00:00

You’re listening to Agile Ideas, the podcast hosted by Fatimah Abbouchi. For anyone listening out there not having a good day, please know there is help out there. Hi everyone and welcome back to another episode of Agile Ideas. I’m Fatima, CEO at Agile Management Office, mental Health Ambassador and your host. This podcast is sponsored by Agile Management Office, helping with high-impact delivery execution in an Agile era.

00:32

Before we jump into today’s special guest, I just wanted to let you know about the launch of my PMO Playbook. It’s an online newsletter available on Substack that is full of how to practical, hands-on, experienced knowledge about project management and PMO In particular. There are a couple of plays on there that tell you how to do pipeline management, how to do dependency management. These are based on practical things that I have applied over the last 20 years and I’m going to continue building and adding to that PMO playbook. So, check out the PMO playbook. There is a free subscription option as well, and there will be content that I’ll be sharing there that I’m not sharing anywhere else, so make sure to check it out. I will include notes for that in the show notes. We’ll include notes for that in the show notes.

01:23

Now on to today’s guest. Today we have Adrienne Tan. Adrienne has over 20 years of experience in product management. She is passionate about helping organizations lift their product capability and leverage product management to drive business value with products that customers love. As the co-founder and CEO of BrainMates and leading the product, she leads a team of experienced product experts who deliver practical, product-led change to clients across various domains and industries. And when I talk about product management, this lady has it all she has the experience, the capability, the knowledge of product management and, above all else, the experience to back it all up. So please join me in welcoming Adrienne to the show.

02:11

Okay, adrienne, welcome to the show. Thank you for having me, fatimah. It’s been really great following what you’ve been doing since we first connected a few about a couple of months ago when we were speaking on a panel together. One of the questions I wanted to kick us off with, because I think it’s something I’ve been speaking to a lot of people about, is what the hell is going on in the product market right now in terms of like opportunities, roles, like it’s gone, absolutely bonkers. Is that your impression as well?

02:41

uh, well, it was certainly. The product market was healthier during the um mid-covid years. It has decreased substantially in terms of, especially, leadership positions. So, the hiring of new product leaders is somewhat limited, low at the moment, which is a bit sad because I think people over hired during the, you know, during the post-COVID years. After the first year of COVID, people were planning on how they would grow, develop their products. Everyone was excited about scaling and so what they did was that they, I feel over hired in product, hoping to, you know, supercharge their product development cycles.

03:39

I think that, given the changes in the money market, because of the higher interest rates, money is more expensive and because money is more expensive, people think a little bit harder about whether they should invest in new product development, whether they’ll get that return. If they don’t feel sufficiently confident about that, what will happen is that they’ll start to pull back and they have pulled back in terms of developing new products, and that’ll have a flow on impact on the people that are being hired, and you would have seen that there have been quite a few redundancies. I don’t think um that redundant, you know, especially last year there was quite a few numbers of redundancies, but I think at the moment it’s probably right sizing, trying to find the right skill sets and capabilities to be able to augment their teams. So, in terms of hiring, it’s maybe slowing down now do you think it’s probably been the most prominent?

04:51

over the last, yeah, particularly with the rise of agile.

04:56

Um, I feel, and I wanted to ask some questions about that, which we’ll get to in a minute, but yeah, what’s your thoughts on that?

05:02

um, you know, I started, started in product in 2000, So that was 24 years ago and clearly people were not as knowledgeable about product management as they are now. They didn’t really understand the purpose of the function and the role in organisations. That has changed significantly because of the results that product people have gotten overseas. So, you know, you look to Silicon Valley, and you see that they’re doing some amazing work, and so you know us as companies in Australia reflect and think, well, how do I replicate some of that? They see that product has a significant you know, has made a significant impact in terms of growth for some of these companies and so we’ve looked to others to bring back that kind of product management narrative and practice into this country. And so, absolutely, there’s been a ton of interest in product. Companies understand that they need good product people to be able to develop great products and services.

06:07

You know, considering you mentioned Silicon Valley, considering a lot of high growth startup scale ups, a lot of successful ones, basically starting in the sort of product led type organizations Do you think that there is more of a shift towards a product led organization as sort of the new frontier? Do you see that shift still kind of happening?

06:28

Oh yeah, absolutely, the shift is still happening. It’s a very hard shift to make because most of our companies are enterprise, mature organisations, the companies that make money in this country. Right, if we look to it, the people that mine, the people that you know, run the supermarkets, the banks. They’re really large organisations and they have a lot of legacy. You know systems, culture, people, processes, and in order to become product-led, you need to change fundamentally your company operating model, and that takes time if you’re a really large business and that requires a lot of leadership and leaders to understand the benefits of becoming product-led, which are significant.

