Prioritisation is hard and it’s also what makes excellent product managers. Product strategy is about deciding what not to do, but it’s hard to know when or what to say “no” to. Prioritisation becomes even harder as companies evolve, grow, and form more product teams since teams lack a common language to make systematic decisions.

In this workshop, product management leader, Gabrielle Bufrem, will teach you a prioritisation framework that you can systematically apply across your team and organization that will enable you to make decisions that will maximize for IMPACT. Gabrielle will share advice from her upcoming book IMPACT Prioritisation: she will break down prioritisation into six buckets and teach you how to define and utilize them for your organization. She will enable you to:

• Identify reach
• Measure customer and business impact
• Predict opportunity cost
• Assess confidence
• Calculate effort
• Total the impact score

Gabrielle will also cover how to make feature requests from beloved Hippo’s or customers actually work for you and will provide a workflow to seamlessly integrate them with the IMPACT prioritisation framework. This is a highly interactive workshop filled with real-life examples and exercises so that you can feel confident applying your new skills immediately after the workshop.

We all know that we build better products when we get more exposure to our users, but how do we get the most out of our time and target our efforts more effectively?

This is a workshop for product managers who need, or want, to do their own user research/user experience testing – how to start, how to do it and then presenting back in a way likely to get people excited about the results rather than dreading them.

The day will be focused on learning techniques that you can start using immediately – so we’ll be looking at:

• Where to start: it’s easier than you think and we do it all the time in our day jobs
• Getting buy-in from those around you: including your user researchers if you have them
• Aligning research with business goals/objectives
• Choosing the right tool for the job (tools, methodologies, terminology, etc.)
• How to fit research into agile development processes
• Presenting findings (to get even more buy-in)
• What happens after you’ve made your changes

A practical, hands-on way to understand the why behind your user’s behaviour and apply that knowledge to user experience and product design. 

What you’ll learn

Through a series of fun, practical exercises you’ll learn:

• Psychology and interaction design. How to evaluate and design interactions such as onboarding, search, navigation and eCommerce using psychology.
• Psychology and user experience. Evaluating and improving digital products based on psychology. How humans perceive and understand the world around them and how to build your product around that framework.
• Psychology and the dark arts. Persuasive design, cognitive biases and other brain hacks. Do they really work and how to apply them in product design. What are the ethics of applying psychology to digital design?

After the workshop

You’ll be able to:

• Design products, apps and websites that match how people think and behave
• Find, understand, evaluate and apply psychology theory to digital product design
• Have your own ethical framework for designing using psychology
• Make better, informed design decisions and advocate to the wider team using psychology theory

Come to the workshop and you’ll able to put psychology into practice as soon as you get back to the office.

Ask 10 people what a product roadmap is and you will get 10 different answers! This artifact is often misunderstood, yet an incredibly powerful if done right. Creating a great one is part art and part science. In this full-day session, we will talk through the purposes of a roadmap and a process for establishing your product’s vision, gaining alignment with your stakeholders, validating themes, and presenting to upper level execs in order to maximize your team’s impact.

Key questions to answer include:

• What are the differences between product strategy, a product roadmap and a feature release plan?
• How do I relate my product work to business objectives?
• How can I balance the need to plan, while staying lean and agile?
• How do I look beyond the next quarter without over-committing?
• How do I confirm projects or initiatives that have not been fully validated by customers?
• How do I manage stakeholders and their pressure/influence?
• How do I prioritize what product aspects to work on 1st, 2nd, 3rd…?
• What’s the best way to present a product roadmap to my stakeholders?

Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) are a worldwide phenomenon, helping to drive the success of organizations like Google, Zynga, Oracle, Twitter, and many more. They are particularly suited to driving the alignment necessary for a high-performing cross-functional product team. But if not handled correctly, OKRs can quickly lead to silos, unethical behaviour, and demotivation.

How do the best-performing product cultures use OKRs? Topics we will cover:

• How to define effective OKRs
• How to set annual OKRs and break them down quarterly
• How to determine the right level of ambition for your organization
• How OKRs drive your product roadmap
• How to map OKRs to people and teams
• How to make OKRs visible across your organization
• How to turn OKRs into action plans
• How to monitor and report on OKRs
• How to adjust OKRs when thing don’t go as planned
• How to get buy-in on OKRs from your stakeholders

We’ll also cover the most common what-if scenarios teams experience (or fear):

• What if we can’t measure the most important things?
• What if we miss our targets?
• What if our outputs don’t generate the outcomes we wanted?
• What if our direction changes mid-year?
• What if we realize our objectives were wrong all along?

