Podcast appearances and mentions of bruce mccarthy

In this episode of the UX Consultants Lounge, host Kyle Soucy speaks with Tamara Adlin, owner of Adlin, Inc., a consultancy specializing in helping early-stage startups and larger companies with product alignment and redesigns. They discuss her impressive career journey and her profound impact on the field of UX consulting. Tamara shares her experiences transitioning from a corporate role at Amazon to establishing her own consultancy, along with the lessons learned from a brief stint co-creating an agency.Key Topics Discussed:Challenges and Rewards of Specializing: Insights into the implications of specializing in early-stage startups and how it shapes business prospects and networking.Her Quick Hit Process: Tamara introduces her unique approach to initial client engagements, distinguishing it from typical assessments and emphasizing the importance of alignment before design.Women in Tech: Tamara provides candid advice for female consultants navigating the tech landscape, underscoring the necessity of advocating for proper titles and compensation.Career Coaching and Support: Tamara discusses her commitment to mentoring and coaching. She talks about the importance of having open conversations about career advancement and salary negotiations, highlighting her involvement with the "Never Search Alone" network to support job seekers.New Ventures: Discussion on Tamara's latest podcast, "Corporate Underpants," which delves into how internal politics affect digital products. She also hints at her upcoming book, Align Before Design.Connect with Us:Host: Kyle Soucy | Usable Interface (https://usableinterface.com/)Guest: Tamara Adlin | Adlin, Inc. (https://www.adlininc.com/)- - - - -Links and Resources Mentioned:Corporate Underpants - Tamara's Podcast: https://www.adlininc.com/underpantsAlign Before Design - Updates on Tamara's New Book: https://www.adlininc.com/align-before-designTamara's Article about Being an Experienced Woman in Tech - https://medium.com/@tamaraadlin/elation-deflation-the-reality-responsibility-of-being-an-experienced-woman-in-tech-92deb07bd358Never Search Alone: https://www.phyl.org/Taking the Work Out of Networking: https://karenwickre.com/book/Aligned by Bruce McCarthy and Melissa Appel: https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/aligned/9781098134419/Submit a question or story: Have a question or topic that you'd like us to cover in a future episode and/or want to share an anonymous consulting story? Submit your questions and stories. Don't want to miss an episode? Be sure to sign up for the podcast newsletter.Thanks for tuning in! Don't forget to subscribe and leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast platform. I can't wait to have you back in the lounge for our next episode!

Bruce McCarthy is a renowned product leader at Product Culture, the organization he founded in 2018. He's also the author of two books: Aligned (2024) and Product Roadmaps Relaunched (2018). Bruce sat down with the Product Momentum team for an in-person chat on the heels of his INDUSTRY Global keynote; our conversation focused on – … The post 156 / Bruce McCarthy: Prioritizing Stakeholder Objectives Is the Hardest Job in Product appeared first on ITX Corp..

How do you build trust and alignment with stakeholders to ensure product success?  In this episode of the Pragmatic Product Chat Series, we're joined by Bruce McCarthy, renowned product management expert and author, to explore the often-overlooked art of stakeholder management. Drawing insights from his latest book Aligned: Stakeholder Management for Product Leaders, Bruce emphasizes that product management isn't just about creating roadmaps and specs—it's about fostering collaboration, building trust, and managing expectations across teams.  Bruce introduces key concepts like "sharp skills"—the soft skills critical for stakeholder engagement—and the "stakeholder canvas," a practical tool for mapping stakeholders and understanding their motivations. From co-creating strategies to navigating difficult stakeholder relationships, Bruce offers actionable advice to help product managers elevate their collaboration and communication skills.  Tune in to learn how to manage stakeholders effectively and align teams around shared goals for better product outcomes.  For detailed takeaways, show notes, and more, visit: www.pragmaticinstitute.com/resources/podcasts  Pragmatic Institute is the global leader in Product, Data, and Design training and certification programs for working professionals. Learn more at www.pragmaticinstitute.com. 

Have you ever wished you had one book to learn from early in your career, and avoid many mistakes? We found one of those for product professionals, and this episode is all about that!“Aligned: Stakeholder Management for Product Leaders” by Bruce McCarthy and Melissa Appel is a must read for every product person. It will help you understand the intricacies of stakeholder management, and put into action a plan to build a healthy relationship with your stakeholders, one that you need to nurture and grow in order to be successful in your job.On our first episode of 2025 we had the pleasure to meet with Bruce, Founder at Product Culture, and Melissa, Executive Product Management Coach at Product Culture, co-authors of the book.In the episode, Bruce and Melissa shared with us how they each got to Product Management and eventually to write Aligned, who the book is for, how they approached writing it, and so much more!Join Matt and Moshe as they learn from Bruce and Melissa:The challenges product people have with stakeholders, such as saying no, cultural and language differences, remote environments, etcTools to establish rapport with stakeholders, such as socializing, 1-on-1s, discovery interviews, mirroring, etcThe biggest thing that will help you grow your career in productHow to get stakeholders involved in ways that will get their buy-insThe book's structure, weaved into it a story with examples on how to use the listed toolsSome of the tools in the book, such as the Stakeholders CanvasCan stakeholders benefit from reading the book?Tools they love using as product professionalsAnd so much more…Connect with Bruce and Melissa:Bruce's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brucemccarthy/ Melissa's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/melappel/ Aligned book's resources: Alignedthebook.com Product Culture: Productculture.com Connect with Matt and Moshe on LinkedIn:Matt Green: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattgreenanalytics Moshe Mikanovsky: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikanovsky Note: any views mentioned in the podcast are the sole views of our hosts and guests, and do not represent the products mentioned in any way.Please leave us a review and feedback ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

In this engaging podcast episode, David J Bland hosts Bruce McCarthy and Melissa Appel, who share their insights on product management, stakeholder alignment, and the journey of writing their new book, 'Aligned.' They discuss the challenges of managing stakeholders, the importance of face-to-face communication, and the iterative process of testing ideas and content for their book. The conversation also dives into marketing strategies post-publication and the exploration of new audiences and formats to enhance the book's impact.

Send us a textIn this episode of UX Leadership by Design, Mark Baldino and Bruce McCarthy discuss the challenges and solutions around stakeholder alignment in product management. Bruce highlights the importance of bridging communication gaps across departments to achieve unified goals and emphasizes the role of empathy, strategic prioritization, and effective stakeholder management in driving organizational success. He also touches on methods for identifying influential stakeholders, leveraging trust, and fostering cross-functional collaboration for product teams, especially in remote settings. Drawing from his book Aligned: Stakeholder Management for Product Leaders, Bruce provides actionable strategies for navigating the complexities of building consensus and aligning teams with the organization's overall mission.KEY TAKEAWAYSUnderstanding and Aligning with Key Stakeholders: Successful product leaders prioritize stakeholder alignment, actively engaging across teams to achieve cohesive objectives that serve the organization's mission.The Role of Empathy in Collaboration: Effective alignment requires empathy, listening to stakeholders' perspectives, and validating their challenges to build a foundation of trust and cooperation.Focusing on Value Creation: Product teams must balance user needs with market demands by identifying and prioritizing solutions that drive real value for both customers and business.Proactive Communication Strategies: Building trust and clarity within cross-functional teams is essential, especially in remote environments; proactively reaching out to influential figures strengthens alignment.Defining and Mapping Organizational Influence: Identifying informal power players within an organization can be more effective than relying on an org chart, allowing product leaders to foster essential alliances.Leveraging Remote Tools for Connection: In a virtual setup, choosing high-bandwidth communication (like video) and maintaining consistent, high-touch engagement with stakeholders enhances team synergy.Using Vulnerability to Drive Authentic Relationships: Showing vulnerability and a willingness to ask for help or clarification can build stronger relationships, ultimately promoting an aligned and transparent culture.CHAPTERS00:00 Introduction to Bruce McCarthy and His Journey01:51 Identifying the Tipping Point for Product Culture03:50 Understanding Alignment and Misalignment in Organizations07:57 Challenges in Product and Design Teams12:08 Building Cross-Functional Relationships15:59 Navigating Organizational Dynamics20:05 Strategies for Remote Collaboration24:10 The Role of Vulnerability in Leadership28:00 Aligning Product and UX Teams31:59 Resources for Further LearningLINKS:Connect with Bruce on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brucemccarthy/Aligned: Stakeholder Management for Product Leaders: https://www.alignedthebook.com/Product Culture Website: https://www.productculture.org  Connect with Mark on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markbaldino/ Fuzzy Math - B2B & Enterprise UX Design Consultancy: https://fuzzymath.com/