07:15

Right, you know the idea about becoming product-led is not just to you know, make fun products and put them out in the market, is to really grow your business significantly through the products that you create in your organisation.

07:31

And that’s really interesting because one of the things that I’ve been seeing and speaking to people about lately is the fact that organisations have gone from, you know, traditionally large enterprise chains to actually breaking up their business into this sort of modular, divisional sort of, and product-led divisions. And it seems as though, in the wake of this sort of high agile ways of working which I know agile has been around for 25-plus years, but I’ve kind of seen a shift in the last five to ten years where it’s been more prominent and one of the things I wanted to ask you about is there is a bit of a disconnect, I think, in people’s understanding between a product owner and a product manager. So, what’s your thoughts on that? I’m sure you’ve got some, oh my goodness Okay.

08:14

So firstly, I think that product people do conflate product management and agile, and they are different. You know, agile is a way of delivering great products and services, but product management encapsulate a little bit more than that, especially if you go up further, up what I call a zoom level and we look down on some of the delivery work. The intent of product is to be able to identify the problems to be solved rather than, you know, trying to figure out how to solve those problems. And that’s where I think agile plays a part. And if we don’t, if we simply introduce new agile practices without really thinking about how it interfaces into product, or even if you don’t introduce any product practices, then I think there’s fundamentally a disconnect between what you’re trying to do as a business, which is essentially, you know, be a profit.

09:14

Most businesses yes, there are non-for-profits is to be a profitable, growing organization, and so it’s really important to connect the agile practices with good product practices as well. You don’t, you know you can’t run with one without the other, but largely in Australia, most people are focused on agile transformations and so they focus on how to build great products rather than which great products to build, and they haven’t yet connected those two. They haven’t yet really linked those two closely because most organisations believe that somebody, some executive out there, will tell them you know what products should be going to market, and they just then push those ideas into the agile process, essentially the agile machine.

10:10

It’s interesting. I read somewhere that you said that it was never about the delivery of features. For us oldies, it was always about the value that the features delivered, and that seems to be something that a lot of people tend to forget.

10:23

And that’s so silly, isn’t it? Sorry, but what’s the point of making something if it doesn’t really benefit your customers and also doesn’t benefit the business? There’s no point just simply going through the process, and delivery itself is an output. What you’re trying to drive for is a meaningful outcome for your customers and your business. That means that the customer can do their jobs better, whatever that job is, because your products are assisted with that and, as a result, is willing to exchange money, time, effort, whatever it might be, and your business, as a result, benefits from that exchange.

11:01

And do you think that, with the rise of agile ways of working, and those ways of working be so different across company to company? Do you think that it’s helped or hindered? You know true product management?

11:14

To be honest, I think it’s hindered true product management because we’ve again gone back to delivery and making features. So, we’re making things faster, but we’re not necessarily delivering value faster, which is two very separate things. And look, I like working in the agile way, don’t get me wrong. You know I’m looking for people who are not just implementing an agile process, but who have agile mindsets. They’re you’re agile behaviours. They can understand and work in uncertainty and navigate through that and make change quickly. But it has hindered. In fact, it’s not only hindered, but also kind of put a blanket on product. It’s hindered because we’re so focused on agile that we didn’t think about product, or we’ve thought of agile like product, when actually it’s two separate things.

12:11

And why do you think that is? Is it lack education? Is it ignorance? Is it? Where do you think that stems from?

12:18

It stems from people believing that they know what to do, and so they’re looking for people to make things faster for them. It’s a cultural thing, right? It’s because we think, you know, as executives in large organizations, we think, well, how do I unlock value faster? And that’s, you know, and that’s what they would think, and they think, okay, well, let me go and look where the problems might exist. And sure, sometimes the problem exists in delivery and people not playing well together, not moving as fast together, and most executives then believe that if they move faster and they send things out to market faster, they’ll get the results that they’re after. But in actual fact, it’s actually not that. It’s not about being faster. It’s about identifying which opportunities, bets, you want to pursue faster, rather than building just faster, right?

13:15

Yeah, absolutely. And you raise a good point, because you can put out a thousand new products, but if they don’t meet the customer’s expectations or the value that it’s supposed to deliver for a customer, then’s the point.

13:26

You’ve just wasted all that delivery effort oh, yes, yes, and you’ve actually not only wasted delivery effort, but you’ve also wasted opportunity yeah, absolutely, and what’s that opportunity cost exactly?

