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How to Build and Manage the First Product Roadmap for a Startup

When creating a product roadmap for a startup, it is important to structure priorities based on customer and business needs, and to format the roadmap in a way that reflects its flexibility. It is also important to include learning and discovery initiatives, marketing and sales activities, and timelines in the roadmap. Regularly touching on the roadmap and aligning key players and stakeholders with the aptitude for change will help increase the success of the product roadmap.

From Big Tech to Startup: Adding Value From Day 1

When transitioning from a large tech company to a startup, one must be prepared for a different set of rules and structures. Tasks such as creating a hiring process, building data infrastructure, and coordinating user research must be done, and the mindset must shift from data-driven to insights-driven. To be successful in a startup, one must add value from day one, develop processes, leverage their network, and outsource non-core tasks. Additionally, one must be careful not to recommend major changes while still new and focus on team relations to impact delivery.

Should You Stay Up to Date with Technical Skills As a Product Manager?

Having technical skills is essential for managers to stay connected to their team and understand their day-to-day tasks. Investing in learning new coding languages and data visualizers can help product owners reduce turnaround time and increase team motivation. Additionally, having technical skills can help managers innovate further and create more value for the company.

How to Spark Sales-Driven Change

A product owner at a B2B company noticed that customers were buying multiple products that they didn't need, and the sales team was pitching products that weren't suitable for certain customers. To address this, the product owner proposed a six-month experiment to create a data model that would recommend which product a sales team should sell to a customer at a single point in time. The experiment was successful and is still being used even after the product owner left the company. The product owner learned that it is important to keep the whole company in mind when optimizing and to gain both bottom-up and top-down support when sparking a significant change in an organization.

Getting Creative to Land Your First Tech Job

This article details the journey of a job seeker who was unable to gain a job in the Fintech industry. To stand out from other candidates, the job seeker created a PowerPoint presentation that detailed features and business proposals related to the company they were applying for. This strategy worked and the job seeker eventually landed a job in the product management market. The article also provides lessons learned, such as the importance of leveraging experience and taking any opportunity as a junior to build a resume.

What to Do When Candidates Turn Down Your Job Offer

Candidates are increasingly turning down job offers, even from top multinational technology companies. This could be due to employers not doing enough to pitch their company to candidates during the interview process. To resolve this, employers should create a framework of training for interviewers to ensure they spend time talking about the company's mission and vision, and how the role fits into the candidate's career goals. Additionally, employers should advocate for their brand, speak up about their Glassdoor job ratings, and instill a high amount of confidence in potential employees.

Strategies to Deliver Effective Employee Feedback

Feedback is an essential part of creating a high-performing culture. Managers should practice radical candor and use the right words and phrases when delivering feedback. The observer's bias, mission skillset, and excellence theories should be taken into consideration when providing feedback. Don't wait for quarterly reviews; provide feedback on a weekly basis to ensure issues are addressed quickly and efficiently.

Reasons Promoting From Within Is Better for Growing Your Business

When a principal engineer left a team without a backup plan, the Associate Director had to decide whether to groom a senior engineer to the next level or hire a Lead engineer from outside. The Associate Director chose to groom the senior engineer, giving him more ownership and products, and dividing the project lifecycle into three phases. The Associate Director invested a lot of time with the senior engineer, providing feedback and 1:1s, and after two quarters the senior engineer was ready to lead independently. The lessons learned from this experience were to invest in the internal team, be tactful in choosing and nurturing second-line leaders, and lead by example.

Change Management in Engineering Organization

In order to refactor the mobile app architecture to MVVMC, the engineering team worked directly with the UX designers to understand the onboarding flow and create a connection between the two teams. This enabled the engineers to start the framework of the architecture ahead of the onboarding flow being fully defined, and when the product was ready, the final update took less time. The project was released within the high-level deadline, creating less pressure on the product team. The lessons learned from this experience were to involve the engineering team early on in the process and for engineering leaders to find accelerators to add special technology without always being at the end of the chain.

Communication Is the Key in the Workplace. Here’s How to Improve.

Poor communication in the workplace can lead to ineffective one-on-one meetings and staff meetings. To break this cycle, it is important to provide different forums for status updates, focus on improving person-to-person communication, and create goals and objectives on a quarterly basis. It is also important to create a platform where everyone can talk about emotions and feedback, and to show vulnerability in order to create a culture of psychological safety.

Becoming a Manager of Engineers: Focusing on Team Visibility

The author was managing a large engineering team of 80 people, but the business was frustrated with the lack of delivery. To increase visibility of the engineering team's work, the author created a dashboard to explain to the executives, leadership, and business side of teams the need to keep up with yearly updates and manage technical debt. After three years, the dashboard showed improvements in technical debt and time spent on bugs, and provided a better understanding of the team's capacity and a more reliable roadmap. The author learned the importance of transparency and open communication in creating a better quality of work.

The Role of Testing in the Engineering Product Development Process

This article discusses how a dedicated QA team can add value to the development process. It explains how the team created a framework, wrote tests, and trained QA engineers to optimize them. This resulted in better coverage of automation, ownership of the test, and a better understanding of the technology. The collaboration between QA engineers and developers made the tests faster, less brittle, and the code more robust. The article also highlights the importance of collaboration and testing as an essential part of the process.

Tips to Get Back to Work After a Career Break

After taking a 6 year break from her career to take care of her kids, a woman decided to make a comeback to the tech industry. She started from scratch as an apprentice in a Ruby on Rails consulting company and worked her way up to a product manager role. She experienced many challenges and rejections, but with the support of her family and her passion for the industry, she was able to make it happen. She learned that if you are passionate about something, don't be afraid to start again and trust the process.

How to Replatforming a Major Organization

This article discusses the process of transforming an established organization that had been working in the same space for 30 years. The author implemented best practices to deliver products faster and globally, while also forming new partnerships and managing change. The author also provided advice for anyone performing a complete replatform, such as auditing the process, sharing successes and failures, and being an understanding and honest leader.

Completing a Successful Reorganization within a Well-Established Company

As CTO of a well-established organization, I was tasked with reorganizing the company to provide better cybersecurity and data security tools. I ran an audit to understand the company’s situation, implemented a platform approach, aligned job descriptions, and collaborated with leadership and teams. I also held a town hall meeting to discuss the reorganization and put in place KPIs to follow up with my team. The keys for a successful reorganization are to focus on processes, objectives, and pains, and to provide empathy during conversations.

