One Knight in Product Avoiding the agency trap & ADHD in Product (with Janna Bastow, CEO ProdPad, co-founder Mind the Product)
Jan 6, 2021
Janna Bastow, CEO of ProdPad, talks about the perils of building features for clients, avoiding the agency trap, and the challenges of date-based roadmaps. She also discusses her recent ADHD diagnosis and how it impacts Product Management.
AI Snips
Chapters
Transcript
Episode notes
From Personal Pain To Product
- Janna built ProdPad initially to solve her own product management pain and hacked prototypes before meeting her co-founder Simon.
- They iterated from internal tool to public product, quitting jobs once traction justified full-time focus.
Why Time-Based Roadmaps Mislead
- Date-based, timeline roadmaps create false certainty and encourage commitments teams can't keep.
- A three-bucket horizon (now/next/later) aligns confidence and allows changing priorities without shame.
Ask Why Before Committing Dates
- When asked for dates, ask why and whether the date is externally driven or strategic.
- Reserve fixed dates for genuine constraints and keep most roadmap items horizon-based to protect discovery time.