Half-Day Interactive Workshop

“Get ready to actively participate in your transformation from product manager to product leader”

A product manager rarely has any authority beyond what they can talk people into, thus we need to become really strong communicators. In this half-day interactive workshop, we’ll look at the three kinds of communication: managing up, team communications, and the very important roadshow for getting other groups onboard with your vision. We will use the power of story for formal communication and a combination of techniques from NVC (Harvard’s negotiation project) and the GSB’s “touchy feely” class to make sure your message gets through, and that we are listening effectively.

This special half-day training workshop, with product author and lecturer, Christina Wodtke, is specifically designed for product managers who are looking to really level up their communications skills and who want to use story-telling to effectively communicate with others.

Be quick as there are very limited spaces for this workshop in order to ensure the best possible learning experience!

Get your tickets now! (these are separate from the main workshops)

In this workshop, Dan Olsen will share his 6-step Lean Product Process for how to iterate your way to product-market fit. The workshop starts with how to understand, define, and prioritise customer needs. You will learn how to formulate your value proposition to ensure your product is differentiated from the competition. You’ll also learn how to define and build an MVP prototype to test your value proposition with customers. The workshop will also explain how to translate what you hear from customers into actionable learning so you can rapidly iterate and improve your product. Workshop concepts will be illustrated via real world case studies and class exercises.

Every product manager understands that they need to gather evidence to help them make decisions and set the right strategy and priorities, yet simply having a massive data warehouse and analytics skill sets doesn’t help you ask the right questions or come to the right conclusions.

How can product managers take a human centered approach to measurement?  The third full-day workshop offered by Mind the Product seeks to answer this question; how can we take a product mindset on metrics.

This workshop will be framed very differently from the usual Metrics workshops because it specifically focuses on the role of the product manager in driving a common understanding throughout the product development lifecycle.

In the workshop we’ll address how product managers can work with their teams to create a strong metrics practice that’s set-up for long-term success, answering the following questions:

• How do you put a product mindset around metrics?
• How can Product Managers flesh out the One Metric That Matters and locate it within the ecosystem of other metrics?
• How do you work with data to help experiment towards the most valuable experiments?
• What can a product manager do to ensure that metrics are implemented and tracked properly during the build process?
• What does a product team need to report on as they track metrics?
• How can you create a metrics-driven culture?

Although these are simple questions on the surface, the answers to them are seemingly infinite. This course is a practical, actionable life raft in a sea of competing terms, formulas, theories, and approaches. It was created to ensure that you take the ideas and frameworks within it directly to your job the following day.

Take this course if you:

• Want to hear specifically how product managers work with metrics
• Prefer pragmatic, actionable insights over theories that sound good but never tie back in to your job as a product manager
• Want to understand the “one metric that matters” for various types of business models and stages
• Want to hear specific details and scenarios about working with cross-functional teams to implement metrics tracking
• Want to get hands-on with business scenarios that will let you work with metrics concepts throughout the course of the day
• Want to hear about pitfalls you should watch out for along the analytics journey
• Want to spark inspiration from the 100+ different metrics – used by businesses of all sizes and verticals – that are sprinkled throughout this course

This class is tailored towards working product managers, ideally who have worked with products through various stages of development. The class is hands-on and requires deep reflection from participants on what has worked for them in the past, and how their process could evolve. Metrics and analytics inform almost everything you do. Whether you’re refreshing your memory or expanding your understanding, you’ll be practicing all day to apply metrics and analytics to real-world situations. Come to class with a product, service, brand, or entire company in mind – there will be several opportunities to explore how you’d apply these theories and frameworks to real-life situations.

Key Takeaways

At the end of the session participants will come away with a sense of what frameworks they can implement immediately, as well as a grounded understanding of how to ensure that your users stay at the heart of the measurement process.

Foundations 101 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 centered around inquiry-driven development process. Participants will improve their understanding of customer problems and perspectives, solution testing, delivery mechanisms, and team process.

What we’ll cover on the day

Foundations 101 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 participants 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 organisation 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

Essentials is an overview course intended for confident product managers who are looking to increase their strategic skills and influence. The intention of this course is to help product managers build a strategic layer onto their core product practices, and focus on the soft skills and influencing tactics that are often needed to ensure effective product delivery. It seeks to answer the questions:

• How can product managers increase organisational understanding of product practice?
• What parts of their process can be used as tools for increased alignment?
• How can product teams craft an evidence-driven product vision and ensure buy-in?

This course is centred on the senior product manager’s role between the product team and the broader business. In order for teams to deliver effectively, they need buy-in and support from their stakeholders. Participants will gain an understanding of how to sharpen their product practice so that it becomes an alignment and educational tool.

What we’ll cover on the day

Essentials 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 participants have 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:

• Evaluating opportunity: Understanding how to unpack product assumptions and line up macro data to establish product viability and the foundations for product/market fit
• Implementing user research: Breaks down the components of running a user research round and what is needed to ensure maximum value of the time invested
• 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 life cycle
• Stakeholder management: A deep-dive into organisational relationships and understanding how to build a communication strategy

A practical, hands-on way to understand how the human brain works and apply that knowledge to User Experience and product design. You know somethings are ‘good design’ and some things are ‘bad design’ for UX but have never been quite sure why? Learn the psychological principles behind how our brain makes sense of the world and apply that to product and user interface design.

After the workshop you’ll be able to:

• Design products, apps and websites that match how people think and behave
• Make more compelling designs
 that use psychology theory to enhance their effectiveness
• 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?

Does your organisation have trouble keeping track of the big picture during product development? Are you working with an agile team concerned with delivering more stories rather than a great user experience? Have you ever ended up releasing a product that doesn’t actually solve the customer’s problem?

In this workshop you’ll learn how User Story Mapping can help. User Story Mapping is a collaborative practice that keeps the whole team focused on how and why customers use your product. Helping everybody deliver a great user experience together.

You’ll create story maps with your fellow attendees. You’ll see how they keep the whole team focussed on the customer’s experience. You’ll understand how they can be used to break down the customer journey into small chunks of work without losing sight of the big picture.

What you will take away from this workshop:

• Understand user story mapping and how to create story maps with your team
• How story maps help the whole team identify with the customer’s journey
• How to use story maps as a tool for product discovery
• How story maps can bring product managers, researchers, designers, developers and testers together around a  single artefact
• How story maps help you prioritise the customer experience over building more features
• How you can use story maps to supplement or replace traditional agile backlogs

Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) are a worldwide phenomenon, helping to drive the success of organisations 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 organisation
• How OKRs drive your product roadmap
• How to map OKRs to people and teams
• How to make OKRs visible across your organisation
• 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 realise 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.