My guests today are Itamar Gilad and Bruce McCarthy.Itamar is a former product leader for Gmail, Youtube, and Microsoft - and is the author of the bestselling book Evidence Guided.Itamar's latest book is about creating high-impact products in the face of uncertainty, and he also has some strong views on roadmaps, roadmapping, common traps to avoid, and what to consider instead.But so does Bruce!Bruce is the author of the book Product Roadmaps Relaunched and, most recently, the book Aligned - a deep dive into stakeholder management for product leaders.The question is: do Itamar and Bruce agree on what a great roadmap looks like? Whether we need them at all?You'll have to listen to find outAll I can say is: this was such a beautiful conversation, with two giants discussing their points of view and talking highly of each other's work. Loved it, and I'm sure you will too.We covered:* The purpose of roadmaps* The dangers of output-based roadmaps and practical tips to avoid them* When to have dates on roadmaps* How to craft an outcome-based roadmap* Techniques to use instead of roadmaps* How to use OKRs and roadmaps* Deep dive on Itamar's framework GIST* And so much 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

In this insightful episode of Rocketship.fm, host Mike Belsito sits down with Bruce McCarthy and Melissa Appel, co-authors of "Aligned: Stakeholder Management for Product Leaders." The conversation delves into the often challenging world of stakeholder management, offering practical advice for product managers and leaders looking to navigate complex organizational dynamics. Throughout the episode, McCarthy and Appel share valuable strategies from their book, covering topics such as understanding organizational structures, building rapport with stakeholders, and managing roadmap changes. They emphasize the importance of treating stakeholders as individuals, aligning goals, and fostering trust through effective communication and collaboration. This episode provides listeners with actionable insights to enhance their stakeholder management skills and drive product success. This episode is sponsored by: Virtual Edition of INDUSTRY: The Product Conference: Join hundreds of Product Managers and Product Leaders from all around the world for a day-long virtual conference experience -- including keynote sessions, interactive discussions, virtual networking and more. Purchase your pass before September 15th, and you can register for just $99 (saving 50% off of the day of show rate). Gigantic: Upskill your team with real-world, practical video-based training on topics like Product Strategy, Product Leadership, AI for Product Managers, and more. Rocketship.FM is brought to you by Evergreen Podcasts.

My guest today is someone special to me: Bruce McCarthy.Bruce has probably seen and helped more companies with product roadmaps than anyone in the world.He's the author of the best-selling book "Product Roadmaps Relaunched" and has just launched his new book Aligned: Stakeholder Management for Product Leaders.Bruce and I met in Madrid a couple of years ago. Our first 1:1 was over breakfast, where we talked about different things - including the new book he was writing at the time.I knew immediately that it would be a very relevant book for many folks...  And as Lenny Rachitsky puts it now in his review, this book is "Your guide to building exceptional stakeholder relationships".This episode is a mini-masterclass on how to manage stakeholders and how to foster alignment in your organization.We discussed:* Why OKRs and Roadmaps are great tools to drive alignment - and how to do them well* Real case examples and lessons learned on how to align stakeholders* The importance of having collective outcomes and cross-functional collaboration* Practical tips and habits for succeeding with stakeholder management* Mental models, frameworks, and practices for effective decision making* Why org charts tell us very little about who makes decisions* 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

Alignment is one of the hardest challenges of strategy. Conflictive goals, every department fighting for their priority, opposed world views and interpretations of how the future will unfold… Luckily, Bruce McCarthy is an expert on the topic, and in this episode, he shares many tactics and tips on how to surface these conversations, use the right artifacts, and create alignment. Resources New Book: Aligned ProductCulture.org Follow Bruce on Linkedin / X

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

Global Product Management Talk is pleased to bring you the next episode of... Product Mastery Now with host Chad McAllister, PhD. The podcast is all about helping people involved in innovation and managing products become more successful, grow their careers, and STANDOUT from their peers. About the Episode:  Today we are talking about the need for product leaders to manage stakeholders and the associated challenges this creates. Aligning the perspectives of stakeholders on a product project is desirable as well as difficult. Helping us with this difficult task is Bruce McCarthy. Previously, Bruce joined us for a three-part series on creating and using product roadmaps. He is the co-author of the book Product Roadmaps Relaunched: How to Set Direction While Embracing Uncertainty. He is currently working on a new book project, co-authoring Aligned: Stakeholder Management for Product Leaders. He is also the co-founder of Product Culture—one of his customers said about Bruce, “Coach, trusted advisor, organizational therapist—like me, you'll probably hire Bruce because of his experience in product management or his skills as an Agile coach.” What a great quote.

How product managers can align stakeholders on product projects Today we are talking about the need for product leaders to manage stakeholders and the associated challenges this creates. Aligning the perspectives of stakeholders on a product project is desirable as well as difficult. Helping us with this difficult task is Bruce McCarthy. Previously, Bruce joined […]

Comedians share crazy road stories from across the US. Featuring standup by Funky Sam Medina, Margaret Dodge, Belinda Carroll, French Accent, and Bruce McCarthy. Hosted by Wild Jo, Carol Newell, and emcee Mista See. 

This week, the Xagility podcast has the pleasure of welcoming the amazing Bruce McCarthy. Bruce has authored Product Manager versus Project Manager and co-authored Product Roadmaps Reloaded: how to set direction while embracing uncertainty along with C Todd Lombardo, Evan Ryan, and Michael Connors. In this episode, Bruce and John discuss the definition of product, product vs project management, probabilistic forecasting, and the importance of using roadmaps right. Bruce McCarthy's linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brucemccarthy/ --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/xagility/message

This week, the Xagility podcast has the pleasure of welcoming the amazing Bruce McCarthy. Bruce has authored Product Manager versus Project Manager and co-authored Product Roadmaps Reloaded: how to set direction while embracing uncertainty along with C Todd Lombardo, Evan Ryan, and Michael Connors. In this episode, Bruce and John discuss the definition of product, product vs project management, probabilistic forecasting, and the importance of using roadmaps right. Bruce McCarthy's linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brucemccarthy/ --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/xagility/message

In this session, Bruce will walk you through the cultures and practices of these organisations and help you think about how to tackle the big, scary challenges in your organisation with a few examples where the right vision, team, and plan have led to winning formulas. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/business-of-software/message

Comics from around the country take a break from their tours to talk to Dive Bar Comedy about the state of standup. Featuring comedians Bruce McCarthy, Phil Johnson, Heather Dragulescu, No Filter Paul, Loren Ackerman, and David Burger. Hosted by Wild Jo, Carol Newell and emcee Mista See.

Comedians Shaggy Durai, Casey McNeal, Bruce McCarthy, Andy Tillinghast, and Bella Rose live stream from California, Hawaii, Illinois, and India. Interviews and introductions by hosts Wild Jo, Mista See, and Carol Newell. Follow comics on Instagram for showtimes and jokes. Join us in Los Angeles for live standup comedy shows.

Post pandemic comics re-enter society with long hair, long beards, and an even longer list of complaints. Featuring standup by Dave Carter, Bruce McCarthy, Scott Kidd, Shaggy Durai, and Mike Muratore. Hosted by Wild Jo, Carol Newell, and emcee Mista See.

From spanking ass to eating ass, this episode starts with a dominatrix and gets raunchier from there. Featuring standup performers Mistress K, Henry Garcia, Bruce McCarthy, Tommy Lucero, and Jacob Hågensen. Hosted by Wild Jo and Mista See.

