Product Momentum Podcast

It’s ironic that companies comprised of teams that have embraced Agile methodologies can at the same time find themselves in search of organizational agility. With all the best intentions, proponents of Agile dutifully adhere to its prescribed set of principles. But then we suddenly find ourselves constrained by the same demons we had sought to escape. We seem to have lost our ability to experiment and learn, to adapt and grow, and to be resilient and flexible in the face of ambiguity. This is where Flow can come into play, Fin Goulding explains. In this 20th episode of the Product Momentum Podcast, Fin Goulding joins Sean and Paul as together they explore an increasing demand for a more business agile way of working. Through the evolving lens of Flow, Fin shares his insights based on a rich career as a C-level executive in large organizations, prolific author, and expert in the field of business and technical agility. Soft-spoken yet firm, he reminds us that, “agile is really a thing that you are; it’s not something that you buy.” Flow, he adds, helps us move away from a very rigid methodology into something that’s more of a philosophy, a way of being. Have a listen to find out how. The post 20 / Flow: Visualize the Possibilities appeared first on ITX Corp..

As organizations move inexorably to a team-based, agile methodology, how do individual contributors effectively demonstrate what they’re working on or what they’ve accomplished? If performance is measured based solely on the team’s deliverables, how do team leaders appropriately acknowledge each member’s contribution or target their professional development? Enter the notion of contributive design, as explained by Miguel Cardona. Contributive design fosters an environment in which team members collaborate as one, but also where they’re not necessarily dependent on others for their own outcomes. The involvement of each individual in the project is distinguishable, but not distinct. In this episode of ITX’s Product Momentum Podcast, hosts Sean and Paul welcome Miguel Cardona. He is a professor of design at Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) and an artist. He is also the keynote speaker at ITX’s 2nd annual ITX UX 2019: Beyond the Pixels design conference. Miguel introduces us to the notion of contributive design and its far-reaching impact. In the classroom, contributive tools help him evaluate the performance of project teams while isolating the contributions of each student. Contributive design applies with equal significance in the workplace as we consider the modular nature of teams, design systems, and the user experience. Read our blog post here The post 19 / The Significance of Contributive Design appeared first on ITX Corp..

We’ve been working together in teams forever, right? After all, humans are social creatures. So it only makes sense that we would come together, organize around common objectives, and apply our energies and intellect to solve problems and deliver outcomes that move our world forward. If that is so, why do so many organizations simultaneously implement dubious structures and practices that conflict with their pursuit of high-performing teams? The answers may be more obvious than they seem, Christina Wodtke explains. In this episode, Sean and Paul catch up with Christina Wodtke – professor, speaker, and author of Radical Focus – to discuss techniques that help organizations create and sustain high-performing teams. Christina has admittedly made a career out of stating the unstated, exposing the proverbial elephant in the room. Whether it’s questioning the value of meetings and status reports or how companies conduct their hiring practices and performance reviews, Christina unabashedly critiques the ways in which those same organizations treat their most important asset – and in the same breath offers remedies that address them. Listen to the full episode to hear more from Christina, including: The role of managers on so-called “autonomous” teams Shaping and constantly re-evaluating rules of engagement for your team Creating psychological safety in a variety of environments The post 18 / Simple Steps to Achieve High Performance appeared first on ITX Corp..

Product people get excited about solving problems that make users’ lives better. On that we can all agree. It’s the approach through which we choose to achieve that goal where differences arise. Sometimes the differences are more clear – Agile vs. Waterfall, for example. On other occasions, the difference is less obvious. Take user-centered vs. human-centered design. On their face, they seem synonymous; after all, users are human. But as we’ll hear from Kim Goodwin, the difference between them is more than a mere distinction. In this episode, hosts Sean and podcast newcomer Paul Gebel welcome Kim Goodwin, author, consultant, and a featured keynote speaker at ITX’s 2nd annual ITX UX 2019: Beyond the Pixels design conference. Paul is a new host for the show and a Senior Product Management at ITX. Kim discusses the power of human-centered design, in which product people must draw ever closer to those most familiar with the problems they face every day. It is those most familiar with the problems our product aims to solve, she says, who hold the key to their solutions. If we are to create products that solve those problems, we need to think in terms of meeting human needs. Read our blog post. The post 17 / Human-Centered Design appeared first on ITX Corp..

Imagine a world in which we drop the labels that segregate us as Lean, as Agile, as Waterfall, as Design Thinkers. Instead, imagine a world where we build the kinds of organizations and cultures that encourage and reward learning and customer centricity, that incentivize teams to deeply understand their customers, and that ensure that we’re always delivering value on their behalf. This is organizational agility as Jeff Gothelf describes it. In this episode, hosts Sean and Joe chat with Jeff Gothelf. He is an author, coach, consultant, and featured keynote speaker at ITX’s 2nd annual ITXUX2019: Beyond the Pixels conference. As you listen to the podcast, it’s clear that Jeff is focused on helping teams build healthy collaborations that deliver products and services that customers love, rather than holding fast to a philosophy that may yield less-than-optimal results. The world Jeff hopes for may not be the one he predicts will come to pass. But it’s a world that allows us to freely pick and choose the components and methodologies that work best.  “Our job [as product builders] is to meet them there. Understand their specific challenges, embrace the problem to be solved, the job to be done.” Read our blog post here. The post 16 / Developing Organizational Agility appeared first on ITX Corp..