How to Recognize Traits of High-Performance From Candidates with Non-Traditional Backgrounds

When a startup needed to scale, the hiring process was focused on finding an individual with a self-driven attitude and the ability to work independently. The candidate was given an entry into a fast-growing startup and provided with an environment to thrive in, with support and resources to gain more skills. The goal was to create a platform that would enable the candidate to succeed.

Understanding Career Growth: Promotion and Sideways Career Changes

As one progresses in their career, they must learn to adapt to new functions and solve different problems. It is important to take time to reflect and explore sideways opportunities in addition to the obvious route. There are tools available to help employees explore themselves, their role, and the ideal role for the future. It is also beneficial to explore one's values, motivations, and how their current role compares to their ideal position. This reflection exercise can help one establish expectations with stakeholders and mold their role and organizational structure to empower the visionary people in the org to complement their strengths effectively. If the current trajectory at the company starts to look like a poor fit for the long term, one should consider a sideways career change and work with their manager to ensure that opportunities to contribute more widely help them move in the right direction for the future.

(Re)building product teams: insights from recent recruitment

The hospitality industry was one of the hardest hit during the 2020 lockdowns, and the effects are still being felt today. This has caused a decrease in trust and an increase in high-risk employment. The hospitality tech industry has also been affected, making it difficult to find the right product managers. After months of searching, the author was able to build a team of seven diverse individuals by the end of 2021. The author learned the importance of diversity, transparency, and setting the right expectations throughout the recruitment process. The author is now looking for six more product managers and more senior talent to lead the team.

The Process of Scaling Small to Medium Sized Teams

Growing a team from small to medium size is a challenging process that requires hands-on attention, direction for problem-solving, and hiring struggles. It is important to identify existing problems and build a strong foundation before scaling the team. Additionally, it is important to build trust and create organizational structures to ensure a healthy culture for new hires. Finally, it is important to designate key team leads and be selective when hiring to ensure the team is successful.

How to Deal with Organizational Adversity

In this article, the author shares their experience of having a vision for a project that was not aligned with their leadership's. They explain how they pushed back against the tension, listened to feedback, and communicated their vision to customers and the industry. They also provide tips on how to ensure less confrontation, such as building small and impactful pieces first, being prepared to defend decisions, and being respectful and humble. Ultimately, they were successful in decreasing costs and executing the project within the timeframe.

How to Build and Manage the First Product Roadmap for a Startup

When creating a product roadmap for a startup, it is important to structure priorities based on customer and business needs, and to format the roadmap in a way that reflects its flexibility. It is also important to include learning and discovery initiatives, marketing and sales activities, and timelines in the roadmap. Regularly touching on the roadmap and aligning key players and stakeholders with the aptitude for change will help increase the success of the product roadmap.

From Big Tech to Startup: Adding Value From Day 1

When transitioning from a large tech company to a startup, one must be prepared for a different set of rules and structures. Tasks such as creating a hiring process, building data infrastructure, and coordinating user research must be done, and the mindset must shift from data-driven to insights-driven. To be successful in a startup, one must add value from day one, develop processes, leverage their network, and outsource non-core tasks. Additionally, one must be careful not to recommend major changes while still new and focus on team relations to impact delivery.

Should You Stay Up to Date with Technical Skills As a Product Manager?

Having technical skills is essential for managers to stay connected to their team and understand their day-to-day tasks. Investing in learning new coding languages and data visualizers can help product owners reduce turnaround time and increase team motivation. Additionally, having technical skills can help managers innovate further and create more value for the company.

How to Spark Sales-Driven Change

A product owner at a B2B company noticed that customers were buying multiple products that they didn't need, and the sales team was pitching products that weren't suitable for certain customers. To address this, the product owner proposed a six-month experiment to create a data model that would recommend which product a sales team should sell to a customer at a single point in time. The experiment was successful and is still being used even after the product owner left the company. The product owner learned that it is important to keep the whole company in mind when optimizing and to gain both bottom-up and top-down support when sparking a significant change in an organization.

Getting Creative to Land Your First Tech Job

This article details the journey of a job seeker who was unable to gain a job in the Fintech industry. To stand out from other candidates, the job seeker created a PowerPoint presentation that detailed features and business proposals related to the company they were applying for. This strategy worked and the job seeker eventually landed a job in the product management market. The article also provides lessons learned, such as the importance of leveraging experience and taking any opportunity as a junior to build a resume.

What to Do When Candidates Turn Down Your Job Offer

Candidates are increasingly turning down job offers, even from top multinational technology companies. This could be due to employers not doing enough to pitch their company to candidates during the interview process. To resolve this, employers should create a framework of training for interviewers to ensure they spend time talking about the company's mission and vision, and how the role fits into the candidate's career goals. Additionally, employers should advocate for their brand, speak up about their Glassdoor job ratings, and instill a high amount of confidence in potential employees.

Strategies to Deliver Effective Employee Feedback

Feedback is an essential part of creating a high-performing culture. Managers should practice radical candor and use the right words and phrases when delivering feedback. The observer's bias, mission skillset, and excellence theories should be taken into consideration when providing feedback. Don't wait for quarterly reviews; provide feedback on a weekly basis to ensure issues are addressed quickly and efficiently.

Reasons Promoting From Within Is Better for Growing Your Business

When a principal engineer left a team without a backup plan, the Associate Director had to decide whether to groom a senior engineer to the next level or hire a Lead engineer from outside. The Associate Director chose to groom the senior engineer, giving him more ownership and products, and dividing the project lifecycle into three phases. The Associate Director invested a lot of time with the senior engineer, providing feedback and 1:1s, and after two quarters the senior engineer was ready to lead independently. The lessons learned from this experience were to invest in the internal team, be tactful in choosing and nurturing second-line leaders, and lead by example.

Change Management in Engineering Organization

In order to refactor the mobile app architecture to MVVMC, the engineering team worked directly with the UX designers to understand the onboarding flow and create a connection between the two teams. This enabled the engineers to start the framework of the architecture ahead of the onboarding flow being fully defined, and when the product was ready, the final update took less time. The project was released within the high-level deadline, creating less pressure on the product team. The lessons learned from this experience were to involve the engineering team early on in the process and for engineering leaders to find accelerators to add special technology without always being at the end of the chain.

Communication Is the Key in the Workplace. Here’s How to Improve.

Poor communication in the workplace can lead to ineffective one-on-one meetings and staff meetings. To break this cycle, it is important to provide different forums for status updates, focus on improving person-to-person communication, and create goals and objectives on a quarterly basis. It is also important to create a platform where everyone can talk about emotions and feedback, and to show vulnerability in order to create a culture of psychological safety.