Getting to know your customer’s pains is one of the biggest challenges of building enterprise software. Joining me to take a deep dive into this topic is my good friend and return guest, C. Todd Lombardo.   As the VP of Product & Experience at Openly, an insurance-tech startup, C. Todd is a seasoned product leader in the B2B space with a ton of experience leading in-house product teams to success. He has also written two of my favorite product books: Product Roadmaps Relaunched: How to Set Direction while Embracing Uncertainty, and, of course, his newest book, Product Research Rules: Nine Foundational Rules for Product Teams to Run Accurate Research that Delivers Actionable Insight.   In this episode, C. Todd and I discuss topics based on three of the nine product rules included in his newest book, Product Research Rules: 1) How to align your team/s on the right question/s to research 2) How to plan research in a B2B context & 3) Why it is essential to share your findings throughout the innovation process.   Episode Details: Product Research Rules with C. Todd Lombardo: “Start with the problem first; Don’t start with the solution or the technology.” — C. Todd Lombardo   About C. Todd Lombardo: Data nerd. Design geek. Product Fanatic. Product-guy who believes “product”​ is not the right fit for today's data-driven, experiential world. C. Todd focuses on building and mentoring teams in areas of user experience design, product management, and product strategy. Currently, he is the VP of Product & Experience at Openly, an insurance-tech startup.   In addition to leading in-house product teams to success, C. Todd has worked as a design and product strategy consultant for notable clients such as TripAdvisor, LogMeIn, Spotify, New York Times, BBVA, FedEx, Lowes, and Genentech. Additionally, he serves on the adjunct faculty at Madrid's IE Business School and Baltimore's Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA), where he teaches graduate-level courses in design, innovation, and data visualization.   Topics We Discuss in this Episode: Todd’s career background and experience in various product roles About his newest book, Product Research Rules: Nine Foundational Rules for Product Teams to Run Accurate Research that Delivers Actionable Insight What you need to know to build a product that solves the problem(s) of your customers or users How to conduct research to fully understand what the problem is that you’re trying to address with the product you are creating What some of the key product rules are and how you can leverage them to drive you and your team forward Key insights and examples on “Rule #3: Good insights start with a question.” How to align your team as a leader so they can discover the right questions to ask and research (and get the executive team, management, and stakeholders on board too) Examples of how to create solutions for problems your customers are actually having Key insights and examples on “Rule #4: Plans make research work.” How to access/communicate with your customers in a B2B environment The critical role that the product leader plays in enabling their team to feel empowered Key insights and examples on “Rule #8: Insights are best shared” The importance of good user experience and a good product that fills a need and isn’t just a solution in search of a problem   Product Leader Tip of the Week: When it comes to product research, you need to ask simple questions — then listen. The ability to ‘dig in’ and then know when to listen is crucial! Don’t wait to speak. Instead, listen to what somebody is saying and then respond.   And don’t forget: be humble if you’re wrong.   To Learn More About C. Todd Lombardo: Todd Lombardo’s LinkedIn Product Research Rules: Nine Foundational Rules for Product Teams to Run Accurate Research that Delivers Actionable Insight, by C. Todd Lombardo and Aras Bilgen Product Roadmaps Relaunched: How to Set Direction while Embracing Uncertainty, by C. Todd Lombardo, Bruce McCarthy, Evan Ryan, and Michael Connors Openly   Related Resources: Enterprise Product Leadership Episode 27: “How to Define a Clear IoT Vision” with C. Todd Lombardo  danielelizalde.com/Template — Download Daniel’s free IoT Product Strategy Template here!   Want to Learn More? Sign up for my newsletter at danielelizalde.com/Join for weekly advice and best practices directly to your inbox! Visit danielelizalde.com/Podcast for additional information, show notes, and episodes. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts so you don’t miss out on any of my conversations with product and thought leaders!  

Dive Bar Comedy welcomes back zany and talented comics Bruce McCarthy, Curt Seablom, Kristin Lundberg, Phil Johnson, Rishi Arya, and former clown Jon Deline. Hosted by Wild Jo, Carol Newell, and emcee Mista See.