13:37

that’s right. So if, if you know executives want to move faster and I use executives broadly because you know, in inverted commas, it could be your CEO, it could be your GMs of the world, it could be a mix of your leadership team, your management team, but if they want to move faster, they need to enable their team to be able to figure out what problems to be solved faster what problems to be solved faster and other than the faster.

14:08

you know, I guess, silver bullet that people think Agile is thinking about the work that you’ve been doing at BrainMates and product management in general. What other I guess misconception have you come across or been privileged, particularly when maybe a client rings up and says, hey, we need X, and you’re thinking that like, is there any sort of misconceptions or, I guess, challenge areas that are really more prominent that you hear about often? In product or in agile, or in both. In when trying to merge product and agile together.

14:39

Yeah.

14:42

So actually, goes back to what you’ve asked, the original question what’s the difference between PM and PO?

14:49

What happens, what I’ve seen happen, especially in large enterprises, is that they go through you know what they call an agile transformation, and they then start to make shifts in. They start to look at the agile operating model and they see that there’s certain roles and titles in that, in that operating model, and they believe that simply changing the titles of some of the people in the organization makes them more agile. They forget really about the fundamental things that enable an organization to be able to do you know, to be able to deliver great products and services, and that, ultimately, is really understanding the capabilities of their people. Right, they think simply changing somebody’s job title will make a difference and change the culture in their organisation. But it’s, you know what happens is it just causes so much confusion? So, knowing product people to be called a product chapter lead or a principal chapter lead, a product owner, so they’ve got all of these titles that are really meaningless without the substance behind those.

16:08

And that’s confusing not only for the individuals when they go out to market and trying to secure new positions, but also, as you said, within the organization. I concur with that, and I actually have seen product owners which you know is a role in some agile-based methods that actually you know was a project manager then give them the product owner hat and then there’s a confusion between what they do and what your operational product managers do that you know lead a particular product within the organization and there’s just this broad disconnect between it. So, I think you’re right Roles and responsibilities are usually not clearly articulated and maybe that’s because it’s not well understood to begin with.

16:42

Yeah, and also capabilities required to be able to perform those roles. I don’t think people really understand those. Like I say, it’s not sexy when we talk about skills and capabilities. It’s sexy to talk about you know different ways of doing agile, because the nomenclature, the language is so much. It’s more fun.

17:05

Nobody wants to go back to basics, but we you know, we’re dull perhaps, but we like to go back to basics and understand, you know, the capabilities an organisation requires to be able to deliver that strategy, before even thinking about roles, responsibilities, job descriptions. So, we go back to basics. But there is back to your original question. There is a big difference between a PO and a PM and they’re not interchangeable. Sometimes a PM might do some PO work within an agile you know method, practice, whatever we want to call it, but a PO isn’t a PM. A PO is a specific role within a scrum.

17:50

And it’s interesting, you know you talk about like skills and capabilities, I think to your point at least I can say from what I’ve seen in some of these agile trends being on the governance side is that they are usually cookie cutting, a model with roles based on you know, one of your big consultancies, and so that’s why you know you typically find people that just need to be allocated to a box, so they’re just putting a square peg in a round hole, so to speak. Thinking about um capability around product management, product, true product management what sort of skills and competencies do you see are essential for good product managers?

18:26

1. So, there are some uh core um capabilities that I think are required for product Around research. So, starting around kind of you know research, but not just research in terms of customer research. It’s about you know gathering, understanding market intelligence, being able to have foresight, to be able to see where the market might be heading and where you might be able to position your product in the future. There’s visioning and there’s strategy. That’s core to product. There is, you know, data, data analysis, really understanding data and using data in your decision making. There is, you know, some work around prioritisation, ability to make decisions based on the you know, based on the information, the context around you. So visioning, strategy, research, experimentation, being able to experiment, get results and decide how to move forward. So those are what I call craft skills. There are more go to market, for example, lifecycle management.

19:46

They’re all craft skills, but as a product person, you have to work as a team and what becomes so important for us is our adaptive skills, that’s, those kinds of human skills I hate to use the word soft skills because they’re harder than craft skills. You can always learn how to do a roadmap. What is hard is actually selling that roadmap. So those adaptive skills are super important as a product person and as you progress through your career, those adaptive skills are super important. As a product person and as you progress through your career, the adaptive skills you’re going to call upon more of your adaptive skills than you are upon your craft skills. Those are the influencing skills the ability to negotiate, communicate, story tell, convince, do all those sorts of things that become super important. That’s your superpowers, really.

