Christian about his past experiences working with Designers. Christian shared his story about how he developed a good eye and understanding of UI and UX. Table of content: 00:30 - Small talk 01:45 - Christian's design history 06:20 - Working together with a Designer 07:50 - How design skills help Product Managers 08:20 - Keeping an open & honest relationship ✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩ 👨💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery &n...
Apr 26, 2021•11 min•Transcript available on Metacast 