Bruce's site:https://productculture.orgBruce's book:Product Roadmaps RelaunchedThe product Scorecard: https://walkerux.wordpress.com/2017/08/21/notes-on-bruce-mccarthys-prioritizing-product-goals/Transcript (powered by Otter.ai; please let me know about any discrepancies!)George Stocker  0:00  Hello, I'm George Stocker, and this is the build better software podcast. Today we're talking about product roadmaps with Bruce McCarthy. Bruce, welcome to the show.Bruce Mccarthy  0:09  Thanks, George. Nice to be here.George Stocker  0:11  Now for people who may not know who you are or what you do. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and your work?Bruce Mccarthy  0:17  Sure. The way I always introduce myself is I'm a Product guy. I've been a product manager, Chief Product officer, an engineering manager, a design manager, business development, guy marketing, sales. I've done all these different things, agile, enablement, and whatever. But I always come back to my roots as a product guy. I like building stuff. I like solving problems. I like getting the team together and working on Alright, how are we going to tackle this folks? How are we going to make things better for the customer and for the business? So I always kind of go back to that product leadership kind of role and these days For the past seven or eight years, I really been teaching and workshopping and coaching teams how to do that stuff. After a long career of being fairly successful at it myself, I felt like I had learned the ingredients and how they fit together properly. And so I do workshops, public ones that you can buy tickets to, and private ones for companies. And I have a forum for invitation only for Chief Product officers where we get together and workshop each other's challenges. And I do consulting and speaking at conferences and things like that. I also wrote a book that I think you've seen called product roadmaps relaunched, and how to set direction while embracing uncertainty came out from O'Reilly a couple years ago, and it's become kind of the standard, the standard book on product roadmapping.George Stocker  1:58  And you brought up solving problems from customers. And I'm glad you brought that up. Because at least in my career, when I've seen product roadmaps they have, well, we need these particular features at this particular time to grow. And you know, this particular outcome, and it was laid out in a calendar fashion with exactly what features the product team needed to build and what they needed to do. How does how you view a roadmap differ from that?Bruce Mccarthy  2:23  Well, I kind of think that that, in my mind, old fashioned view of a roadmap gets teams into trouble a lot. Number one, it gets them into trouble in terms of broken promises. They are constantly finding that their dates were over optimistic and so they're constantly feeling behind. Also, those kind of optimistic roadmaps don't take into account. stuff you got to do to keep the old things the things the features you shipped last year still working for clients and updated and free of killer p one bugs and so on. And it doesn't take into account shifting priorities because you might make up a roadmap at a point in time, say just before the sales kickoff in January of a given year. And it might go for a whole year or even longer. But your process as a product person of learning what's going on in the market doesn't stop an end there. Even if you've done a ton of research, and you think you know exactly what's right on January 10. of that year, on January 11. Someone's going to come to you with some new information. And you're going to be like, Huh, I wonder if that really should change our priorities? And maybe on January 11, you're not sure yet. But by February 10, you're probably like, Yeah, yep. You know, that thing we were thinking about for the end of the year. It no longer seems as important as this other thing that's just clearly becoming a theme among our customers, or you got to respond to competitive pressures. are new and unpredictable. So this idea of committing in advance to exactly what features we're building on what dates is kind of a doomed effort, because you're going to change your mind and you're going to find that some things take longer than you expected them to. So my approach to roadmaps is to admit that upfront, and to have a regular process of updating the roadmap every month or every quarter with the latest information, and to say upfront, this is not a commitment. In fact, our confidence in anything beyond this quarter is increasingly low. Some teams I work with actually publish a percentage of confidence on each item and the roadmap or each timeframe in the roadmap say quarters or something like that. That goes down to something like you know, four quarters out, it goes down to like, we're 20% confidence that that this is actually what we're going to be shipping at that point. time. But there's one more critical point that I really want to hit on aside from unpredictability. And that is that most roadmaps, forgetting just about the time commitments. They are, as you said, a list of features. There are a list of things we plan to ship changes we plan to make, and those commitments to features and changes and tweaks and redesigns or whatever, are made well in advance of actually opening up the code and digging into it, or testing the idea with customers or producing a design and seeing if it works. And those commitments are made really prematurely. If you've got a problem to solve and you think you've got a good idea for a feature to solve that problem for the customer, like make them more productive or, or something like that. You really can't know in advance whether That feature will effectively solve that problem or whether that feature is the best way to solve that problem. You can measure it after the fact. But what if it turns out that you were wrong? What if you ship feature x? Because you're sure that it's going to raise your conversion rate or your retention rate or something like that? And you find out, it doesn't actually do that at all, or it does it but not half as much as you need to meet your business goals. What are you going to do? You're going to go back to the drawing board and come up with another feature, or another idea. And if it's six months before you ship that, well, that's a really slow way to improve your business, right. So instead, the in the book I described a different way to approach the core content of a roadmap rather than being features. The core content tend to have a roadmap is problems, problems to solve or customer needs that are Currently unfulfilled or under fulfilled. And so, you know, you would actually put on the roadmap productivity, customer productivity or some more specific example like that like something you could measure, like increasing their outputGeorge Stocker  7:17  conversion rate for checkout or,Bruce Mccarthy  7:21  yeah, if it were an e commerce site, for example, that's a good example. For e commerce websites, one of their biggest bane of their existence is abandoned carts. People pick out a product, put it into their shopping cart, and then never check out. And it's hard to know why. But if let's say that was the problem you're trying to solve is low checkout rates or abandoned cart rates that are too high. Well, there are a variety of things that you might try to fix that problem. Maybe the problem is, your checkout process is too confusing. And so you might read design it. Or maybe it's too long, there's just too many steps and people get tired and they abandon partway through. Or maybe it's not the design at all, maybe you just don't accept the credit card they have in their pocket. And the real problem is you need to accept American Express as well as MasterCard and Visa, or Apple Pay or whatever. Or maybe the problem is that they don't find out about the shipping charges until late in the game, and the shipping charges are much higher than they expected. wherever they are, or maybe it it's, you know, the list goes on and on and on. And any one of those is a reasonable guess. And any one of those might have a small incremental effect on your conversion rate, your checkout rate. But rather than put all of those are some of those and try to guess ahead of time, which ones are really going to work on my roadmap. I'm just going to put increase the checkout rate or decrease the cart, abandon And then rate, and I'm going to have maybe a list of things to test. And that that list of things to test is not a commitment to features and dates. It's a commitment to solve the problem. And these are the things we're going to start trying and prototyping rather than shipping to see what actually makes a difference in simulated situations until we can figure out which of those 10 ideas that I just rattled off, maybe three of them are really highly leveraged, let's focus on them. Now, when I'm putting this item of improving the checkout rate, on the roadmap, it could be nine months before we even start the research process to figure out which of those 10 ideas is the right one. So why am I going to put any of them on the roadmap at this point? I just don't know. And it's foolish of me. It's misleading, kind of fooling myself and it's misleading my audience about my certainty about what's the right thing to do them Makes sense?George Stocker  10:01  It does. And what jumps to mind immediately is that leadership tends to be released from leaders that I've interacted with. It tends to be about projecting confidence and projecting certainty. But it sounds like your roadmap process focuses on accepting the uncertainty of product development. How do you get leaders? And how do you get product teams? We're used to the old way to adopt this way. Now, where you say, hey, the emperor has no clothes, and everybody can see it. Everybody knows it. Yeah. How do you help teams make that change?Bruce Mccarthy  10:37  Well, the thing that I see with with leaders is, they are used to extracting commitments from their people in order to get things done especially this is true and to a degree of executives at many, many companies, but it's particularly true at early stage companies that are founder led where they're used to To extracting commitments and what they call high integrity commitments, right? You've heard those words probably. And they really are going to hold you to those commitments because they're trying to do way too many things. They're trying to do it all on a shoestring and they're trying to bootstrap this thing. And it's generally worked for them to put the pressure on people, and you can't change that tendency to want to hold people accountable for for what they commit to in a personality like that, nor should you try because a it's doomed and B. That's what got companies from zero to one, you know, that's what got the that's what got these people into a position of authority in a company. And so let's go with that instead of trying to fight it and the way I go with that, is gradually to get there trust that I can be held accountable for results rather than Then for specific features and dates, if I can convince them that if I get asked, and this happens all the time, right, for a specific feature, and when Can I have it? I can answer the question, but then I can answer it with this is the this is the real skill of a product manager, I can answer it, answer it with another question. Okay. Yeah, we could probably do that. But tell me if we do that. What is the hoped for result? What is the desired outcome from this particular output that you're asking for? Now, sometimes, from an executive, you'll get lack of patience. I don't have time to get into it, just do it. That's not a good answer. If you get that you still want to come back and say, Well, I want to make sure that we design this thing correctly in order to meet the needs. Yeah, I know, you told me this thing. And maybe it seems fairly simple, but there's 1000 little decisions that are Gonna go into the implementation. And if I can get just even 20 minutes of clarity right now even five minutes of clarity right now on the desired result, we can make sure that we're building the thing you actually want. Okay, so you've sold me on the idea that I can spend five minutes now and explain to you that if we do this, and the customer does that, then this will result in that this other thing for the company, we think, and as you say, an executive of that type will project confidence that this will definitely work. And then your analytical brain, whether you're a product manager, or an engineering manager, or a designer should come into play, and you should see if you can start playing out alternate scenarios, not just not to poke holes in the plan, because that'll just make them defensive, but to suggest alternatives. Well, what if we could get the same result quicker and easier with x y Instead, you know what if instead of redesigning the whole checkout flow, we just added American Express or consolidated, the two slowest steps, you know, as an incremental thing as an experiment to see if that actually improves the numbers. And then you can, then what you've set up as a conversation where you are together trying to cooperate on evaluating alternative solutions to the problem. And then maybe, maybe that person's mind is opened up to the idea that there might be two or three or four or many possible solutions to the problem. And even if you can't get them to stick with you through all of that, you've set the stage that the real. The real goal is to change the customer behavior and change the financial results for the company. And if you know exactly how to manage That will then just as good practice, you go back to the drawing board, and you say to your team, okay, we've been asked to to redesign the checkout flow to increase throughput to increase conversion rate. How can we test this idea and validate whether it's actually going to get the result that we want before spending months doing the work? Can we get some users in and do some mock ups? do some tests of mock ups and stuff like that? And see, what happens? Can we build a micro site and then in a totally non scalable way and do an A B test?and just see what happens and then when you come back to that executive and say, so that thing where you wanted us to redesign the checkout flow? Well, we tried these three different options and because we're, we're always optimizing for the conversion rate, right? And we found that this alternative, which is turns out is no different than we realize. Thought is actually the best way to increase our conversion rate. Because you had the conversation about what's the real goal, because even you had to have an uncomfortable moment where you were pushing to get clarity on the desired goal. You've set up that later conversation about what's really going to get you the desired goal. And so if you're always trying to even on the roadmap, wrap, the project stuff in the product stuff, the the the wrap the output in the desired outcome. Then gradually, you get leverage and trust in those conversations that you are thinking, like they want you to think and as a responsible steward of the resources.George Stocker  16:54  With the roadmap, we've talked a little bit about how it's set up, and how there are outcomes on the roadmap. And what you're looking to test during here, timeframes. Is it now near and later, is it quarter? next quarter? How is that set up? And then what else is part of the roadmap that you put together?Bruce Mccarthy  17:15  Yeah, so you got to have some kind of time buckets, even if you said it's now next and later, just really broad, no dates, kind of buckets. And you've got to have the problem oriented themes that we discussed. And you've also got a for an internal roadmap, you've got to have those business objectives like, Okay, if we do this, what does that mean for the company? And I don't mean that you need to make a sales projection, but I do mean that you need to say the objective here is to increase the conversion rate. And if we can raise it by two points, then here's what the result might be. Or maybe the objective is, for a SaaS business renewal rates. We want to improve those So you want to build those business objectives? The reason why from the, from the point of view of the people who are funding this effort, right into the roadmap, I even there's an example in the book where this company actually gave a percentage of the resources that were placed against each different business objective. so that they could sort of take a portfolio view of what they were working on. CFOs love that kind of that kind of analysis. So business objectives, problems to solve, rather than features, timeframes. And I think it's all got to start with a vision of the value that your entire effort your entire product, your entire program to produce this product is aiming for, for the customer. Maybe it incorporates a piece of the business side to like, we want to we Want to make security foolproof for enterprises? And that's a, you know, hundred billion dollar market. So we want to be the number one vendor in that space. I don't love the we want toGeorge Stocker  19:16  that's the big hairy audacious goal,Bruce Mccarthy  19:19  right A B hag for the product. And I like it to focus mostly on the benefit to the customer, like making security foolproof, or providing, you know, a better, faster, easier something for the customer and a little piece of a little dash of what's our differentiator Why Why should you consider us? It's like a Actually, it's really like a boiled down version of your value proposition as a product. It names the customer, the benefit to the customer and the differentiator. That should be like at the top of the page. If you have a roadmap like many do that's a timeline or it's a grid with hopefully not features, maybe themes, products. have problems to solve and timeframes. Above all of that is. And if we achieve if we do all of these things, here's the result. Here's where we're solving for this. As the constant Northstar reminder of why we're here. Though, all of those things are four out of the five components, I think that you must have in a roadmap. The fifth one is the disclaimer. Now, maybe that sounds like a while, of course, you know, sure. You gotta have weasel words down the bottom right? You gotta have the Safe Harbor statement. But I actually really like to lean on that when I'm talking to customers in particular, but any stakeholder pointed out and say, not only is the roadmap subject to change, but it is highly likely to change. It is a constantly evolving document, it is likely to change and one of the ways that it can change is if in this discussion, you convince me of certain things that I didn't know or wasn't really Thinking about you give me new information that changes my priorities or informs my strategy. Well, why wouldn't I change my roadmap? I should, I should change as a responsible product person trying to do the best thing for the customer and the company, I need to take advantage of that new information incorporated into my plan and publish it in the next iteration of the roadmap. There's sort of a, this sort of one other piece. It's not a component of the roadmap, but it's a component of the road mapping process. And that's the update. I think a lot of people forget this, that kind of like the roadmap is the thing we do in either the end of the year or the beginning of the year. And then we forget about it until the end of the year when we have to make a new one. And we pretty much ignore the old one because we didn't do any of that. And instead, what I want is to republish an updated version of the roadmap really regularly I have a friend Sam Clemens, who was head of product at a company called insight squared in Boston for many years. And the way he did it was, it was a quarterly roadmap with percentages of percentages of confidence going out for quarters. The confidence level for the last quarter was like 25%. And he published it in a one page document that the sales team was encouraged to pin up in their cube. So that when someone asked, Is there, is it on the roadmap, they could answer the question, along with the disclaimer. But here's the thing, it was a quarterly roadmap, but he updated it every month. He sent out a fresh version of it with an annotation of all the changes and explanation of all the changes and why all those changes were made every month. And you know, a lot of some of them were things like well, this has taken longer than we thought. Others were like, We tested this idea and it doesn't work and so what We're taking it off the roadmap, and we're putting on something that we think will work based on what we learned. Or we're reprioritizing, we're taking based on signal from customers, this thing that was four quarters out, we think is far more important. And so we've moved it up to next quarter and swapped out some other things to make room for it. And when you're that sort of radically transparent about the changes to the roadmap, it I think, begins to increase confidence that you are constantly updating your thinking based on the latest evidence of what's going on, with customers and in the marketplace, and what's the best thing to be doing, and you train all of your stakeholders to expect it. It's not, oh, the roadmap changed what