Daniel & Robert working at ready2order as Director of Product and Talent Acquisition Lead. They both have the mission to build an amazing product with great people. Daniel is on board for more than 5 years and Robert joined 7 months ago to streamline hiring processes for all departments and especially Product Management & Design. In this episode, they share how they defined and implemented a new hiring strategy to find the right people at the right time. Table of content: 00:30 - E...
Apr 22, 2021•44 min•Transcript available on Metacast In the second part of the coaching vs. managing series, Alex interview Christian about coaching practices as an external and unbiased coach. Christian talks about how to identify and define goals together with his coachees as well as deep-diving into asking good and the right questions. Table of content: 00:30 - Intro Alex 01:20 - Unbiased coaching 03:45 - Why product people call a coach 04:40 - Defining and working towards goals 07:15 - Asking the W's (who, what, by when) 08:55 - What are good ...
Apr 19, 2021•13 min•Ep 45•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode, Christian and Alex dive deep into the world of product market fit and the pivotal role that product marketing plays in its success. Joined by special guest Martina, an experienced product marketer, they explore the complexities of finding the right market for a product, the importance of trust and customer feedback, and the distinct roles of product management and product marketing. With insights from Silicon Valley Product Group and Martina's expertise, they discuss strateg...
Apr 15, 2021•46 min•Transcript available on Metacast Following up on the previous episode, Christian and Alex share what podcasting tools they use and how the process of creating an episode works. Next to that they followed up on their product review format and took a deeper look into the tool Descript.com . Table of content: 00:30 - Intro podcast tooling 01:55 - Anchor.fm for podcast distribution 02:00 - Zencastr.com for recording 03:35 - Adobe Audition for the raw cut 04:45 - Descript to finalize the episode 06:20 - Squarespace for o...
Apr 12, 2021•18 min•Transcript available on Metacast A while ago the Product Bakers have promised to talk about how they started the Product Bakery. In this episode, Alex and Christian share how they started this project and the processes they set up to manage themselves. Next to that, they talk about how they interate on the podcast format based on the feedback they get from their community. Table of content: 00:30 - Small talk 02:25 - Podcast Alex & Christian are listening to 05:50 - Product Bakery's problem statement 06:50 - Fro...
Apr 08, 2021•16 min•Transcript available on Metacast The product bakers decided to talk about coaching product managers & designers as a leader over two episodes. In this episode, Christian interviews Alex to talk about his experience of being a manager and coach at the same time. Alex shares his point of view of the thin line between managing people and working toward business goals vs. coaching, leading, and empowering people. Table of content: 00:30 - Intro Christian 01:15 - Coaching & managing people 04:00 - Different types of employee...
Apr 05, 2021•14 min•Transcript available on Metacast This is the first case study where the Product Bakers made a deep-dive into a real-world project with Product Lead Mathias Kluge. Mathias shared how he and his team identified churn reasons and the process of finding solutions. Besides reducing churn by over 40%, Mathias faced also many challenges and made a lot of learnings which are shares in this episode. Table of content: 00:30 - Intro Mathias Kluge (Matze) 03:05 - From Product Design to Product Management 03:55 - When to start ...
Apr 01, 2021•43 min•Transcript available on Metacast Christian was curious and asked Alex what the key things are he takes care of in his first days as a fresh leader joining a new company. They touched upon the topic of strategy, tooling, and getting to know the leadership team and staff. Table of content: 00:30 - Intro Christian 01:40 - What to look at when you apply for a new leadership role 04:30 - Getting to know the leadership team & your staff 07:00 - Reviewing the strategy & understanding decisions 10:05 - Alining on tools &...
Mar 29, 2021•15 min•Ep 39•Transcript available on Metacast Josh Seiden is a designer, strategy consultant, coach, and author. He started his career in the early 90s. Since then a lot of things have changed. That's why Josh decided to write and share his experience, and latest observations in amazing books such as "Lean UX" or "Outcomes over Output." In this episode, Josh discusses with the Product Bakers everything about Lean UX and how to work with hypotheses and problem statements. They've also touched upon the topic of lean experimentation to validat...
Mar 25, 2021•38 min•Ep 38•Transcript available on Metacast This week Alex picked up the topic of prioritizing and saying no to stakeholders and customers. Christian explains in this episode where to start before you make a decision (saying no) and how to say no in the right way. Table of content: 00:30 - Intro by Alex 03:10 - Self-awareness and doing your homework first 05:20 - Prioritizing against OKRs & company goals 07:15 - Balancing operational and research work 12:00 - Explain why you say no to people ✩ Follow The Product Bakery P...