During this workshop, you’ll gain first-hand experience using OKRs throughout a simulated year-in-the-life of a product team, handling what goes wrong, adjusting course, and managing expectations. You’ll also get the chance to set OKRs for your team and get live feedback you can leverage when you get back to the office.

Workshop Overview
Product Management Foundations is an overview course intended for individuals who hold the title of Product Manager, or have some working knowledge of the product development process. The intention of this course is to help product managers develop a broader understanding of their role. It seeks to answer the questions:

• What are the core functions and primary responsibilities of a product manager?
• What does good product management look like?
• How do product managers know if they are adding value?

As such, the course is tightly focused on running an effective core team that is centred around inquiry-driven development process. You will improve your understanding of customer problems and perspectives, solution testing, delivery mechanisms, and team process.

What we’ll cover on the day
Product Management Foundations is a full-day workshop that is comprised of nine modules. Each module includes a lecture component on theory and practice, interspersed with up to three hands-on activities. This ensures that you are afforded an opportunity to apply and work with concepts in a setting that will answer questions and facilitate critical thinking. The following modules will be covered:

• Learning mindsets: How inquiry breaks down at different points through the product development lifecycle
• Goals alignment: How to create effective goals and align the team and organization around them
• Design thinking: What design thinking is and how product managers can break down what is needed for product understanding
• Persona development: How to effectively create personas and use them in product processes
• Lean testing: Unpacking types of lean tests and how to implement them for maximum learning
• Interview guides: Writing interview guides that do not bias or lead the subject
• Wireframes and prototypes: Using visuals at different fidelities to facilitate the right conversation
• User stories: Creating an effective communication mechanism for efficient and transparent delivery
• Core team communication: How to think about “culture as product” and foster a team that that is geared towards continuous improvement

Things to reflect on before the workshop 
Before your training workshop, we ask that you take some time to consider the following questions. The more time you take to consider your current situation, and the issues and challenges you face, the more you’ll gain from your training:

• How was your role described to you when you first got started?
• What have you learned about product management since taking the job?
• How well do you feel you understand your customers?
• Do you think you have a healthy team culture?

Key Takeaways
At the end of the workshop, you will be confident in your understanding of the role of a product manager, including a firm grasp of the concept of design thinking and how it is important. You’ll have a clear understanding of where the customer sits in the product practice, how to define and prioritise your customer personas, and how not to bias your customer research. You’ll go back to the office feeling confident in your ability to facilitate a goals conversation, and how to structure hypothesis for lean tests.

We’ll be running a wide variety of product management workshops led by expert trainers. We will announce more workshop topics very soon, so check back here for more details.

Training Workshop Overview

We know that product managers are responsible for so much more than simply product delivery but are often given little authority. However, as product managers develop in their roles and continue to confidently deliver value to their customers, it is crucial that they begin to align their organisation around their process and vision in order to have an impact.

Communication and Alignment empowers product people to begin understanding how to align their organisation around product process and practice. In this overview workshop, we outline some of the grounded, tactical skills that product managers can use every day and how they can add a layer of strategic thinking to help collaborate with their stakeholders.

Together we delve into communication strategies that will help foster trust and collaboration within your organisation, how to evaluate an opportunity, how to extract maximum value from your research activities, and much more.

What we’ll cover on the day

Communication & Alignment is a full-day workshop comprised of six modules. Each module includes a lecture component on theory and practice, interspersed with up to three hands-on activities. This ensures that you have an opportunity to apply and work with concepts in a setting that will answer questions and facilitate critical thinking.

Syllabus:

• Evaluating opportunity: Understanding how to unpack product assumptions and line up macro data to establish product viability and the foundations for product/market fit
• Research techniques: Reviewing a range of research methodologies, beyond the classic interview, that help product teams validate problem and solution
• Synthesis: Distilling insights from research and how to collaborate with stakeholders to deepen user understanding and influence
• Prioritisation: Covering a range of techniques and their uses for alignment at points of product development lifecycle
• Stakeholder management: A deep-dive into organisational relationships and understanding how to build a communication strategy

Things to reflect on before the workshop

Before your training workshop we ask that you take some time to consider the following questions. The more time you take to consider your current situation, and the issues and challenges you face, the more you’ll gain from your training:

• How much effort do you feel you have invested in stakeholder relationships?
• How often do you make an effort to make your process more collaborative?
• How do new projects or changes to features happen at your company?
• How do you currently collect evidence to support decisions?