20:35

I that and I think there’s no, there’s no need to downplay the importance of soft skills. They are essential to any role really to be successful, even in project management. One thing that I wanted to touch on from that list that you said I was interesting that you mentioned life cycle management at the very end and you mentioned about you know seven or eight other things, which just reiterates that product management isn’t just about delivering products about the value, so I love that, so I think that’s great.

20:59

No, it’s about making sure that your product, like delivery of your first product, is the first step. Then it’s always trying to understand its position in the market. How you move it forward. What levers do you need to pull, whether it’s more of a sales lever or more product lever, so you need more features or less features, or your marketing levers, so you need to be able to understand the levers that are available to you, manipulate those levers to ensure that your products always will position with the right target market as it progresses through its life cycle to in order to deliver the business results that you’re after and then, and then you talked about go to market one thing that’s sort of becoming a little bit more prominent.

21:46

I was talking to some chief marketing officers recently and they were saying that the chief sorry the marketing and product relationship now needs to be, and is, stronger than ever before, and I think that may have to do with the go-to-market piece. Do you think that marketing and product are becoming closer than ever before?

22:05

Do you know that product actually stems from the marketing body of work, where Neil McElroy wanted to essentially position the Kame soap in relation to competitors. So that’s where product stemmed from. It was really steeped in the marketing domain and then in the 80s, I guess, the software company started to apply it and it has certainly morphed into including delivery, but it had its um, it had its heyday, its genesis in brand slash, brand management, slash marketing. So, product and marketing should be tied at the hip. And what we often forget in product these days and it’s really our bad is that we’re so focused on releasing something. Releasing something is not the same as launching something. Communicating something to your customers the same as launching something. Communicating something to your customers, making sure that there’s a really tight connection between the product and the customer. And that’s where go to market really is essential and really, we’ve not really done a great job in that.

23:27

It’s interesting. That’s a really interesting factor which I didn’t know, but I do find that in a lot of the organizations I’ve been a part of, that, yeah, marketing and product don’t really sit closely together. I feel like product might engage marketing, but usually really late in the piece when it comes to like change and comms and really things like that. So maybe there’s a bit of a change happening, particularly with the rise of the chief product officer role, which is something fairly I don’t think that’s been around that long, has it.

23:55

It hasn’t been around that long. I would say probably about eight to ten years about five to eight years in Australia, maybe longer overseas. Yeah, and it’s you know. I think that the rise of the chief product officer is super important because they need to have the ability to influence at that leadership level. Again, they need to be able to unlock, create the right environments for their products to be able, for their product people to be able to decide which problems to solve, as opposed to be given features to build.

24:29

Yeah, absolutely, and prioritisation across an enterprise. So, we’re not in silos just delivering products left right and confusing the market. Yeah, oh, absolutely, and prioritisation across an enterprise. So, we’re not in silos just delivering products left right and confusing the market.

24:37

Yeah, oh absolutely.

24:39

It’s interesting, you know you said last five to eight years in Australia that’s really the timeline that I think Agile has arisen as more prominent than ever before, in Australia at least, with the big four banks, you know, leading the charge in that space. So it’s not maybe not a coincidence, but anyways, um, one of the things I wanted to ask as well was when we think about um product management, one of the you know, some of the product managers I know work in a particular industry but then they really want to get into another industry in product. Do you think it’s really easy interchangeable skills between industry to industry for product managers? Um?

25:14

I think look, I can only speak for myself, and the people that don’t enable product managers to move from one industry to another, I think are really short-sighted. To be honest, I work in multiple industries I work in mining, retail, I work in financial services, I work in gaming, and what I rely on heavily are my craft and my adaptive skills rather than my industry knowledge, because there’s so many people in that business that really understands the industry, and so you know I’m the one that’s asking the stupid questions, but I’m asking stupid questions in relation to you know, my craft and where I want to, what I want to uncover.

25:58

Yeah, absolutely. I agree with that. I think the short side of this applies in a lot of other contexts, like in my PMO space. It’s the same thing where people will say, oh, you don’t have industry experience, how are you going to be successful? But it’s more about the soft skills and getting the industry experience is why you go into an industry to begin with. So, um, I like that. And what about in terms of getting started? So, say, I’m, I’m in. You know, I understand a little bit about product, but I haven’t really done that type of role. I don’t expect that I’m going to go into a role tomorrow, but where would someone get started early in their career if they wanted to get into product management?