went wrong. It's like, Oh, great, updated version of the roadmap. This is awesome.George Stocker  23:51  So that brings to when the roadmap changes in an established marketplace, there are competitors and then those competitors have features, how do you guard against, we have to have this feature because our competitor has this feature.Bruce Mccarthy  24:07  Right? Um, honestly, the fastest way to commoditizing your product and losing all of your margin is a feature war. You don't want to get into that situation where it's just me to feature after me to feature. That way, all the products eventually become the same, and there's no differentiation and the only thing you have less left to compete on is price. And that's where all your margin disappears. So why would you want to get into that situation? You wouldn't. So instead, what you want to do is figure out how you differentiate how you have something that a nobody else has, and B is difficult for them to duplicate so that they can't have it next quarter. And C is something that speaks to particularly to your segment of the market. So, if you if you want to have a red ocean strategy, referencing that book where you and a couple of other behemoths are just slugging it out continuously over the same customer, then Okay, you're stuck in a feature war and eventually a price war. And honestly, that that kind of that kind of situation is no fun. Instead, you can carve out a niche. Maybe it's big, maybe it's small, but one that you are uniquely able to serve and where you are the obvious answer to the customer's unique problem. You know, amazon.com is the answer to most commodity purchases right now if they're not super perishable, right? So why am I am I going to try to compete compete with them on selling books or going into the video streaming business? No, I'm not going to do that. But There are lots of products where Yeah, they sell them. But they aren't the best way to get the best version of that product out of them could could they get into the selling business of selling cars? Well, they could. But I'm not sure they'd be very successful because people want to touch and feel and test drive a car first. So that's not going to be a real great way to compete. I'll give you another example. Much more recent. Did you see that the guys that Basecamp came out with a new product called Hey, I did it's a, it's an email service. And you think, Oh my god, they're gonna try to compete with Gmail and outlook. That's crazy. Why would anybody do that? Those guys are enormous. But those products are commodities and they're mostly interchangeable and they're mostly free. Hey, has a subscription price and not a cheap one. It's like 30 bucks. A month. So it's a premium subscription price for a consumer to pay for themselves. How does that make any sense? Well, they're not expecting to have the number of users that Gmail has. And they're not expecting to have the profile of the typical Gmail user. They're expecting to have somebody who is very addicted to email but wants to be super productive on it. And who buys into their very opinionated way that we should manage our workflow. If you really like the way Hayes workflow works, it's the only tool of its type. And so it's the only option for you they have in that sense for that particular user, if they can identify them, they have no competition at all. There's another there's a sort of competitor called superhuman, which you may also have heard of, that's also a subscription based email client, butGeorge Stocker  27:59  they work on top of Gmail don't think they did or not their own email provider.Bruce Mccarthy  28:03  That's right, hey, actually, because they wanted to really take control of the whole stack and the whole experience, you would get a Hey, calm email address, whereas with superhuman, it's whatever email address you have on top of Gmail. And so they just exist at that layer. And they're strictly about throughput and focus in the interface, whereas hay is much more about filtering out noise, and bucketing things in a very, very opinionated way that they think is the right way to do it. You know how you can set up rules in Gmail to put things into folders? And at some point, every nerd like spends all day one day making all these little folders and rules and stuff like that. I know I did. But, hey, doesn't allow you to do that. They just have three buckets. Well, four if you count the no you can't email me bucket. And you can't configure them. So you either love it, in which case, it's very low effort for you, or it doesn't fit. And you're going to go check out to superhuman, or you're going to go back to Gmail,George Stocker  29:11  in the case of superhuman versus Hey, since superhuman exists on top of Gmail, they're dependent upon Gmail for their livelihood at gmail subsequently could copy their features tomorrow, but they could copy their features and they could send them out of business. Whereas Hey, it sounds like a tougher proposition for any competitor.Bruce Mccarthy  29:30  Exactly right. Gmail could copy their features. It could also turn off their API or their forwarding or whatever it is that superhuman uses. And then superhuman would be out of business overnight.George Stocker  29:45  Now, in my time on a product team, I've generally dealt with three or four interest groups in any product or product management folks, the sales folks versus the engineering team. Then of course, you've got the board of directors, you have upper management, and they all have different things that we're worried about. Engineering groups are worried about keeping the lights on and making sure things can actually be done. The sales group needs to meet their quotas. Upper management's looking at the health of the company writ large, and products is sitting there trying to hold it all together. Now, if there's just one group that had to adopt change for roadmaps, that would be tough enough. Now you've got four groups you're dealing with, when you're introducing your process into an organization.Bruce Mccarthy  30:25  Oh, and it's worse than that. A lot of organizations, they also have marketing and partnerships and channel sales. And maybe they have to deal with external analysts and technology partners. And maybe they have enterprise customers who are used to having input on the roadmap, the list goes on and on and on. Finance also usually has a voice and in the roadmap, the list of potential stakeholders is quite lengthy. And there's a there's a big challenge. There, I find that the way to approach that is a couple of things. One is, at the highest level, at the simplest level, everybody should be hearing the same story about how this all fits together and how we all succeed together, everybody should understand the product vision that we described how a future world will benefit from the existence of this product or the success of this product, and how it serves the overall company mission. If those are different if it's a big enough company to have multiple products. Everybody should understand what problems are we trying to solve in order to achieve that what business results should we expect if we do achieve that? And that the timeframes and the disclaimer so the first you know, few slides of your PowerPoint presentation, if that's the form your roadmap is in should be the same for absolutely everybody. You don't want to have 14 different roadmap For all your different stakeholders, but within that deck, each different stakeholder like that kind of wants their own drill down into their own worries into their own concerns. So sales wants to know when am I going to be able to sell XYZ. And so for things that are close enough to delivery that you actually can give them a feature and a date, you should have that information, either in a delivery plan or on slide number four. And for engineering that wants a deeper dive into the features that are not yet being worked on, but are maybe on deck, if you will, up next. You should have a slide for what are the possible features under each theme that you'd like to discuss and go through the investigation and research process with engineering on but you don't show those that slide to anybody outside of that. Engineering, because it's all completely unbaked. At that point for, for investors, you know, you might have not revenue projections, but hope we might focus on the business objectives for the marketing team you might talk about, well, what sorts of things might you be able to demo at the next conference? Or should they be ramping up a campaign for in the fall or something like that. So for each one, you can imagine a deck that starts off with the same three slides for everybody that tells the high level story and then has seven or eight more slides one or two for each other stakeholder group, that give them just the information that they need. And then just having a roadmap is not enough. You've actually got to involve all those stakeholders in your process. If you want the buy in that you're looking for. You've actually got to go to talk to those stakeholders, not when you're done with the roadmap. But when you're in the beginning to middle stages of developing it, so that my favorite words are, hey, I'm working on my roadmap, and I need your input. Can you help me and being asked to help and give input early in the process is super flattering for those folks. And it makes them feel like they got inside access, and it makes them feel like they're helping you and you're helping them and you're collaborating on this. And even if you say no to them on some things, they feel like you gave them the opportunity to be heard at the right time and place. And so they end up feeling a sort of a sense of authorship, co authorship of the result. And I would do that as informally as you can don't like schedule a meeting and have a review of the roadmap and ask for their sign off. If if you're in an office with them, hang out at the coffee machine. Wait till they come by and say Hey, you got a minute, I want to I just, I'm working on this and I need your need your help. If you can't do that, slack them and ask them for five minutes, you know, and rather thanrather than try to make it super formal. And then when you do have the formal meeting where it's like the roadmap review, instead of them, like, trying to show how smart they are, but poking holes in a roadmap, they're trying to take credit for how great and insightful the roadmap is, because they see their fingerprints on it.George Stocker  35:32  Now I had the privilege to be a part of one of your sessions. I don't remember if it was a two or three day roadmap engagement, where you came in to help us develop a roadmap at a previous employer. But for everyone who is not aware of what this process is, like, if a team wanted to call you in and say, Hey, Bruce, could you help us out? We need to produce a roadmap. What is your engagement look like?Bruce Mccarthy  35:52  Well, first I do public roadmap workshops that are these four sort of four days have to Our sessions, but then we, we have people from all different companies and we use a made up product. And we put them in teams and I deliberately, even if there are multiple people from one company, I deliberately split them up, put them into teams, and we have a lot of fun with it that way. But if I'm, if I'm on the occasion that I'm working with a single company, and they're trying to produce their real roadmap, it takes a little longer. And so it's usually a several days process. And we get the key stakeholders into a room for several days, we get the folks from sales, we get the folks from engineering, we get the folks from marketing, maybe design as well as product, sometimes in the right size company will have the CEO in the room the whole time, or for strategic parts of it. And the whole idea is to get us all on the same page about those major components. What is the vision What does success look like? What are the business objectives? What problems do we need to solve? How do we prioritize this stuff? You remember from our engagement, we were like all writing lots of white yellow stickies, putting them on a wall, and arranging them seeing where the common themes played out and debating the priority of things based on how leveraged we thought they would be for the results we were trying to get. One particular technique that I like, in that kind of workshopping situation, is to sort of crowdsource the ideas and not let any one voice really dominate the conversation. Because often there's, you know, a few people who have very verbally dominant sort of behavior, you know, often they're in sales or they're the CEO or something like that. And then there's other people may be an engineering or design who are more thoughtful and introspective and they won't just blurt out The first thing that they're thinking, so to level that playing field, so that we get all those ideas on the table, because all of them are useful is I have people first write stuff down silently without talking to each other, so that we get everything on the table without anybody getting shouted down. Then we put all put all those stickies together. And we we look at them together without anybody's name on anything. And that tends to get a better result that sometimes you'll be like. Like, you'll have two or three stickies of ideas of how to solve a problem that at first blush, to maybe the to the CEO, or the head of sales makes zero sense. They seem to be coming completely out of left field. But then when you ask for an explanation, you discover that there's a really clever idea there that nobody else thought of, and that one bounced off of some of the other ideas. begins to really become a promising direction. And those nuggets aren't going to happen. If you don't, if you don't crowdsource like that.George Stocker  39:08  We've talked a lot about product teams. And your advice seems especially centered towards product teams, what can non product software teams that maybe work on internal software, or teams that work in services based business with software? What can they take away from your process?Bruce Mccarthy  39:25  I think a lot of these principles, although they were developed with software product teams apply broadly across businesses. I'll give you an example. I did a version of this workshop, a half day version of this workshop for a company in New Zealand, and it was just for their for their marketing team really, but they got all termed up about the method of thinking about the objectives and the desired outcomes rather than the solutions or at least before thinking about the solutions. And they brought me in to run their corporate planning process for their next annual planning process, that way to run it completely based on desired outcomes rather than outputs. And they ended up organizing and budgeting for the entire year this way. This was an electric power utility. This was not a software company, not a hardware company, not a consumer goods company, nothing like software. And yet they found that the principles really applied there. So I mean, if you think about it, there's the What's our vision? What are we trying to do that benefits the customer? What are the measurable business objectives that we need to meet? What are the problems we need to solve along the way? What are the critical timeframes in those are all universal business considerations? The one exception people might think be tempted to make is for internal teams like you said. But I don't think that's a real distinction because even though your product isn't sold to some external customer, it is used by internal customers for some reason, it is providing some kind of value to whoever is using the product, even if it's like a back end system that supports another product. Still, there are outcomes that are desired from doing any work to change or create in the first place that system. And if you can describe those desired outcomes, you can get a much more reliable result in terms of achieving them. Just because you frame the problem correctly. Does that make sense?George Stocker  41:50  It does. Now there's one thing I want to talk about because it was revolutionary when I read the book. In the book, you talk about a way to prioritize work and you come up with a formula and it's scorecard that can prioritize work. Can you talk about that?Bruce Mccarthy  42:03  Yeah. For me this, this comes from going back to what's the desired result. I always ended up with a list of way too many good ideas, especially through this kind of brainstorming process that I described. And all of them seemed like things that we should do. But we couldn't get even half of them done in any period of time. Like I, I started at this company, and went around to all the executives and asked them, What projects they thought we either should be working on this year, or maybe already we're working on this year. And the list was 75 items long. And we only had five developers. And some of these things were really chunky big things. And so it seemed to me like yeah, we could maybe get two or three of these 75 things done. How We pick. So over time, I've developed this method of scoring these things to decide which things are the winners. And the basic idea behind it is that you should score things based on the likelihood of getting a positive result with the least amount of effort, you should score them on ROI on bang for the buck, right? If, but you can only do that. If you agree on what the bang you're looking for is, you can only do that if you agree on what your business objectives are at that particular company. Fortunately, we have just gone for a round of investment and we knew exactly what the the business objectives we had sold to the board and the investors were so I was able to fill them into my scorecard at the top and rank every single idea as to how much I thought it would contribute to those objectives. Each each objective separately was given a score for each item And then added up. And then divided by a couple of other things. One was effort, our rough guess as to how hard a problem this was to solve. And then also confidence. Sometimes, two ideas look roughly similar in bang for the buck, but you just have a lot more knowledge about one of them than the other about whether about how to solve the problem, or about whether the customer will really get value out of it. And it will really drive the business results you think it should. And so that confidence becomes your fudge factor and you're your decider in those kinds of ties. And the confidence comes from basically your confidence that your scoring is correct that it will really work out that way in the real world. On the other hand, sometimes also you run into things that look really good before you put the confidence factor in. This should be really And I'll bet the customers will really love it. Awesome. It's at the top of the list. Except, well, we've never done anything like this before. So we don't really know what's involved. And it's kind of different than our usual value proposition to the customer. So we don't really know if they'll like it until we try it. So now you put the confidence of only like 30% in and it falls way down on the list. But that's just telling you not it's a bad idea, but that you need to do your homework, you need to go and actually do a design project or a research spike, or something that's going to get your confidence up where it should be before you attempt it. So I I love the scorecard method as a way of breaking those log jams and also of managing your stakeholders. Because if you This is the other thing I did at that same company, if you all agree on what the goals are, and you kind of go through and discuss your scoring on All the things even if you don't 100% agree on everything, what you're doing is you are unpacking the prioritization logic for all the stakeholders in exactly the same way and then a logical framework that they all agree on and buy into. And so it's very easy to bring a bunch of people who don't usually agree to alignment, if you can get them to go through this process with you.George Stocker  46:23  Nice. Now, where can people go to learn more about you and to get in touch with you?Bruce Mccarthy  46:28  Thanks for asking. My website is product culture.org. Because I believe that these things that we're talking about sort of come down to a culture of focusing on the product discipline of making customers successful and how that makes the company successful. on there, you'll find info about my book, product roadmaps, relaunched and a link to Amazon and I also have a weekly what I call it nano letter which is called one thing on product culture, and it's really short. It's meant to be read, you know, like while you're making coffee or the coffee line. It's just one thing on product culture each week. And you can also sign up for my public workshops on the website.George Stocker  47:14  Wonderful papers. Thanks for joining me today.Bruce Mccarthy  47:17  Thanks for having me, George. It was great talking about this stuff.George Stocker  47:20  It was and we could talk about it for hours, but unfortunately, our listeners won't listen for that long. Alright folks, that's it for this week. I'm George Stocker, and I hope you'll join me next time on the build better software podcast.Transcribed by https://otter.ai