Becoming a Manager of Engineers: Focusing on Team Visibility

The author was managing a large engineering team of 80 people, but the business was frustrated with the lack of delivery. To increase visibility of the engineering team's work, the author created a dashboard to explain to the executives, leadership, and business side of teams the need to keep up with yearly updates and manage technical debt. After three years, the dashboard showed improvements in technical debt and time spent on bugs, and provided a better understanding of the team's capacity and a more reliable roadmap. The author learned the importance of transparency and open communication in creating a better quality of work.

The Role of Testing in the Engineering Product Development Process

This article discusses how a dedicated QA team can add value to the development process. It explains how the team created a framework, wrote tests, and trained QA engineers to optimize them. This resulted in better coverage of automation, ownership of the test, and a better understanding of the technology. The collaboration between QA engineers and developers made the tests faster, less brittle, and the code more robust. The article also highlights the importance of collaboration and testing as an essential part of the process.

Tips to Get Back to Work After a Career Break

After taking a 6 year break from her career to take care of her kids, a woman decided to make a comeback to the tech industry. She started from scratch as an apprentice in a Ruby on Rails consulting company and worked her way up to a product manager role. She experienced many challenges and rejections, but with the support of her family and her passion for the industry, she was able to make it happen. She learned that if you are passionate about something, don't be afraid to start again and trust the process.

How to Replatforming a Major Organization

This article discusses the process of transforming an established organization that had been working in the same space for 30 years. The author implemented best practices to deliver products faster and globally, while also forming new partnerships and managing change. The author also provided advice for anyone performing a complete replatform, such as auditing the process, sharing successes and failures, and being an understanding and honest leader.

Completing a Successful Reorganization within a Well-Established Company

As CTO of a well-established organization, I was tasked with reorganizing the company to provide better cybersecurity and data security tools. I ran an audit to understand the company’s situation, implemented a platform approach, aligned job descriptions, and collaborated with leadership and teams. I also held a town hall meeting to discuss the reorganization and put in place KPIs to follow up with my team. The keys for a successful reorganization are to focus on processes, objectives, and pains, and to provide empathy during conversations.

How to Recognize Traits of High-Performance From Candidates with Non-Traditional Backgrounds

When a startup needed to scale, the hiring process was focused on finding an individual with a self-driven attitude and the ability to work independently. The candidate was given an entry into a fast-growing startup and provided with an environment to thrive in, with support and resources to gain more skills. The goal was to create a platform that would enable the candidate to succeed.

Understanding Career Growth: Promotion and Sideways Career Changes

As one progresses in their career, they must learn to adapt to new functions and solve different problems. It is important to take time to reflect and explore sideways opportunities in addition to the obvious route. There are tools available to help employees explore themselves, their role, and the ideal role for the future. It is also beneficial to explore one's values, motivations, and how their current role compares to their ideal position. This reflection exercise can help one establish expectations with stakeholders and mold their role and organizational structure to empower the visionary people in the org to complement their strengths effectively. If the current trajectory at the company starts to look like a poor fit for the long term, one should consider a sideways career change and work with their manager to ensure that opportunities to contribute more widely help them move in the right direction for the future.

(Re)building product teams: insights from recent recruitment

The hospitality industry was one of the hardest hit during the 2020 lockdowns, and the effects are still being felt today. This has caused a decrease in trust and an increase in high-risk employment. The hospitality tech industry has also been affected, making it difficult to find the right product managers. After months of searching, the author was able to build a team of seven diverse individuals by the end of 2021. The author learned the importance of diversity, transparency, and setting the right expectations throughout the recruitment process. The author is now looking for six more product managers and more senior talent to lead the team.

The Process of Scaling Small to Medium Sized Teams

Growing a team from small to medium size is a challenging process that requires hands-on attention, direction for problem-solving, and hiring struggles. It is important to identify existing problems and build a strong foundation before scaling the team. Additionally, it is important to build trust and create organizational structures to ensure a healthy culture for new hires. Finally, it is important to designate key team leads and be selective when hiring to ensure the team is successful.

How to Deal with Organizational Adversity

In this article, the author shares their experience of having a vision for a project that was not aligned with their leadership's. They explain how they pushed back against the tension, listened to feedback, and communicated their vision to customers and the industry. They also provide tips on how to ensure less confrontation, such as building small and impactful pieces first, being prepared to defend decisions, and being respectful and humble. Ultimately, they were successful in decreasing costs and executing the project within the timeframe.

How to Build and Manage the First Product Roadmap for a Startup

When creating a product roadmap for a startup, it is important to structure priorities based on customer and business needs, and to format the roadmap in a way that reflects its flexibility. It is also important to include learning and discovery initiatives, marketing and sales activities, and timelines in the roadmap. Regularly touching on the roadmap and aligning key players and stakeholders with the aptitude for change will help increase the success of the product roadmap.

From Big Tech to Startup: Adding Value From Day 1

When transitioning from a large tech company to a startup, one must be prepared for a different set of rules and structures. Tasks such as creating a hiring process, building data infrastructure, and coordinating user research must be done, and the mindset must shift from data-driven to insights-driven. To be successful in a startup, one must add value from day one, develop processes, leverage their network, and outsource non-core tasks. Additionally, one must be careful not to recommend major changes while still new and focus on team relations to impact delivery.

Should You Stay Up to Date with Technical Skills As a Product Manager?

Having technical skills is essential for managers to stay connected to their team and understand their day-to-day tasks. Investing in learning new coding languages and data visualizers can help product owners reduce turnaround time and increase team motivation. Additionally, having technical skills can help managers innovate further and create more value for the company.

How to Spark Sales-Driven Change

A product owner at a B2B company noticed that customers were buying multiple products that they didn't need, and the sales team was pitching products that weren't suitable for certain customers. To address this, the product owner proposed a six-month experiment to create a data model that would recommend which product a sales team should sell to a customer at a single point in time. The experiment was successful and is still being used even after the product owner left the company. The product owner learned that it is important to keep the whole company in mind when optimizing and to gain both bottom-up and top-down support when sparking a significant change in an organization.

Getting Creative to Land Your First Tech Job

This article details the journey of a job seeker who was unable to gain a job in the Fintech industry. To stand out from other candidates, the job seeker created a PowerPoint presentation that detailed features and business proposals related to the company they were applying for. This strategy worked and the job seeker eventually landed a job in the product management market. The article also provides lessons learned, such as the importance of leveraging experience and taking any opportunity as a junior to build a resume.