Mar 22, 2021•13 min•Transcript available on Metacast With many years of experience in product management, data, and analytics Ben Yoskovitz joined the Product Bakery to have a conversation about these topics. As a founding partner of Highline BETA a venture studio and venture capital firm, he looks a lot into data and analytics of companies to support business ideas and startups. In this episode, the product bakers discussed the basics of defining good metrics & KPIs as well as the history and future trends of data-driven work and mindse...
Mar 18, 2021•44 min•Transcript available on Metacast The topic of user story mapping has been discussed many times recently. In this episode, the product bakers focused on the counterpart: customer journey mapping. Alex shares his experience and discussed with Christian when and how you should start working with a customer journey map. As always, Christian also tried to better understand how you can combine customer journey and user story mapping. Table of content: 00:30 - Intro by Christian 01:10 - What is customer journey mapping about? 0...
Mar 14, 2021•16 min•Transcript available on Metacast This time Alex came up with "the top of mind topic" of in-house vs. consulting and agency product management. Together with Christian, they've discussed the different focus areas different parties have and what product people need to become for example a good consultant or coach. Table of content: 00:30 - Intro Alex 02:25 - Differences between in-house, coaching, and agencies 05:30 - When should I choose and do what? 07:55 - Training and educating people (coaching) 09:10 - Dee...
Mar 11, 2021•19 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode, Christian and Alex are discussing on top of their minds the topic of "double diamond." They quickly fall into topics of design thinking and process definition and shared some insights and refreshers on how to validate and deliver product ideas. Table of content: 00:30 - Podcast intro 01:35 - Double diamond and design thinking 04:20 - Setting up a double diamond process 06:05 - Research & delivery aren't linear processes 08:10 - Adjusting the process 09:25 ...
Mar 08, 2021•12 min•Transcript available on Metacast Empirical process control and understanding people were and are Andrea Tomasini's biggest passions. After starting his career as Engineer and leveling up to VP Engineering, Product, and CTO, he reached the point where he wanted to build his own agile organization. These days Andrea's agile consultancy agile42 operates in more than 13 countries across the globe, helping companies of all sizes to establish an agile mindset. Even the Product Bakers have been trained and coached by Andrea alre...
Mar 04, 2021•52 min•Ep 32•Transcript available on Metacast After studying psychology in the late '90s, Cindy started her product, research, and design career. She has lead many Product, Design, and Research Teams over the last decades. Next to that she wrote and published the book Lean Customer Development . Cindy speaks in this episode, about how to best do customer research. She shares very practical examples of how to understand customer problems without interviews, and best practices to understand what customers really want and need. One of he...
Feb 25, 2021•47 min•Ep 31•Transcript available on Metacast As a follow-up on the previous discussion about Design Operations, the Product Bakers invited Pete Fossick, who is a seasoned Design Director, Coach, Trainer, and co-founder of the DesignOps Network & conference to diving deeper into the topic. The whole conversation was around the history of design ops, how the role developed and evolved as well as its specific responsibilities. At the end of the conversation, they've discussed how to accelerate innovation with an operations team as w...
Feb 18, 2021•1 hr 5 min•Transcript available on Metacast From working in hospitality to building a Design community is a rare transition that Mindaugas Petruitis made. These days Mindaugas is focused on his design fellowship at On Deck (space between On and Deck) as Program Director for the Designer Fellowship. Endless conversations and networking with Product & Design People across the globe motivated and inspired him to come up with this fellowship. In this episode, the product bakers and Mindaugas look at the evolvement of design communities as...
Feb 11, 2021•49 min•Transcript available on Metacast Jim Semick works for more than 20 years in Product Management. About 8 years ago he was looking for the next big challenge in his life. He quit his full-time job with two kids and no clear business idea. What he had back then was a great and motivated co-founder as well as the vision to make Product Managers' lives easier. In this episode, Jim talks about the importance of having a clear vision of how to build a company with your co-founder before you even have a business idea. Next to tha...
Feb 04, 2021•35 min•Ep 28•Transcript available on Metacast This time Christian and Alex sat together to take a deeper look at backlog management. The goal was to clarify common misunderstandings such as who owns the backlog, who is supposed to create tickets, what ticket types are the "right" ones, etc. Table of content: 2:25 - Frequently asked backlog questions 3:15 - Leonardo Davinci & backlog management 6:00 - Basics of epics & user stories 12:40 - Who should write tickets? 14:25 - Empowering teams to work on the backlog 19:00 - ...