How would you feel about being posed the contention that prioritisation is really about saying no to good ideas because there's always too many of them? There's always more of them than we can handle and we've got to focus not just on the good ideas but on the truly great ideas. In this BoS Talk from Product Guru Bruce McCarthy, he will walk you through the ins and outs of prioritisation and why they are important and where we can improve our prioritisation in our companies. Recorded live at Business of Software Conference USA in Boston, MA, September 2018. For more great talks, visit businessofsoftware.org --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/business-of-software/message

El Product Manager o responsable de producto en el mundo del desarrollo de software necesita tener una capacidad de juicio del negocio, no solo estar centrado en problemas de ingeniería. Es como el abogado del usuario dentro de la propia empresa. Tiene unas funciones muy distintas a las de un gerente de proyectos o project manager ¿Cuáles son las habilidades puntuales de ambos perfiles? ¿Puede una sola persona asumir ambos roles? En este episodio te ayudamos a entender las tareas y responsabilidades de estos roles distintos, hacia dónde están orientados (usuario final vs. ejecución y outcome del proyecto) y qué factores hacen que necesites uno u otro perfil.Contadnos qué cosas nos hemos dejado en el tintero en los comentarios. Esto es un podcast que se hace de manera asíncrona pero puede ser dinámico también así podemos dotarnos de la experiencia de vosotros. ¡Esperamos que tengáis una muy buena semana!Estos son los enlaces a los temas de los que hemos hablado:Si deseas ampliar más sobre la diferencia entre responsable de producto y gerente de proyectos, te recomendamos este artículo: https://productcoalition.com/product-vs-project-management-batman-robin-or-marvel-dc-bd42a7069cd8Mind the Product: https://www.mindtheproduct.comArtículo de Autentia: https://www.adictosaltrabajo.com/2019/08/14/product-manager-o-project-manager/Scrum: https://www.atlassian.com/es/agile/scrumGoogle's Associate Product Manager (APM) program: https://careers.google.com/programs/apm/Kent McDonald: https://www.kbp.media/author/kent-mcdonald/Product School: https://productschool.comProductCon: https://productschool.com/productcon/Asana: https://asana.com/Waterfall: https://www.smartsheet.com/content-center/best-practices/project-management/project-management-guide/waterfall-methodologyLa gente de dirección de producto en tech necesita tener una capacidad de juicio, no solo estar centrados en problemas de ingeniería. Es como el abogado del usuario dentro de la propia empresa porque tienes que comunicar sus problemas y qué necesitan. Buen post de Paul Adams, SVP of Product en Intercom: https://www.intercom.com/blog/product-judgment/Fran Sevillano (invitado en el E25) transicionando a PM: https://fransevillano.com/2020/02/07/why-become-a-product-manager/Transicionando a Product manager (Afterwork en español): https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmNob3IuZm0vcy8xNTZhN2NjYy9wb2RjYXN0L3Jzcw/episode/YTRjN2UzZjktYTYwOC00NDA0LWIwNzQtZGU1NTE0NWNmMDJj?ved=2ahUKEwiXovOxtM_qAhVBlxoKHZkRB_AQkfYCegQIARAFSenior Product Manager Remote NoiceJobs: https://t.me/joinchat/AAAAAE1KZCcECQB1y6g0ygSenior Agile/Scrum Remote NoiceJobs: https://t.me/joinchat/AAAAAElD2ZwmavdgJhN4hgShreyas Doshi: https://twitter.com/shreyasLibro de Bruce McCarthy: https://learning.oreilly.com/library/view/product-manager-vs/9781492034452/#:~:text=Bruce%20McCarthy%2C%20CEO%20of%20UpUp,initial%20research%20to%20final%20product%E2%80%94Síguenos en Twitter:Danny Prol: https://twitter.com/DannyProl/Claudio Cossio: https://twitter.com/ccossioEstamos en todas estas plataformas:Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/saas-product-chat/id1435000409ListenNotes: https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/saas-product-chat-daniel-prol-y-claudio-CABZRIjGVdP/Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/36KIhM0DM7nwRLuZ1fVQy3Google Podcasts: https://podcasts.google.com/?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5zaW1wbGVjYXN0LmNvbS8zN3N0Mzg2dg%3D%3D&hl=esBreaker: https://www.breaker.audio/saas-product-chatWeb: https://saasproductchat.com/

