In this November 2020 #mtpcon Digital session, Director of Product at Onfido Susana Videira Lopes, shares two different product career stories, explaining the which was most effective in serving both the business and the individual.
Watch the session in full, or read on for the highlights.
The Horizontal Slice
Susana begins by giving an example of a friend, Lily, who in her first product role, spent a whole year working on nothing but delivery execution. Susana visualises six core product management activities in a pyramid, with delivery execution making up the bottom, horizontal slice:
- Product vision
- Product strategy
- Problem discovery and validation
- Problem prioritisatio…
Lily was stuck at the bottom of the pyramid, working only on "project management and delivery skills," says Susana, which meant that while she handled all of the delivery execution, her manager was free to take on the roles further up the pyramid. As a result, Lily was left confused and frustrated. Why was she being given these tasks and prevented from learning the skills to move up? At the same time, she saw her manager becoming increasingly separated from the technology team and out of touch with their day-to-day work.
"This approach put me right in the middle of the Venn diagram, which meant that needs of the business, of solving the right problems in the right way, were met," she says, "but also my needs - building up my confidence and having an exciting career - were also met." Susana explains how over time, she was effectively paired with small problems in each horizontal slice of the pyramid that translated into one thin vertical slice going form bottom to top.