Feb 01, 2021•26 min•Transcript available on Metacast Rich Mironov works for more than +30 years in Product Management. Based on his experience as an Independent Product Consultant & Coach with more than 150 clients he shares his thoughts and observations of Product Teams in B2B enterprise. In this episode, he talked to the Product Bakers about how to work as a Product Leader with executives, as well as the topic of negotiating and managing stakeholders and incoming requests. Table of content: 0:28 - Intro 5:45 - Organi...
Jan 28, 2021•54 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode, Alex and Christian discuss the new beta social media clubhouse and its future. Table of content: 1:53 - The clubhouse trend coming to Germany 3:19 - FOMO 4:51 - MVP Mindset 7:50 - The roadmap & snowball effects 10:05 - Clubhouse the next big social network? 12:15 - The trend of broadcasting 13:50 - What’s the problem statement? 17:50 - Clubhouse downsides & future Find clubhouse online: Website: https://www.joinclubhouse.com/ iOS App Store: https://a...
Jan 25, 2021•22 min•Transcript available on Metacast Luca Criscuolo studied initially environmental science and holds a Ph.D. in climate science. Next to all his work and research, he decided at some point to be closer connected to the real world and people building products. From that point on he started working in Product Management and moved his way up to several product leadership roles. With more than 14 years of Product Management experience, he's currently working at eBay as Head of Regional Product Europe. In this episode, Luca and the Pro...
Jan 21, 2021•1 hr 3 min•Ep 24•Transcript available on Metacast Ryan Sousa leads data innovation for Research, Hospital, and Foundation at Seattle Children’s. He is a senior leader, entrepreneur, and practitioner and brings more than 25 years of leadership experience in some of the biggest companies such as Amazon, Starbucks, Expedia, and Nokia as well as several successful startups. Next to all the companies that Ryan has seen, he clearly noticed one key factor that drives success and innovation in companies which is empowering people! Many companies focus ...
Jan 14, 2021•1 hr 3 min•Ep 23•Transcript available on Metacast " You learn the most from your mistakes, not your success. ", is a quote that Rory Madden would immediately sign! With more than 16 years of experience as a Consultant, Entrepreneur, and Business Analyst he has a lot of experiences to share. Rory founded two start-ups that failed, and one of the biggest learnings he made was to talk to customers as early as possible. Based on that learning, he founded the UXDC (User Experience & Developer Experience) Conference. The mission of the conf...
Jan 07, 2021•56 min•Ep 22•Transcript available on Metacast A long and exhausting year is over! Alex and Christian sat down together one last time in 2020 to wrap up a year of remote work and sharing some morning routine tips in times of home office to not only be productive but also to take care of your physical and mental health. The Product Bakers wish you all a happy new year's eve. Stay healthy, stay conscious. Happy new year! 🎉🥳🎊 PS: The next interview will be published on the 7th of January. Check out our website update: htt...
Dec 31, 2020•25 min•Ep 21•Transcript available on Metacast Could it be a better time to launch the 20th episode on Christmas?! 🎄 We want to thank all our listeners for the amazing support we've got, and wish everyone MERRY CHRISTMAS and happy holidays! In this episode, we're doing a little recap on what has happened this year as well as sharing the first outlook for 2021. Since the year is coming to an end we also talk about how we prioritize & set goals for the next year. This includes a deep-dive into self-organization, tooling, and a coupl...
Dec 24, 2020•25 min•Ep 20•Transcript available on Metacast Shruti is a design researcher and interaction designer. She leads the talented team of The Studio at Zalando in Berlin. At the time of recording this episode, she led the product design & user research team at N26. She has also worked in strategic design consulting with IDEO, user experience at Nokia, and with a few other places. Shruti’s goal has been to nurture effective collaboration between design, research, product management and engineering to deliver customer-focussed solutions – buil...
Dec 17, 2020•55 min•Transcript available on Metacast Branding plays a key role in every kind of business. Laura Busche's passion for marketing and brand strategy started in 2008. Since then she focused a lot on working and learning everything about brands until 2013 when she published her amazing book "Lean Branding" as part of the Lean Series from O'Reilly. Laura consulted Alex and Christian for almost one hour about building up the Product Bakery brand and community. She shared how to use a storyboard to define the brand values and target ...
Dec 10, 2020•53 min•Transcript available on Metacast Monica Lent is a passionate Software Engineer & Entrepreneur with more than 10 years of experience. Next to her first startup affilimate.com , she regularly launches new products, services, and communities such as blogginfordevs.com. Monica shares in this episode many practical tips and examples on how to build up your own community and the need for companies to move beyond acquiring customers and connecting closer to their audiences. Table of content: 0:30 - Intro Monica Lent 3...
Dec 03, 2020•1 hr 1 min•Transcript available on Metacast 