26:31

I would say that you would want to develop, like there are lots of transferable skills into product development, into product management and, depending on where you are. So, if you were in customer service, you want to think about, you know, understanding the customer a lot more, but at a broader market level as opposed to an individual level. What is that market demonstrating, showing, saying what is your insight into that particular target market? And so, you could probably bring those skills to bear, and you want to kind of start honing those skills. And then you want to start asking yourself, if it’s that you know, if my customers are these sorts of, if my market is this market, um, what, what type of customers do I have? Is it simply, is it, you know, in b2b, for example, it’s really complex. I have different types of customers and I how do I start to understand them a lot more Contextually? How are they doing their work? If it’s you know, b2b, what problems are they having? What’s preventing them from doing their jobs? So, it’s really trying to understand, getting deep into that customer psyche.

27:49

If you were in finance you could then you know, because a product manager has to is multilingual, so they need to be able to speak tech, they need to be able to speak commerce, commercial, they need to be able to speak customer and they also need to be able to speak design. And so, if you had a financial background, then you start to understand if you could bring that kind of commercial mindset and discussion skills to play, then you can kind of hone those skills and get into product. That way, if you’re in design, you can also go down the route of hey, I understand the customers and here’s how you know solutions might be able to solve those customer problems. So, it depends on where you start your professional journey. But if you understand the core capabilities of product, which is tech, financial, you know design and customer well, then you could probably pull one of those levers and try and speak to that and demonstrate that to the people in your organisation to be able to move into product that way.

28:59

And so, you know what I’m hearing. There is curious and I guess try to put your nose in places to get that you know experience, maybe shadowing product managers and, as you said, there’s probably a lot of. I know that you lead a lot of other organisations that you know get together community events and things like that, so that would probably be another place where they could start to learn.

29:22

Those are the practical tips. Yes, yes, absolutely.

29:27

Can you recommend any particular event book podcast resource?

29:31

anything like that, all of them. So, in terms of events there, um, we run product women. Uh, it’s on the meetup platform. Um, we have a leading the product conference every year. If you go to the website there’s, you know lots of videos and content there. Um, Marty Kagan’s books are where you might start. He is you for want of a better word the father of product management, modern product management. He started with the book Inspired. His latest one is Transformed, so you could start with those books. Lenny, if you look under, look for Lenny’s Newsletters. Oh, yes, I know Lenny’s Newsletters.

30:13

Amazing content on there, amazing yeah, and great guests as well, really, really great guests.

30:18

Yep, absolutely so, with all of those like if you want to be in person, come to our event, come to our conference. If you want to read, read Marty’s books as a start. And if you want to learn about what’s happening in the industry, Lenny’s newsletter is fantastic.

30:34

Okay, perfect. No, that’s good. I’ll make sure to include those in the show notes for everybody to look up. I want to talk a little bit about you now, the CEO. So, one of the things that you mentioned so people don’t think I’m weird in your application form is you know, we talk about the obvious thing your green hair. I wanted to know like that, from what I understood, was a symbolic point in your career. Can you tell us a little bit more about that?

31:00

Yeah, well, I left my full-time job in 2000, Right, 24 years, no, no, not 2000, 2004, 20 years ago to start BrainMates, and at that point I didn’t leave, leave my job, my full-time job, to start a business per se. I left my full-time job to essentially have a bit of an adventure. Yes, part of that was a list of things I wanted to do. One of them was to start a business and the other one was to colour my hair different colours. There were things like learn to make brownies, which I could still do, travel to, you know, to Italy and stay in a castle, which haven’t done. Just so, there were lots and lots of things on my list.

31:40

Okay, okay, clearly, the open, starting the business and, uh, coloured hair stuck, yeah absolutely and it’s look, it’s really great to see you know that um, embracing of personal quirks and things like that. Like there’s less, less of that out there than you know the typical, you know corporate, what you expect to see of a CEO. So, I think it’s really fun and really great. You also mentioned you can’t drive or push a pram.

32:04

Tell us a bit, I can’t drive a car, so you don’t have a license, or you don’t have a license, I have to drive.

32:11

I shouldn’t be on the road. I’m very unco and I and it must have um, it must have translated into not pushing a pram as well, because I was terrible at pushing my son. My pram for my son, oh my. So, I think at one point I went backwards in an escalator, or I couldn’t get off. It was terrible, like I’ve had terrible moments.