What to Do When Candidates Turn Down Your Job Offer

Candidates are increasingly turning down job offers, even from top multinational technology companies. This could be due to employers not doing enough to pitch their company to candidates during the interview process. To resolve this, employers should create a framework of training for interviewers to ensure they spend time talking about the company's mission and vision, and how the role fits into the candidate's career goals. Additionally, employers should advocate for their brand, speak up about their Glassdoor job ratings, and instill a high amount of confidence in potential employees.

Strategies to Deliver Effective Employee Feedback

Feedback is an essential part of creating a high-performing culture. Managers should practice radical candor and use the right words and phrases when delivering feedback. The observer's bias, mission skillset, and excellence theories should be taken into consideration when providing feedback. Don't wait for quarterly reviews; provide feedback on a weekly basis to ensure issues are addressed quickly and efficiently.

Reasons Promoting From Within Is Better for Growing Your Business

When a principal engineer left a team without a backup plan, the Associate Director had to decide whether to groom a senior engineer to the next level or hire a Lead engineer from outside. The Associate Director chose to groom the senior engineer, giving him more ownership and products, and dividing the project lifecycle into three phases. The Associate Director invested a lot of time with the senior engineer, providing feedback and 1:1s, and after two quarters the senior engineer was ready to lead independently. The lessons learned from this experience were to invest in the internal team, be tactful in choosing and nurturing second-line leaders, and lead by example.

Change Management in Engineering Organization

In order to refactor the mobile app architecture to MVVMC, the engineering team worked directly with the UX designers to understand the onboarding flow and create a connection between the two teams. This enabled the engineers to start the framework of the architecture ahead of the onboarding flow being fully defined, and when the product was ready, the final update took less time. The project was released within the high-level deadline, creating less pressure on the product team. The lessons learned from this experience were to involve the engineering team early on in the process and for engineering leaders to find accelerators to add special technology without always being at the end of the chain.

Communication Is the Key in the Workplace. Here’s How to Improve.

Poor communication in the workplace can lead to ineffective one-on-one meetings and staff meetings. To break this cycle, it is important to provide different forums for status updates, focus on improving person-to-person communication, and create goals and objectives on a quarterly basis. It is also important to create a platform where everyone can talk about emotions and feedback, and to show vulnerability in order to create a culture of psychological safety.

Becoming a Manager of Engineers: Focusing on Team Visibility

The author was managing a large engineering team of 80 people, but the business was frustrated with the lack of delivery. To increase visibility of the engineering team's work, the author created a dashboard to explain to the executives, leadership, and business side of teams the need to keep up with yearly updates and manage technical debt. After three years, the dashboard showed improvements in technical debt and time spent on bugs, and provided a better understanding of the team's capacity and a more reliable roadmap. The author learned the importance of transparency and open communication in creating a better quality of work.

The Role of Testing in the Engineering Product Development Process

This article discusses how a dedicated QA team can add value to the development process. It explains how the team created a framework, wrote tests, and trained QA engineers to optimize them. This resulted in better coverage of automation, ownership of the test, and a better understanding of the technology. The collaboration between QA engineers and developers made the tests faster, less brittle, and the code more robust. The article also highlights the importance of collaboration and testing as an essential part of the process.

Tips to Get Back to Work After a Career Break

After taking a 6 year break from her career to take care of her kids, a woman decided to make a comeback to the tech industry. She started from scratch as an apprentice in a Ruby on Rails consulting company and worked her way up to a product manager role. She experienced many challenges and rejections, but with the support of her family and her passion for the industry, she was able to make it happen. She learned that if you are passionate about something, don't be afraid to start again and trust the process.

How to Replatforming a Major Organization

This article discusses the process of transforming an established organization that had been working in the same space for 30 years. The author implemented best practices to deliver products faster and globally, while also forming new partnerships and managing change. The author also provided advice for anyone performing a complete replatform, such as auditing the process, sharing successes and failures, and being an understanding and honest leader.

Completing a Successful Reorganization within a Well-Established Company

As CTO of a well-established organization, I was tasked with reorganizing the company to provide better cybersecurity and data security tools. I ran an audit to understand the company’s situation, implemented a platform approach, aligned job descriptions, and collaborated with leadership and teams. I also held a town hall meeting to discuss the reorganization and put in place KPIs to follow up with my team. The keys for a successful reorganization are to focus on processes, objectives, and pains, and to provide empathy during conversations.

How to Recognize Traits of High-Performance From Candidates with Non-Traditional Backgrounds

When a startup needed to scale, the hiring process was focused on finding an individual with a self-driven attitude and the ability to work independently. The candidate was given an entry into a fast-growing startup and provided with an environment to thrive in, with support and resources to gain more skills. The goal was to create a platform that would enable the candidate to succeed.

Understanding Career Growth: Promotion and Sideways Career Changes

As one progresses in their career, they must learn to adapt to new functions and solve different problems. It is important to take time to reflect and explore sideways opportunities in addition to the obvious route. There are tools available to help employees explore themselves, their role, and the ideal role for the future. It is also beneficial to explore one's values, motivations, and how their current role compares to their ideal position. This reflection exercise can help one establish expectations with stakeholders and mold their role and organizational structure to empower the visionary people in the org to complement their strengths effectively. If the current trajectory at the company starts to look like a poor fit for the long term, one should consider a sideways career change and work with their manager to ensure that opportunities to contribute more widely help them move in the right direction for the future.

(Re)building product teams: insights from recent recruitment

The hospitality industry was one of the hardest hit during the 2020 lockdowns, and the effects are still being felt today. This has caused a decrease in trust and an increase in high-risk employment. The hospitality tech industry has also been affected, making it difficult to find the right product managers. After months of searching, the author was able to build a team of seven diverse individuals by the end of 2021. The author learned the importance of diversity, transparency, and setting the right expectations throughout the recruitment process. The author is now looking for six more product managers and more senior talent to lead the team.

The Process of Scaling Small to Medium Sized Teams

Growing a team from small to medium size is a challenging process that requires hands-on attention, direction for problem-solving, and hiring struggles. It is important to identify existing problems and build a strong foundation before scaling the team. Additionally, it is important to build trust and create organizational structures to ensure a healthy culture for new hires. Finally, it is important to designate key team leads and be selective when hiring to ensure the team is successful.

How to Deal with Organizational Adversity

In this article, the author shares their experience of having a vision for a project that was not aligned with their leadership's. They explain how they pushed back against the tension, listened to feedback, and communicated their vision to customers and the industry. They also provide tips on how to ensure less confrontation, such as building small and impactful pieces first, being prepared to defend decisions, and being respectful and humble. Ultimately, they were successful in decreasing costs and executing the project within the timeframe.