Key Takeaways

You will leave this workshop with the skills you need in order to build a strategic layer onto your core product practices. You will understand how to evaluate a potential product idea/change for value, and how to use process as an alignment tool within your company. You’ll go back to work with a firm grasp of where you should include your stakeholders as collaborators, understanding how to build effective relationships with said stakeholders, and with the ability to create a communication strategy with your organisation.

Workshop Overview
Every product manager understands that they need to gather evidence to help them make decisions and set the right strategy and priorities. However, simply having a huge data warehouse and analytics skill sets doesn’t help you ask the right questions or come to the right conclusions. So, how can product managers understand how to use data and metrics to add value to the customer’s journey and their businesses?

Geared towards working product managers who need to regularly gather data from different sources to make decisions, this full-day workshop offered by Mind the Product helps participants understand how to adopt a user-driven perspective on measurement, ensuring that your products are optimized for customer success.

This Product Metrics workshop is unique because it specifically focuses on the role of the product manager in driving a common understanding throughout the product development lifecycle.

What we’ll cover on the day
Divided into modules, each topic covered focuses specifically on the role that product managers should play in the process of metrics alignment and implementation: The workshop will be driven by a single business scenario, allowing you to work together in a hands-on way, tackling metrics questions similar to aa real-world situation.

The course covers:

• How to keep customers at the centre of your metrics process
• How to align your stakeholders around measurement goals and help them break down business goals into workable metrics
• How to apply the concept of “One Metric that Matters” and how other metrics work with OMTM
• How product managers should think about measuring tests and experiments
• Implementing metrics and how to effectively collaborate with different roles on your team
• Structures for reporting about metrics and achieving alignment with stakeholders
• Reflections on what a metrics-driven culture looks like and how product managers can help to create one

Things to reflect on before the workshop
Before your training workshop, we ask that you take some time to consider the following questions. The more time you take to consider your current situation and the issues and challenges you face, the more you’ll gain from your training:

• Currently what are your most common data sources?
• How often do you look at data (qualitative or quantitative) before you make product decisions?

Key Takeaways
At the end of the workshop, you will understand how product managers work with metrics. You’ll go away with pragmatic, actionable insights that tie back into your job as a product manager, and specific details and scenarios about working with cross-functional teams to implement metrics tracking. You’ll also have a good understanding of the “One Metric that Matters” concept for various types of business models and stages.

Use maps to create value for your customer and your organisation

Definitions

The definition of systems thinking is a “holistic approach to evaluating how a system’s parts relate, and how a system works over time.”  Using systems thinking through system’s mapping in your product practice is critical for understanding risk and spotting opportunities for innovation.   

Workshop Overview

Designed for working product managers who are striving to create product strategy, this training workshop will enable you to use maps effectively in order to make critical product decisions, communicate with stakeholders, and facilitate a shared understanding.

Not be confused with the process of story mapping, systems maps come in all shapes and sizes; user journey maps, experience maps, flows, etc. The key part of maps is that they help the people involved in building products understand the system(s) which underpin their organisation, customer base, workflow, etc. At the end of the session, you’ll have the key tools and techniques necessary to effectively facilitate mapping sessions and achieve desired outcomes.

What we’ll cover on the day

We will use a collaborative scenario in this training workshop to drive hands-on learning. Additionally, you will be prompted at the end of each exercise to reflect on actions or practices from your own products.  The following topics will be covered:

– An overview of systems thinking and the utility of mapping
– Aligning on product strategy and discovery goals
– A tactical guide to maps, including:

• Types of maps
• How interactions create outcomes
• Who to include and how to include them

– How to evaluate and decide on structure:

• Selling the value of the mapping process to stakeholders

– Map creation process:

• What do you need to know?
• What are you looking for?
• Who is involved?

– How can product managers guide towards success?
– An interactive afternoon of collaborative map building

Things to reflect on before your training workshop

Before your training workshop, we ask that you take some time to consider the following questions. The more time you take to consider your current situation, and the issues and challenges you face, the more you’ll gain from your training:

• How much do you understand about your customer’s current experience of your product?
• List 3-5 areas where you feel you wish you had more information about your customer’s current experience
• How well do you understand how parts of your organisation work together?
• How well does your organisation understand dependencies between departments?

Key Takeaways

At the end of the workshop, you will have the ability to use maps to achieve goals and outcomes within your organisation and will have a firm understanding of key mapping frameworks and scenarios. You’ll be able to identify the right map for the organisational challenge and have the tools needed to effectively facilitate collaboration on maps within your wider team. In short, you will have a plan for maintaining an effective use of maps and adopting them as a long term asset.