32:34

I am. I can so relate to that honestly, um other than both BCS. I can relate to that because I failed to get my manual. I wanted my manual license. Being a female, I was like I got to get my manual. My dad didn’t believe in it, and I failed my license, and I got on the fourth go. So that was one. And when I started pushing a pram with my daughter, who was born a few months ago, I remember my first day in the shopping centre actually bumping into an old woman and I probably nearly knocked her over and I felt so bad. But um, it does get easier. I don’t know if you’ve been practicing for a while my son is 16th.

33:05

Okay, okay, so you probably have a little bit practice now. Okay, that’s well, that’s um, that’s definitely. Uh, it’s definitely a fun moment like that that make a change. So that list that you talk about is that a continuously improving list that you’ve got?

33:17

No, no, it was a list to get me. It took me a while to leave my full-time job. I think I tried to quit about three times, and it was scary. But that list was there to motivate me and now I you know. Hey, life is an adventure.

33:35

Absolutely, especially in business. And if you don’t mind me asking, what was the desire to change from your full-time role to something else? Was there any particular reason you felt like making that shift?

33:46

Yes, because sometimes when you’re in a large organization, you feel like your efforts really can’t make the change that you’re after in life. Yes, so then you have to figure out well, how best can I make change for organisations? And probably being on the outside rather than the inside. Yes, and I have more of an influence being an outsider, initiating change for organisations.

34:15

I can 100%, absolutely relate to that. It’s so uncanny. But the same organisations that don’t, I guess, support the internal when you’re there, are some of the same organisations that end up engaging you as a consultant. Isn’t that crazy. And it probably costs them twice as much. They should have just leveraged the skill when you were there.

34:41

But I think people need, um, you know they. I guess the difference between now as an outsider is that for both of us, I suspect we get to see what’s going on in other organizations exactly we uh, we bring that change perspective, perspective based on experience that we see happening elsewhere as well, and I think that is you know, that is worth its weight in gold really, because we’re lucky to be able to see what goes on elsewhere 100%, particularly with the size of a team that you’ve got.

35:08

Having the different perspectives across the different industries, I think is invaluable to customers as well. Speaking of which, what’s something that I guess maybe that’s surprised you, or maybe really interesting, that maybe those listening would want to know about what you’re seeing across industry at the moment in the product space.

35:25

I think what’s interesting is that there are so many of our customers going back to basics, because they’ve had customers, they’ve had varying degrees of success in transformations and so they’re always trying to find new ways to make change and implement change.

35:47

And so we have been working with them to really kind of go a strip bag, go back to basics and work on understanding people’s capabilities and not just product capabilities, because you think that you know, what I find often is that people protect or work with just their own kind of teams and function. Yes, they’ll spend time creating processes and you know rituals for that particular team, but we forget that product. And I mean that in the general sense. It’s a multi-team sport and ultimately, we need essentially one capability you know framework, one way of making product, irrespective of whether you’re engineering, product design, bas, project managers because we’re all in it together. We just play, we just we pull different levers during that process and sometimes we need to pull a little bit more than the person next to us, but if we all come from the same point of view that we’re you know, fundamentally have the same capabilities.

37:01

Which ones are we trying to use more of or less of during this process and during this part of the process? I think that’ll break down silos and enable us to work more effectively together.

37:11

I think that’s a really good call out because going back to basics is sometimes the easiest step to try to unpack. You know what a complex can be, complicated mess that, particularly with the sort of revolving door of, you know, contractors or consultancies coming in and out of organisations, sometimes they just need to go back to basics to see what they’re missing and then work from there.

37:33

Rather than putting something new in, I’d rather examine what you currently have Absolutely and work on what you currently have, as opposed to adding more layers of crust 100 it’s.

37:45

It’s complicated as it is one other question that just comes to mind. So, I’ve spent time in different companies and one of the companies I remember, and I don’t know. I think this was a good idea, but they had like five delivery life cycles. They had one for marketing, one for product, one for it. Like there was like five it was complicated.

38:05

That was what they wanted. That’s what they did. But I’m curious when you think about the product life cycle, what’s your thoughts on where that fits in? Do you think that integrated with the typical delivery life cycle, whichever that is for the company? Do you think it runs in parallel? What’s your thoughts on that?

38:19

So, there’s a couple of things. Firstly, the product itself has a life cycle. So as soon as you put a product in market, it is at infancy stage, if you will, you’ll have a different set of customers, and that product will evolve, and we’ll have different sets of customers over time. So, the product itself has a life cycle that you need to actively manage, but in terms of a product delivery cycle and process, I think that should be common across design, engineering, bas and product people.

38:52

I agree. I think that makes more sense.