How to Build and Manage the First Product Roadmap for a Startup

When creating a product roadmap for a startup, it is important to structure priorities based on customer and business needs, and to format the roadmap in a way that reflects its flexibility. It is also important to include learning and discovery initiatives, marketing and sales activities, and timelines in the roadmap. Regularly touching on the roadmap and aligning key players and stakeholders with the aptitude for change will help increase the success of the product roadmap.

From Big Tech to Startup: Adding Value From Day 1

When transitioning from a large tech company to a startup, one must be prepared for a different set of rules and structures. Tasks such as creating a hiring process, building data infrastructure, and coordinating user research must be done, and the mindset must shift from data-driven to insights-driven. To be successful in a startup, one must add value from day one, develop processes, leverage their network, and outsource non-core tasks. Additionally, one must be careful not to recommend major changes while still new and focus on team relations to impact delivery.

Should You Stay Up to Date with Technical Skills As a Product Manager?

Having technical skills is essential for managers to stay connected to their team and understand their day-to-day tasks. Investing in learning new coding languages and data visualizers can help product owners reduce turnaround time and increase team motivation. Additionally, having technical skills can help managers innovate further and create more value for the company.

How to Spark Sales-Driven Change

A product owner at a B2B company noticed that customers were buying multiple products that they didn't need, and the sales team was pitching products that weren't suitable for certain customers. To address this, the product owner proposed a six-month experiment to create a data model that would recommend which product a sales team should sell to a customer at a single point in time. The experiment was successful and is still being used even after the product owner left the company. The product owner learned that it is important to keep the whole company in mind when optimizing and to gain both bottom-up and top-down support when sparking a significant change in an organization.

Getting Creative to Land Your First Tech Job

This article details the journey of a job seeker who was unable to gain a job in the Fintech industry. To stand out from other candidates, the job seeker created a PowerPoint presentation that detailed features and business proposals related to the company they were applying for. This strategy worked and the job seeker eventually landed a job in the product management market. The article also provides lessons learned, such as the importance of leveraging experience and taking any opportunity as a junior to build a resume.

What to Do When Candidates Turn Down Your Job Offer

Candidates are increasingly turning down job offers, even from top multinational technology companies. This could be due to employers not doing enough to pitch their company to candidates during the interview process. To resolve this, employers should create a framework of training for interviewers to ensure they spend time talking about the company's mission and vision, and how the role fits into the candidate's career goals. Additionally, employers should advocate for their brand, speak up about their Glassdoor job ratings, and instill a high amount of confidence in potential employees.

Strategies to Deliver Effective Employee Feedback

Feedback is an essential part of creating a high-performing culture. Managers should practice radical candor and use the right words and phrases when delivering feedback. The observer's bias, mission skillset, and excellence theories should be taken into consideration when providing feedback. Don't wait for quarterly reviews; provide feedback on a weekly basis to ensure issues are addressed quickly and efficiently.

Reasons Promoting From Within Is Better for Growing Your Business

When a principal engineer left a team without a backup plan, the Associate Director had to decide whether to groom a senior engineer to the next level or hire a Lead engineer from outside. The Associate Director chose to groom the senior engineer, giving him more ownership and products, and dividing the project lifecycle into three phases. The Associate Director invested a lot of time with the senior engineer, providing feedback and 1:1s, and after two quarters the senior engineer was ready to lead independently. The lessons learned from this experience were to invest in the internal team, be tactful in choosing and nurturing second-line leaders, and lead by example.

Change Management in Engineering Organization

In order to refactor the mobile app architecture to MVVMC, the engineering team worked directly with the UX designers to understand the onboarding flow and create a connection between the two teams. This enabled the engineers to start the framework of the architecture ahead of the onboarding flow being fully defined, and when the product was ready, the final update took less time. The project was released within the high-level deadline, creating less pressure on the product team. The lessons learned from this experience were to involve the engineering team early on in the process and for engineering leaders to find accelerators to add special technology without always being at the end of the chain.

Communication Is the Key in the Workplace. Here’s How to Improve.

Poor communication in the workplace can lead to ineffective one-on-one meetings and staff meetings. To break this cycle, it is important to provide different forums for status updates, focus on improving person-to-person communication, and create goals and objectives on a quarterly basis. It is also important to create a platform where everyone can talk about emotions and feedback, and to show vulnerability in order to create a culture of psychological safety.

Becoming a Manager of Engineers: Focusing on Team Visibility

The author was managing a large engineering team of 80 people, but the business was frustrated with the lack of delivery. To increase visibility of the engineering team's work, the author created a dashboard to explain to the executives, leadership, and business side of teams the need to keep up with yearly updates and manage technical debt. After three years, the dashboard showed improvements in technical debt and time spent on bugs, and provided a better understanding of the team's capacity and a more reliable roadmap. The author learned the importance of transparency and open communication in creating a better quality of work.

The Role of Testing in the Engineering Product Development Process

This article discusses how a dedicated QA team can add value to the development process. It explains how the team created a framework, wrote tests, and trained QA engineers to optimize them. This resulted in better coverage of automation, ownership of the test, and a better understanding of the technology. The collaboration between QA engineers and developers made the tests faster, less brittle, and the code more robust. The article also highlights the importance of collaboration and testing as an essential part of the process.

Tips to Get Back to Work After a Career Break

After taking a 6 year break from her career to take care of her kids, a woman decided to make a comeback to the tech industry. She started from scratch as an apprentice in a Ruby on Rails consulting company and worked her way up to a product manager role. She experienced many challenges and rejections, but with the support of her family and her passion for the industry, she was able to make it happen. She learned that if you are passionate about something, don't be afraid to start again and trust the process.

How to Replatforming a Major Organization

This article discusses the process of transforming an established organization that had been working in the same space for 30 years. The author implemented best practices to deliver products faster and globally, while also forming new partnerships and managing change. The author also provided advice for anyone performing a complete replatform, such as auditing the process, sharing successes and failures, and being an understanding and honest leader.

Completing a Successful Reorganization within a Well-Established Company

As CTO of a well-established organization, I was tasked with reorganizing the company to provide better cybersecurity and data security tools. I ran an audit to understand the company’s situation, implemented a platform approach, aligned job descriptions, and collaborated with leadership and teams. I also held a town hall meeting to discuss the reorganization and put in place KPIs to follow up with my team. The keys for a successful reorganization are to focus on processes, objectives, and pains, and to provide empathy during conversations.