This week, Bruce McCarthy shares his vision of what he calls 'Product Culture'. Bruce outlines the 4 key aspects of a product culture. 1 - Lead with a vision of Human Awesomeness. 2 - Build small diverse teams. 3 - Trust people to manage their work. 4 - Learn and improve continuously. Recorded at Business of Software Conference Europe 2018 in London. To listen to more BoS Talks, go to https://businessofsoftware.org/videos. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/business-of-software/message

OKRs are getting more and more popular these days as a communication tool that helps product teams align better. But, like every tool, if it's not used correctly it can prove useless or even counterproductive. In this interview with Bruce McCarthy, author of Product Roadmaps Relaunched and Founder of Product Culture, we are discussing how Product teams can adopt OKRs to align themselves with the highest vision and strategy of the business. Key Takeaways: - How to use OKRs effectively - Common mistakes when adopting OKRs internally - What is the intersection between OKRs and customer feedback The interviewee: Ever since he was a child, Bruce has been making things. Having spent a lifetime as a builder and innovator, today he has a passion for helping teams work together better to develop compelling products and services. He's been called the face of Boston product management and (for Top Gear fans) the product management Stig. The interviewer: Aggelos Mouzakitis is the founder of Growth Sandwich. He created Growth Sandwich, back in 2017 with a sole vision: to help promising early-stage teams get their products to market in a solid manner. He has worked or trained more than 500 marketers and founders on how to get to the market with the right mix of tactics and a product that drives engagement and happiness. About Growth Sandwich: Growth Sandwich is the first European Product-led Go-to-Market Strategy agency. We specialise in helping SaaS products and businesses that operate in the subscription economy. Our approach is 100% customer-centric and we help post-Product/Market fit companies establish a repeatable selling motion and recurring revenues.

Dive Bar Comedy returns to Scarlet Lady Saloon in Culver City for more laughs and true life stories from comics Kerstin Porter, Bruce McCarthy, and Sam Brilhart. GT and Wild Jo delve deep in the personal interviews. Emcee Mista See closes out the show rapping over harmonica.

Hosts GT and Wild Jo reminisce on short shorts throughout the decades, then join emcee Mista See for some dive bar fun and very special guest comics. Erin Mohr answers all of our questions about being transgendered, and Bruce McCarthy makes us question our sanity.

Global Product Management Talk is pleased to bring you the next episode of... The Everyday Innovator with host Chad McAllister, PhD. The podcast is all about helping people involved in innovation and managing products become more successful, grow their careers, and STANDOUT from their peers. About the Episode: Product roadmaps are one of the best-known tools and also the most misused by product managers. We have talked twice before with Bruce McCarthy, co-author of the book, Product Roadmaps Relaunched: How to Set Direction while Embracing Uncertainty, to learn how to make roadmaps work for us instead of against us. The first time was in episode 169 (www.TheEverydayInnovator.com / 169), which was right after he wrote the book. Then we talked a year later, to see what he had learned since writing the book– episode 226 (www.TheEverydayInnovator.com / 226). This time we talk about the role of roadmaps in portfolio management. In the process, we discuss what a portfolio is, how portfolios can be created and managed, and how to construct a roadmap for a portfolio.

How product managers can extend product roadmaps to portfolio management. Got to Part 1 of Product Roadmaps. Got to Part 2 of Product Roadmaps. Part 3… Product roadmaps are one of the best-known tools and also the most misused by product managers. We have talked twice before with Bruce McCarthy, co-author of the book, Product […]

How product managers can extend product roadmaps to portfolio management. Got to Part 1 of Product Roadmaps. Got to Part 2 of Product Roadmaps. Part 3… Product roadmaps are one of the best-known tools and also the most misused by product managers. We have talked twice before with Bruce McCarthy, co-author of the book, Product […]

Global Product Management Talk is pleased to bring you the next episode of... The Everyday Innovator with host Chad McAllister, PhD. The podcast is all about helping people involved in innovation and managing products become more successful, grow their careers, and STANDOUT from their peers. About the Episode: Product roadmaps are frequently used badly, almost as handcuffs for product managers. A year ago we explored roadmaps and how they should be used with Bruce McCarthy. At the time, he had recently co-authored the book, Product Roadmaps Relaunched: How to Set Direction while Embracing Uncertainty. Since writing the book, Bruce has been busy helping companies improve how they use roadmaps. I wanted to find out what more he has learned in the last year, which is what this discussion is about. We cover: What a product roadmap isWho the roadmap is forThe pitfalls of roadmapsThe inputs needed to create a roadmapHow to organize a roadmapHow to prioritize product features

Creating a product vision of the future that's awesome for everyone. Got to Part 1 of Product Roadmaps. Got to Part 3 of Product Roadmaps. Part 2… Product roadmaps are frequently used badly, almost as handcuffs for product managers. A year ago we explored roadmaps and how they should be used with Bruce McCarthy. At […]

Creating a product vision of the future that’s awesome for everyone. Got to Part 1 of Product Roadmaps. Got to Part 3 of Product Roadmaps. Part 2… Product roadmaps are frequently used badly, almost as handcuffs for product managers. A year ago we explored roadmaps and how they should be used with Bruce McCarthy. At […]