38:54

People are over complicating it by having separate life cycles for this and separate working exactly, yeah, it’s usually just because one person has a preference for something that doesn’t agree with this other person. Therefore, they’re not working towards the same goal. So why? Which is why they complicate. So back to basics, as you mentioned before. Um, just coming back to um sort of the market and what’s happening, do you have any view or on what’s happening in terms of AI or tech, or any changes that may be happening in the tech space that’s impacting product management that you’re seeing?

39:26

Yeah, absolutely. Look, ai is such you know, such a topical kind of subject at the moment. For us in product, there’s a couple of things right, we need to figure out how to use AI to essentially make product management itself more effective and efficient, and so there are lots of tools around that to help us write user stories, requirements a whole, you know, to do research, so there are lots of AI tools that we can explore and figure out how to embed in our ways of working. And then, obviously, from a product point of view, we need to understand our customers and understand what problems that they have that potentially AI solutions might be able to help solve.

40:17

Awesome, and I assume as a result of that, you’re probably then having to continuously iterate and update. I guess training that you might offer, and I guess how that then is implemented in organisations that may be more or less mature in the digital space.

40:33

Yes, and look in terms. You know, in terms of AI, it’s really like I said, one work out whether it can be part of your tooling ways of working. The other one is to make sure that you don’t over focus, from a product point of view, on the tech itself, because the tech is just a way to solve problems.

40:52

And if we?

40:53

don’t understand our customers’ problems and we simply just use tech we might not be able to, we won’t be successful really.

41:01

Yeah, absolutely. It’s not about the tech, it’s how you use it and sometimes you know. You mentioned before about going back to basics. I think sometimes it’s about just unpeeling everything, going back to basics, understanding where you are and bringing in tech later yes, absolutely, and it’s the same in the project management of PMO space.

41:19

People rush to go and bring in all these tools because this is the new agile tool, this is the new project tool. We need a PPM for this and it’s like you haven’t even figured out your fundamental. You know process for how you’re going to do these things and then you’re just overlaying tech because it’s usually used as a distraction. So, it’s probably similar in products yeah, I like that.

41:36

Yes, it is. They think they’re solving a problem and it’s easy just to put a tech solution in. Yeah, and it doesn’t right, because you’ve got to fundamentally work with people to understand, you know what it is that they’re trying to achieve and how to kind of make them make the change, change behaviour. That’s hard oh, 100.

41:55

And it’s so interesting again like just making me laugh thinking about tools um, just knowing one of the recent companies we were doing work with um, observing their sort of ways of working, they had like four different whiteboarding tools that they were used. Digital whiteboarding tools like the benefit or relevance of that makes no sense. So, um, yeah, I think some review was there before you get started. I think would definitely make sense. Um, in terms of your career, highlights what would you say has been the most memorable moment of your career so far.

42:24

It’s funny because I was reflecting on 20 years. It’s 20 years in the next month that we’ve been in business, so I’ve been asked to write down, you know, all my highlights and there are lots and lots of highlights in 20 years and a lot of like lowlights as well. You know, one of the things that I kind of thought of was the first customer we got years ago, years ago, probably 15 years ago. That came from a newsletter that we wrote, and I thought, wow, we would never have reached this customer. It was a government organization and they reached out to buy some consulting services at that point, 15 years ago. But I thought, you know, marketing does work like and it’s like still stuck with me today that somebody reached out as a result of our newsletter to engage us it’s amazing how simple things like that make you think.

43:18

Sometimes you write, or you read, read or you know. We publish these podcasts, and we wonder is anyone actually listening or reading or any of that sort of stuff? So, it’s really great to see that. But, yeah, absolutely, particularly with the rise of social media, which you would have seen evolve significantly now. But congratulations on 20 years. It sounds like, like you said, highlights, lowlights, all of that fun stuff. It’s definitely rewarding, I’m sure otherwise you wouldn’t still be doing it. If you could think about a piece of advice for maybe other aspiring business owners, what, what do you think you could share, particularly for those who we’re at nearly at 10 years now like to keep us going to get to 20 years, is there any piece of advice that you wanted to share?

43:59

um, look, I think, know, when I first started, I did challenge myself and say, why the hell am I a business? Because I was in a market that was so nascent, it was so new, nobody knew about product and I spent a lot of my time really trying to build up the community and build up demand, and that takes a while. I think, you know, as a business owner, if I had my time back, I would probably be more, I would question and be less passionate and ask myself exactly what is it that I’m trying to achieve? I don’t think I asked myself that. I think I’ve bumbled into it and just had a good time but then that struggle and then it’s like what is it that you really want?