How to Recognize Traits of High-Performance From Candidates with Non-Traditional Backgrounds

When a startup needed to scale, the hiring process was focused on finding an individual with a self-driven attitude and the ability to work independently. The candidate was given an entry into a fast-growing startup and provided with an environment to thrive in, with support and resources to gain more skills. The goal was to create a platform that would enable the candidate to succeed.

Understanding Career Growth: Promotion and Sideways Career Changes

As one progresses in their career, they must learn to adapt to new functions and solve different problems. It is important to take time to reflect and explore sideways opportunities in addition to the obvious route. There are tools available to help employees explore themselves, their role, and the ideal role for the future. It is also beneficial to explore one's values, motivations, and how their current role compares to their ideal position. This reflection exercise can help one establish expectations with stakeholders and mold their role and organizational structure to empower the visionary people in the org to complement their strengths effectively. If the current trajectory at the company starts to look like a poor fit for the long term, one should consider a sideways career change and work with their manager to ensure that opportunities to contribute more widely help them move in the right direction for the future.

(Re)building product teams: insights from recent recruitment

The hospitality industry was one of the hardest hit during the 2020 lockdowns, and the effects are still being felt today. This has caused a decrease in trust and an increase in high-risk employment. The hospitality tech industry has also been affected, making it difficult to find the right product managers. After months of searching, the author was able to build a team of seven diverse individuals by the end of 2021. The author learned the importance of diversity, transparency, and setting the right expectations throughout the recruitment process. The author is now looking for six more product managers and more senior talent to lead the team.

The Process of Scaling Small to Medium Sized Teams

Growing a team from small to medium size is a challenging process that requires hands-on attention, direction for problem-solving, and hiring struggles. It is important to identify existing problems and build a strong foundation before scaling the team. Additionally, it is important to build trust and create organizational structures to ensure a healthy culture for new hires. Finally, it is important to designate key team leads and be selective when hiring to ensure the team is successful.

How to Deal with Organizational Adversity

In this article, the author shares their experience of having a vision for a project that was not aligned with their leadership's. They explain how they pushed back against the tension, listened to feedback, and communicated their vision to customers and the industry. They also provide tips on how to ensure less confrontation, such as building small and impactful pieces first, being prepared to defend decisions, and being respectful and humble. Ultimately, they were successful in decreasing costs and executing the project within the timeframe.

How to Build and Manage the First Product Roadmap for a Startup

When creating a product roadmap for a startup, it is important to structure priorities based on customer and business needs, and to format the roadmap in a way that reflects its flexibility. It is also important to include learning and discovery initiatives, marketing and sales activities, and timelines in the roadmap. Regularly touching on the roadmap and aligning key players and stakeholders with the aptitude for change will help increase the success of the product roadmap.

From Big Tech to Startup: Adding Value From Day 1

When transitioning from a large tech company to a startup, one must be prepared for a different set of rules and structures. Tasks such as creating a hiring process, building data infrastructure, and coordinating user research must be done, and the mindset must shift from data-driven to insights-driven. To be successful in a startup, one must add value from day one, develop processes, leverage their network, and outsource non-core tasks. Additionally, one must be careful not to recommend major changes while still new and focus on team relations to impact delivery.

Should You Stay Up to Date with Technical Skills As a Product Manager?

Having technical skills is essential for managers to stay connected to their team and understand their day-to-day tasks. Investing in learning new coding languages and data visualizers can help product owners reduce turnaround time and increase team motivation. Additionally, having technical skills can help managers innovate further and create more value for the company.

How to Spark Sales-Driven Change

A product owner at a B2B company noticed that customers were buying multiple products that they didn't need, and the sales team was pitching products that weren't suitable for certain customers. To address this, the product owner proposed a six-month experiment to create a data model that would recommend which product a sales team should sell to a customer at a single point in time. The experiment was successful and is still being used even after the product owner left the company. The product owner learned that it is important to keep the whole company in mind when optimizing and to gain both bottom-up and top-down support when sparking a significant change in an organization.

Getting Creative to Land Your First Tech Job

This article details the journey of a job seeker who was unable to gain a job in the Fintech industry. To stand out from other candidates, the job seeker created a PowerPoint presentation that detailed features and business proposals related to the company they were applying for. This strategy worked and the job seeker eventually landed a job in the product management market. The article also provides lessons learned, such as the importance of leveraging experience and taking any opportunity as a junior to build a resume.

What to Do When Candidates Turn Down Your Job Offer

Candidates are increasingly turning down job offers, even from top multinational technology companies. This could be due to employers not doing enough to pitch their company to candidates during the interview process. To resolve this, employers should create a framework of training for interviewers to ensure they spend time talking about the company's mission and vision, and how the role fits into the candidate's career goals. Additionally, employers should advocate for their brand, speak up about their Glassdoor job ratings, and instill a high amount of confidence in potential employees.

Strategies to Deliver Effective Employee Feedback

Feedback is an essential part of creating a high-performing culture. Managers should practice radical candor and use the right words and phrases when delivering feedback. The observer's bias, mission skillset, and excellence theories should be taken into consideration when providing feedback. Don't wait for quarterly reviews; provide feedback on a weekly basis to ensure issues are addressed quickly and efficiently.

Reasons Promoting From Within Is Better for Growing Your Business

When a principal engineer left a team without a backup plan, the Associate Director had to decide whether to groom a senior engineer to the next level or hire a Lead engineer from outside. The Associate Director chose to groom the senior engineer, giving him more ownership and products, and dividing the project lifecycle into three phases. The Associate Director invested a lot of time with the senior engineer, providing feedback and 1:1s, and after two quarters the senior engineer was ready to lead independently. The lessons learned from this experience were to invest in the internal team, be tactful in choosing and nurturing second-line leaders, and lead by example.

Change Management in Engineering Organization

In order to refactor the mobile app architecture to MVVMC, the engineering team worked directly with the UX designers to understand the onboarding flow and create a connection between the two teams. This enabled the engineers to start the framework of the architecture ahead of the onboarding flow being fully defined, and when the product was ready, the final update took less time. The project was released within the high-level deadline, creating less pressure on the product team. The lessons learned from this experience were to involve the engineering team early on in the process and for engineering leaders to find accelerators to add special technology without always being at the end of the chain.

Communication Is the Key in the Workplace. Here’s How to Improve.

Poor communication in the workplace can lead to ineffective one-on-one meetings and staff meetings. To break this cycle, it is important to provide different forums for status updates, focus on improving person-to-person communication, and create goals and objectives on a quarterly basis. It is also important to create a platform where everyone can talk about emotions and feedback, and to show vulnerability in order to create a culture of psychological safety.