Software product development is hard enough. It’s harder still when our investment of resources is based on a set of untested assumptions. The probability that we perfectly address each of the hundreds or thousands (millions?) of assumptions, hypotheses, and decisions is super low. Once we get comfortable with the idea that many of our assumptions are wrong, we can embrace the uncertainty and engage the anxiety that comes from it, says Dan Olsen. In this episode, Sean and Joe chat with Dan Olsen, Silicon Valley-based consultant, author, speaker, and proponent of the Lean Startup approach to software product development. He also hosts the Lean Product & Lean UX Meetup – a monthly gathering of nearly 8,000 members who come together to learn from industry experts and one another about product management, UX design, Lean Startup, growth hacking, and Agile development principles. Dan reminds us that the surest way to eliminate anxiety is to confront its causes. Articulate your hypotheses and test them. Whatever the outcome, the evidence you gather from user testing will boost your confidence and increase product-market fit as your anxiety fades. Dan’s unique insights on product-market fit – a perspective that serves as a melting pot where all the best ideas come together – are sure to be useful to you no matter your role or the product you work on. Read the full blog post here. The post 15 / Test Assumptions to Achieve Product-Market Fit appeared first on ITX Corp..

The common understanding is that to be successful in today’s digital environment designers need to solve problems while building products that people want and need to use. While that may be the core of it, it’s only the core. There’s so much more to it these days, Tim Wood explains. When we talk about interaction design, today’s rapidly emerging next-gen experiences, and the future of product design, designers now need to think about what it means to learn, to adapt, and to change. In this episode, Sean and Joe chat with Tim Wood, a designer with over 20 years of experience in the software and electronics spaces. Tim wears a couple of hats, one being a Professor of Industrial Design and Interactive Design at Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT), and the other as Design and User Experience Innovation Lead at Corning Inc. Playing in both sandboxes gives Tim the opportunity to engage in the private sector while peering beyond the horizon, to the future of product design, through the lens of higher education. His ability to draw conclusions relating to design from a variety of fields sets him apart, and you are sure to learn a lot from him in this episode. Read our blog post here The post 14 / Taking Design Beyond Today’s Conventions appeared first on ITX Corp..

Product people possess the creative and ethical wherewithal to persuade users to behave in ways that materially improve their lives – using our powers for good. The secret is to understand that, if we want to connect our product’s use to a repetitive consumer habit, we must identify the internal trigger that drives consumer behavior. Understanding this crucial piece can explain how software products become so habit forming, Nir Eyal explains. In this episode, Sean and Joe chat with Nir Eyal, a keynote speaker at ITX’s Product Momentum: Beyond the Features product conference (June 19-21), whose work on Behavioral Design has brought him and us to the intersection of psychology, technology, and business. The goal of his work is to help product people design the products and services that consumers want to use and that drive positive, habit-forming behaviors. Nir combines a gift for observation with an uncanny awareness to convert life experiences into problem statements that ultimately lead to research, learning, and discovery. Listen to this episode to hear more from Nir about: The rationale behind his two books, Hooked and Indistractable How human tendencies play into habit and distraction How to ensure your product is creating a positive impact in the world Read our blog post here The post 13 / Product Design Driving Positive Behaviors appeared first on ITX Corp..

When you’re building software products, do you think only about adding features? Or do you think in terms of hiring your software products to solve a problem you have? Context is critical. Product managers should consider new products – and their features – in the same way they would new employees, Mike Belsito says. What problems am I hiring them to solve? What will be my return on investment? In this episode, Sean and Joe chat with Mike Belsito, a startup product and business developer with a rich background in creating big, important things out of nothing. In 2014, Mike co-founded Product Collective, now a 20,000-member community of like-minded product people. He conceived the idea to help folks like himself navigate this untamed wilderness called product management. Out of this product community, Mike spawned INDUSTRY a conference in just its fifth year and it’s already one of the largest product management summits anywhere in the world. Mike describes how him and his team, as product people, have grown and improved Product Collective and INDUSTRY. Listen to hear how they apply product management processes like the Jobs-to-be-Done (JTBD) framework, qualitative feedback, and metrics to their community and conference. Read our blog post here The post 12 / Treating Your Product Community Like a Product appeared first on ITX Corp..

Design sprints introduce experimentation and the scientific method to the world of digital product development. Like experimentation, the process is not about success or failure. It’s really about validation, getting quickly to the point of success or failure with considerably less investment of time, resources, and money, and Jonathan Courtney knows this from experience. In this episode, hosts Sean and Joe catch up with Jonathan Courtney, co-founder and CEO of AJ&Smart. AJ&Smart is a 21-person product studio in Berlin, Germany that has facilitated more than 200 design sprints since 2016, with Jonathan being involved in about 100 of these. A product designer by training and trade, he commands attention through the engaging, humorous, and impassioned way he talks about using the design sprint process to help companies that struggle with defining their product goals. In fact, sometimes a design sprint is about deciding that the product shouldn’t go to market, and that’s okay. Listen to this episode to hear from Jonathan about: Exercises you can add to your sprints to make them run more efficiently How to identify what does – and doesn’t – warrant a design sprint Differences between the North American and European product and design landscapes Read our blog post here The post 11 / Validating Products Through Design Sprints appeared first on ITX Corp..