44:46

do you want a lifestyle business?

44:48

yes um, and if you want a lifestyle business, you’ll go about doing it, um, very differently. Um, you know, at the moment, I finally really clear it took me a long time to grow up that I, I want more than a lifestyle business. I want to be able to, you know, retire in a couple of years. I want my business to be operating without me and I want to be able to live off my business without me working in it. So have been clear. I think being clear with what you want to achieve is super important. Being clear with what you want to achieve is super important, rather than, you know, bumbling through it and then questioning yourself many, many times during the process but sit down, go, what exactly do I want?

45:30

now that I know personally what I want.

45:32

I’m working towards that. I have a plan. My people know about it, um but it when I didn’t, which was 18 years of my life, and brain mates. It was like do I want a little bit of this. Do I want a bit of that? I don’t which was 18 years of my life and bromates. It was like do I want a little bit of this. Do I want a bit of that? I don’t know why I am doing this, and I think that just causes confusion for not only yourself but your whole team.

45:51

And you say you have a plan. How often do you review that plan now? Is it liking an annual thing or quarterly?

45:55

Oh no, I have a board. I’m very, very structured at the moment. I have board meetings every six weeks. I have quarterly planning sessions. I have, you know, a strategy on a page, a company strategy on a page. I review it all the time, I share it with my team all the time. All our initiatives must be aligned to that strategy, that business strategy. And then I also have a portfolio strategy. How do our products fit together? Which ones do we want to invest in?

46:25

um so not very structured at the moment and how do you stop? Because, as a CEO myself, this question is a selfish one for me. How do you stop shiny, exciting new things that you’re like, oh this and bring in? How do you stop that Like?

46:40

that so 18 years. I had lots of shiny new things. Okay, now I know my goal is to retire in two and a half years, when my son finishes school. I want to retire. And then I asked myself if I do this, which you know I did Somebody said to me hey, do you want to come to Malaysia and do a talk?

47:02

And I was like oh yeah, previously I would have gone.

47:03

Oh, yes, I’d love to go to Malaysia and do a talk yes, October, and you know what that would take me. That would take me time to write the talk. I would have to travel there. It would take at least five weeks out of my life. Wow, by the time I write and be distracted and I’m like, well, if I do that, then I can’t, then I’m distracted with everything else that’s going on and I have a really clear plan at the moment and I can’t do that.

47:26

And in two and a half years I can do that yeah, well, that must be exciting for your team, because I’m sure they’re probably thinking someone has to be the successor to step up when you decide to step away.

47:35

I’m not sure that anybody wants the job. Someone said to me last week it’s a job that nobody wants, they don’t have to give it away. I’m like, yes, I’m gonna have to try.

47:44

Yeah, absolutely, look someone. Someone definitely shines through, I’m sure. Where did you come up with the name brain mates, um?

47:51

it’s because my co-founder is my husband and he’s level one, and so brain was him and I’m the friendly one. So together we wanted to work with product people to bring them, you know, friendliness and clever product thinking.

48:07

Oh, that’s really clever. Has anyone ever asked you that question before? Yes, they have.

48:11

Okay, some people have asked whether we’re like a dating agency. I’m like no next generation that’ll be soulmates.

48:20

Yeah, that’s true. That could be your retirement 2.0, because I’m sure, knowing you from what I know now, you’ll be too bored after your retirement, like I got to get back to work when I talk about retirement, it’s not just about not working and, yes, it’s about finding my next passion in life.

48:35

What is it that I’m gonna dedicate the second half of my life to?

48:39

yeah, absolutely no, that makes sense. We have a tradition on this podcast to ask a final question. Is there anything else you’d like to share with our listeners, a call to action, a piece of advice or a question to ponder before we finish up today?

48:54

Look in terms of a piece of advice and this is general. Advice has nothing to do with product, but I think that a lot of individuals in work environments often look to blame others for the problems that they’re currently experiencing, and that just makes everybody miserable. One of the things I talk about is about self-authorization be the change that you want to see, because if I can start a business, if I can make change, I can build an industry so can anybody?

49:26

I thank you for your time. I really appreciate you joining. Me. I really enjoyed our conversation. Thank you very much. Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. Please share this with someone or rate it if you enjoyed it. Don’t forget to follow us on social media and to stay up to date with all thing’s agile ideas. Go to our website, www.agilemanagementoffice.com. I hope you’ve been able to learn, feel or be inspired today. Until next time, what’s your agile idea?