Becoming a Manager of Engineers: Focusing on Team Visibility

The author was managing a large engineering team of 80 people, but the business was frustrated with the lack of delivery. To increase visibility of the engineering team's work, the author created a dashboard to explain to the executives, leadership, and business side of teams the need to keep up with yearly updates and manage technical debt. After three years, the dashboard showed improvements in technical debt and time spent on bugs, and provided a better understanding of the team's capacity and a more reliable roadmap. The author learned the importance of transparency and open communication in creating a better quality of work.

The Role of Testing in the Engineering Product Development Process

This article discusses how a dedicated QA team can add value to the development process. It explains how the team created a framework, wrote tests, and trained QA engineers to optimize them. This resulted in better coverage of automation, ownership of the test, and a better understanding of the technology. The collaboration between QA engineers and developers made the tests faster, less brittle, and the code more robust. The article also highlights the importance of collaboration and testing as an essential part of the process.

Tips to Get Back to Work After a Career Break

After taking a 6 year break from her career to take care of her kids, a woman decided to make a comeback to the tech industry. She started from scratch as an apprentice in a Ruby on Rails consulting company and worked her way up to a product manager role. She experienced many challenges and rejections, but with the support of her family and her passion for the industry, she was able to make it happen. She learned that if you are passionate about something, don't be afraid to start again and trust the process.

How to Replatforming a Major Organization

This article discusses the process of transforming an established organization that had been working in the same space for 30 years. The author implemented best practices to deliver products faster and globally, while also forming new partnerships and managing change. The author also provided advice for anyone performing a complete replatform, such as auditing the process, sharing successes and failures, and being an understanding and honest leader.

Completing a Successful Reorganization within a Well-Established Company

As CTO of a well-established organization, I was tasked with reorganizing the company to provide better cybersecurity and data security tools. I ran an audit to understand the company’s situation, implemented a platform approach, aligned job descriptions, and collaborated with leadership and teams. I also held a town hall meeting to discuss the reorganization and put in place KPIs to follow up with my team. The keys for a successful reorganization are to focus on processes, objectives, and pains, and to provide empathy during conversations.

How to Recognize Traits of High-Performance From Candidates with Non-Traditional Backgrounds

When a startup needed to scale, the hiring process was focused on finding an individual with a self-driven attitude and the ability to work independently. The candidate was given an entry into a fast-growing startup and provided with an environment to thrive in, with support and resources to gain more skills. The goal was to create a platform that would enable the candidate to succeed.

Understanding Career Growth: Promotion and Sideways Career Changes

As one progresses in their career, they must learn to adapt to new functions and solve different problems. It is important to take time to reflect and explore sideways opportunities in addition to the obvious route. There are tools available to help employees explore themselves, their role, and the ideal role for the future. It is also beneficial to explore one's values, motivations, and how their current role compares to their ideal position. This reflection exercise can help one establish expectations with stakeholders and mold their role and organizational structure to empower the visionary people in the org to complement their strengths effectively. If the current trajectory at the company starts to look like a poor fit for the long term, one should consider a sideways career change and work with their manager to ensure that opportunities to contribute more widely help them move in the right direction for the future.

(Re)building product teams: insights from recent recruitment

The hospitality industry was one of the hardest hit during the 2020 lockdowns, and the effects are still being felt today. This has caused a decrease in trust and an increase in high-risk employment. The hospitality tech industry has also been affected, making it difficult to find the right product managers. After months of searching, the author was able to build a team of seven diverse individuals by the end of 2021. The author learned the importance of diversity, transparency, and setting the right expectations throughout the recruitment process. The author is now looking for six more product managers and more senior talent to lead the team.

The Process of Scaling Small to Medium Sized Teams

Growing a team from small to medium size is a challenging process that requires hands-on attention, direction for problem-solving, and hiring struggles. It is important to identify existing problems and build a strong foundation before scaling the team. Additionally, it is important to build trust and create organizational structures to ensure a healthy culture for new hires. Finally, it is important to designate key team leads and be selective when hiring to ensure the team is successful.

How to Deal with Organizational Adversity

In this article, the author shares their experience of having a vision for a project that was not aligned with their leadership's. They explain how they pushed back against the tension, listened to feedback, and communicated their vision to customers and the industry. They also provide tips on how to ensure less confrontation, such as building small and impactful pieces first, being prepared to defend decisions, and being respectful and humble. Ultimately, they were successful in decreasing costs and executing the project within the timeframe.

How to Build and Manage the First Product Roadmap for a Startup

When creating a product roadmap for a startup, it is important to structure priorities based on customer and business needs, and to format the roadmap in a way that reflects its flexibility. It is also important to include learning and discovery initiatives, marketing and sales activities, and timelines in the roadmap. Regularly touching on the roadmap and aligning key players and stakeholders with the aptitude for change will help increase the success of the product roadmap.

From Big Tech to Startup: Adding Value From Day 1

When transitioning from a large tech company to a startup, one must be prepared for a different set of rules and structures. Tasks such as creating a hiring process, building data infrastructure, and coordinating user research must be done, and the mindset must shift from data-driven to insights-driven. To be successful in a startup, one must add value from day one, develop processes, leverage their network, and outsource non-core tasks. Additionally, one must be careful not to recommend major changes while still new and focus on team relations to impact delivery.

Should You Stay Up to Date with Technical Skills As a Product Manager?

Having technical skills is essential for managers to stay connected to their team and understand their day-to-day tasks. Investing in learning new coding languages and data visualizers can help product owners reduce turnaround time and increase team motivation. Additionally, having technical skills can help managers innovate further and create more value for the company.

How to Spark Sales-Driven Change

A product owner at a B2B company noticed that customers were buying multiple products that they didn't need, and the sales team was pitching products that weren't suitable for certain customers. To address this, the product owner proposed a six-month experiment to create a data model that would recommend which product a sales team should sell to a customer at a single point in time. The experiment was successful and is still being used even after the product owner left the company. The product owner learned that it is important to keep the whole company in mind when optimizing and to gain both bottom-up and top-down support when sparking a significant change in an organization.

Getting Creative to Land Your First Tech Job

This article details the journey of a job seeker who was unable to gain a job in the Fintech industry. To stand out from other candidates, the job seeker created a PowerPoint presentation that detailed features and business proposals related to the company they were applying for. This strategy worked and the job seeker eventually landed a job in the product management market. The article also provides lessons learned, such as the importance of leveraging experience and taking any opportunity as a junior to build a resume.