Welcome to episode #27 of IoT Product Leadership, a podcast featuring in-depth conversations with product leaders on what it takes to build great IoT products. I’m your host, Daniel Elizalde.   I have a very special episode for you. Today I have not one, but two incredible Product experts in the show. My guests are Bruce McCarthy and C. Todd Lombardo.   Bruce and C. Todd are experienced Product Leaders and co-authors of the book: Product Roadmaps Relaunched, which by the way I think is one of the best Product books to come out in recent years.   I’ve known Bruce and C. Todd for a while now. Every time we get together we have very rich and passionate product conversations. So I’m very excited to bring those conversations to the show.   In this episode we discuss key leadership topics such as, why should IoT be part of your product strategy? How to work with Executives to clarify the company vision, and we discuss the 10 universal business objectives companies can use to drive their strategy.   This is an episode no IoT product leader should miss.   About Bruce McCarthy and C. Todd Lombardo:  Bruce McCarthy is a serial entrepreneur, author, organizer, and speaker at product, UX, and innovation events around the world. He helps growing organizations achieve their product visions through workshops, mentoring, and team coaching. Bruce's co-wrote Product Roadmapping Relaunched: How to Set Direction While Embracing Uncertainty and opines regularly about Product Culture.   Originally trained as a scientist, C. Todd Lombardo has held job titles ranging from scientist, to engineer, to product manager, to designer, and even professor. He is usually leading product and experience teams at startups. He serves on the adjunct faculty at IE Business School in Madrid, as well as Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA). He is a published O'Reilly Media author with two titles: Design Sprint (2015) and Product Roadmaps Relaunched (2017). He never turns down a good chocolate chip cookie.    Topics we discuss in this episode: Bruce and C. Todd share their backgrounds.  Why IoT should be incorporated into your solution. How Product Leaders work with Executives to clarify their vision. The 10 universal business objectives. Key results and metrics. How to achieve alignment and buy-in within your company. Strategy you need to manage up: objectives, priorities, shuttle diplomacy, negotiation skills. Advice for Product Leaders who are new at developing IoT solutions.   To learn more about Bruce and C.Todd: Bruce on LinkedIn C.Todd on LinkedIn Bruce on Twitter C.Todd on Twitter Product Roadmapping Relaunched: How to Set Direction While Embracing Uncertainty Product Culture C.Todd   Free download: Don’t forget to download my IoT product strategy template, for free.   Related Resources: What Is An IoT Product Manager? IoT Framework for Product Managers How to Build an IoT Product Roadmap

Bruce McCarthy was the president of the Boston Product Management Association, is the founder of consultancy Product Culture and co-wrote the book on roadmapping, Product Roadmaps Relaunched.  He joined us live at the Mind the Product Leadership Forum to chat about how he builds his own roadmaps, prioritisation, product vision, OKRs and quite a bit more. Quote [...] Read more » The post Podcast: Roadmaps, OKRs, Vision and Prioritisation with Bruce McCarthy appeared first on Mind the Product.

Skipped Habits, Disruptive Thinkers, Saying No, and More Welcome to the Process Hacker News, your weekly roundup of useful news and updates from Process Hackers who have been guests on Hack the Process with M. David Green. This week we’ve got skipped habits, disruptive thinkers, saying no, and more. For all the links, check out the show notes at http://www.hacktheprocess.com/skipped-habits-disruptive-thinkers-saying-no-and-more-in-process-hacker-news/. Enjoy! Events Disruptive thinkers will convene for the tech conference, DisruptED19, from January 30 to February 1 in Winnipeg, Canada to discuss the future of work and education. Jennifer Riel will be one of the keynote speakers. On February 11, Rich Mironov and Bruce McCarthy are joining ProductTank Auckland in New Zealand to speak about saying no to good ideas. Media Shira Miller had a successful business, but the economic recession hit her hard, and she had to let go of her dream. On the Life Through Transitions Podcast with Jon de Waal, Shira shares how she made peace with it and how she got back on her feet again. Find out more about e-commerce cooperatives like Empowery as their president, Barth Getto explains their value on The Winning Brand Podcast. Sasha Ariel Alston stars on the Superwomen in Science Podcast, where she discusses teaching youth about coding. If you’re not feeling it in your heart to set goals, Mark Silver proposes you create a Stop Doing List instead in his latest video. Writing After winning the 2018 Reader’s Choice Awards, Adam Siddiq’s book, Shackled, had been nominated again for the 2019 Reader’s Choice Awards. Cast your vote and show some support! In an article on Book Riot, Kate Swoboda’s book, The Courage Habit, was recommended as one of the fifteen best books on habits. Kate also recommends routines to reduce anxiety in her latest episode of the Your Courageous Life Podcast. Speaking of habits, Ryan Waggoner admits that skipping habits and daily habit streaks can often stress us out. Serving in Congress, you might find people whose views and opinions oppose yours. Chief Strategist Chris Campbell shares his insights about working with people who are very different from yourself in an interview with Ron Carucci for Forbes. Recommended Resources Being a Wayfinder means keeping your authentic self to excel in life. If you’d like to become a Wayfinder Life Coach, Martha Beck, recommended by Pace Smith, is accepting registrations until February 21. The Tesla Customer Referral Program ends on February 1, but before then, you can give your friends a chance to gain exclusive benefits like six months of supercharging, a chance to race an electric semi truck around their test track, and an extended five-year warranty. Tesla’s CEO, Elon Musk, was mentioned as an inspiration by many of past Hack the Process guests including Ricky Yean, Alex De Simone, Tom Morkes, Omar Zenhom, and Loic Le Meur. In an interview with Men’s Health, Malcolm Gladwell, referenced by Josh Haynam, reveals some details about his new podcast, Broken Record, his love for music, and sadness. Thanks for checking out this Process Hacker News update from Hack the Process. If you liked what you saw, please leave a comment to let us know what processes you’re hacking.

What features should you build next? Will your product be ever "done"? How to avoid "building yourself into the corner"? Our guest today is the awesome Emily Tate, US General Manager at Mind the Product. You'll learn how to prioritize new features, create roadmaps based on user research, and ignore "squeaky wheals" while focusing on truly important product work. Podcast feed: subscribe to http://simplecast.fm/podcasts/1441/rss in your favorite podcast app, and follow us on iTunes, Stitcher, or Google Play Music. Show Notes Mind the Product — the world's largest community of product people Pivotal Labs — Emily's previous place of work Episode 121: Managing Customer Feedback with Sofia Quintero Critical Thinking for Product Teams — a talk by Teresa Torres sharing her opportunity solution tree Before You Plan Your Product Roadmap — a post by Des Traynor about feature audits The Five Whys for Start-Ups — an article by Eric Ries Taming the Squeaky Wheel — Emily's article Mind the Product, ProdPad — great blogs to follow Product Roadmaps Relaunched — a book by C. Todd Lombardo, Bruce McCarthy, Evan Ryan & Michael Connors Mind the Product events & local meetups The Daily Em — Emily's website Follow Emily on Twitter: @thedailyem Today's Sponsor This episode is brought to you by Balsamiq. Dare to try new ideas and discover the best solutions without learning fancy design tools! Just drag, drop and resize elements into your wireframes — it's that easy. Try it free for 30 days at balsamiq.cloud. Interested in sponsoring an episode? Learn more here. Leave a Review Reviews are hugely important because they help new people discover this podcast. If you enjoyed listening to this episode, please leave a review on iTunes. Here's how.

Global Product Management Talk is pleased to bring you the next episode of... The Everyday Innovator with host Chad McAllister, PhD. The podcast is all about helping people involved in innovation and managing products become more successful, grow their careers, and STANDOUT from their peers. About the Episode: My 12-year old  son recently got a belt sander.  My son is making a bookshelf and has a lot of sanding to do. The belt sander will do the work quickly. It is the right tool for the job, but only if it is used properly. The powerful motor and rapidly moving belt also makes it a beast. If it is not properly handled, it can do a lot of damage to the person using it and anything around it. I showed my son how to use it correctly and we discussed what can happen if he doesn’t use it the way he should. That is the thing with powerful tools. Used properly they are a valuable aid. Used incorrectly, they can cause a lot of pain and turmoil. Road Mapping The same applies to a frequent tool product managers use — the product roadmap. The traditional use of a roadmap nearly guarantees that product managers will get damaged in some way, like mishandling a belt sander. Think about it. A roadmap requires you to keep your promise even after you have learned that the planned features are no longer needed. Well, at least you kept your promise, but you built the wrong thing. Or, you do the right thing and not add features, breaking your promise you made by putting them on the roadmap. While the roadmap is one of the most frequently used tools by product managers, it is also one of the most unsafe. But, the traditional way of using roadmaps doesn’t have to continue. To discuss how they should be used, the author of “Product Roadmaps Relaunched: How to Set Direction while Embracing Uncertainty,” Bruce McCarthy joins us.

Shifting focus from the how to the why by properly using a product roadmap. Got to Part 2 of Product Roadmaps. Got to Part 3 of Product Roadmaps. Part 1… My 12-year old son recently got a belt sander from his Opa. Opa is a German name for grandfather.  My son is making a bookshelf […]

Shifting focus from the how to the why by properly using a product roadmap. Got to Part 2 of Product Roadmaps. Got to Part 3 of Product Roadmaps. Part 1… My 12-year old son recently got a belt sander from his Opa. Opa is a German name for grandfather.  My son is making a bookshelf […]

Bruce McCarthy, also known as the PMs' PM talks about his new book, Product Roadmapping

Product Managers are responsible for the success of a product. As we’ve seen, UX is not misaligned with business goals, in fact it helps achieve those goals. If UX has become a necessity in terms of a driver of business, product managers need to adapt to it. Those who have a respect and understanding for the value of UX, and incorporate it into their product strategies, can better serve their users and customers, as well as the business.

Product roadmaps are a useful tool for managers and the development they oversee. Usability testing and research informs user experience decisions. Both of these goals, in the end, benefit the users. So why can’t your process contribute to both of these goals?