What to Do When Candidates Turn Down Your Job Offer

Candidates are increasingly turning down job offers, even from top multinational technology companies. This could be due to employers not doing enough to pitch their company to candidates during the interview process. To resolve this, employers should create a framework of training for interviewers to ensure they spend time talking about the company's mission and vision, and how the role fits into the candidate's career goals. Additionally, employers should advocate for their brand, speak up about their Glassdoor job ratings, and instill a high amount of confidence in potential employees.

Strategies to Deliver Effective Employee Feedback

Feedback is an essential part of creating a high-performing culture. Managers should practice radical candor and use the right words and phrases when delivering feedback. The observer's bias, mission skillset, and excellence theories should be taken into consideration when providing feedback. Don't wait for quarterly reviews; provide feedback on a weekly basis to ensure issues are addressed quickly and efficiently.

Reasons Promoting From Within Is Better for Growing Your Business

When a principal engineer left a team without a backup plan, the Associate Director had to decide whether to groom a senior engineer to the next level or hire a Lead engineer from outside. The Associate Director chose to groom the senior engineer, giving him more ownership and products, and dividing the project lifecycle into three phases. The Associate Director invested a lot of time with the senior engineer, providing feedback and 1:1s, and after two quarters the senior engineer was ready to lead independently. The lessons learned from this experience were to invest in the internal team, be tactful in choosing and nurturing second-line leaders, and lead by example.

Change Management in Engineering Organization

In order to refactor the mobile app architecture to MVVMC, the engineering team worked directly with the UX designers to understand the onboarding flow and create a connection between the two teams. This enabled the engineers to start the framework of the architecture ahead of the onboarding flow being fully defined, and when the product was ready, the final update took less time. The project was released within the high-level deadline, creating less pressure on the product team. The lessons learned from this experience were to involve the engineering team early on in the process and for engineering leaders to find accelerators to add special technology without always being at the end of the chain.

Communication Is the Key in the Workplace. Here’s How to Improve.

Poor communication in the workplace can lead to ineffective one-on-one meetings and staff meetings. To break this cycle, it is important to provide different forums for status updates, focus on improving person-to-person communication, and create goals and objectives on a quarterly basis. It is also important to create a platform where everyone can talk about emotions and feedback, and to show vulnerability in order to create a culture of psychological safety.

Becoming a Manager of Engineers: Focusing on Team Visibility

The author was managing a large engineering team of 80 people, but the business was frustrated with the lack of delivery. To increase visibility of the engineering team's work, the author created a dashboard to explain to the executives, leadership, and business side of teams the need to keep up with yearly updates and manage technical debt. After three years, the dashboard showed improvements in technical debt and time spent on bugs, and provided a better understanding of the team's capacity and a more reliable roadmap. The author learned the importance of transparency and open communication in creating a better quality of work.

The Role of Testing in the Engineering Product Development Process

This article discusses how a dedicated QA team can add value to the development process. It explains how the team created a framework, wrote tests, and trained QA engineers to optimize them. This resulted in better coverage of automation, ownership of the test, and a better understanding of the technology. The collaboration between QA engineers and developers made the tests faster, less brittle, and the code more robust. The article also highlights the importance of collaboration and testing as an essential part of the process.

Tips to Get Back to Work After a Career Break

After taking a 6 year break from her career to take care of her kids, a woman decided to make a comeback to the tech industry. She started from scratch as an apprentice in a Ruby on Rails consulting company and worked her way up to a product manager role. She experienced many challenges and rejections, but with the support of her family and her passion for the industry, she was able to make it happen. She learned that if you are passionate about something, don't be afraid to start again and trust the process.

How to Replatforming a Major Organization

This article discusses the process of transforming an established organization that had been working in the same space for 30 years. The author implemented best practices to deliver products faster and globally, while also forming new partnerships and managing change. The author also provided advice for anyone performing a complete replatform, such as auditing the process, sharing successes and failures, and being an understanding and honest leader.

Completing a Successful Reorganization within a Well-Established Company

As CTO of a well-established organization, I was tasked with reorganizing the company to provide better cybersecurity and data security tools. I ran an audit to understand the company’s situation, implemented a platform approach, aligned job descriptions, and collaborated with leadership and teams. I also held a town hall meeting to discuss the reorganization and put in place KPIs to follow up with my team. The keys for a successful reorganization are to focus on processes, objectives, and pains, and to provide empathy during conversations.

How to Recognize Traits of High-Performance From Candidates with Non-Traditional Backgrounds

When a startup needed to scale, the hiring process was focused on finding an individual with a self-driven attitude and the ability to work independently. The candidate was given an entry into a fast-growing startup and provided with an environment to thrive in, with support and resources to gain more skills. The goal was to create a platform that would enable the candidate to succeed.

Understanding Career Growth: Promotion and Sideways Career Changes

As one progresses in their career, they must learn to adapt to new functions and solve different problems. It is important to take time to reflect and explore sideways opportunities in addition to the obvious route. There are tools available to help employees explore themselves, their role, and the ideal role for the future. It is also beneficial to explore one's values, motivations, and how their current role compares to their ideal position. This reflection exercise can help one establish expectations with stakeholders and mold their role and organizational structure to empower the visionary people in the org to complement their strengths effectively. If the current trajectory at the company starts to look like a poor fit for the long term, one should consider a sideways career change and work with their manager to ensure that opportunities to contribute more widely help them move in the right direction for the future.

(Re)building product teams: insights from recent recruitment

The hospitality industry was one of the hardest hit during the 2020 lockdowns, and the effects are still being felt today. This has caused a decrease in trust and an increase in high-risk employment. The hospitality tech industry has also been affected, making it difficult to find the right product managers. After months of searching, the author was able to build a team of seven diverse individuals by the end of 2021. The author learned the importance of diversity, transparency, and setting the right expectations throughout the recruitment process. The author is now looking for six more product managers and more senior talent to lead the team.

The Process of Scaling Small to Medium Sized Teams

Growing a team from small to medium size is a challenging process that requires hands-on attention, direction for problem-solving, and hiring struggles. It is important to identify existing problems and build a strong foundation before scaling the team. Additionally, it is important to build trust and create organizational structures to ensure a healthy culture for new hires. Finally, it is important to designate key team leads and be selective when hiring to ensure the team is successful.

How to Deal with Organizational Adversity

In this article, the author shares their experience of having a vision for a project that was not aligned with their leadership's. They explain how they pushed back against the tension, listened to feedback, and communicated their vision to customers and the industry. They also provide tips on how to ensure less confrontation, such as building small and impactful pieces first, being prepared to defend decisions, and being respectful and humble. Ultimately, they were successful in decreasing costs and executing the project within the timeframe.