I recently launched a new series of posts in which I reach out to thought leaders in the world of Product Management to probe them for insights in the profession as a whole as well as their specific fields and areas of interest. In this series, I pose 5 general questions to the participants, and 5 specific questions, to provide readers with a broad spectrum of thoughts on our profession. This page is a collection of those posts, and will be updated as new articles in the series are published. So, from first to latest, here they are!
Lewis Lin
For the very first installment, I called on my good friend Lewis Lin, one of the most knowledgeable resources around in the arena of interviewing for Product Management roles, and the Amazon.com bestselling author of Decode & Conquer: Answers to Product Management Interviews and his new book titled Secrets of the Product Manager Interview.
Rich Mironov
Rich is a 30-year product management veteran based in San Francisco. He’s an unrepentant blogger at www.mironov.com, author of The Art of Product Management, and coach/consultant to product management teams and startup executives. On occasion, he parachutes into software companies as interim VP Products. He thinks a lot about the strategic and organizational challenges of running product management teams.
Paul Jackson
As a Product Manager and user-centered design practitioner, Paul has been building digital products and services for over 15 years. Currently Managing Director of Castle in the UK, he was Head of Product Management for The Times and The Sunday Times and Director of Product at Newsmart, an edtech SaaS that leverages premium news content from the Wall Street Journal.
Suzanne Abate
Suzanne Abate is a seasoned product coach who has developed hundreds of digital products for clients like Jaguar Land Rover, Best Buy, and Warner Brothers, and helped dozens of startups go from idea to execution. She is the Co-Founder of The Development Factory, an LA-based product consultancy, and Chief Product Officer of 100 Product Managers, a free online resource and weekly podcast for new and aspiring product managers. Suzanne has been teaching part-time with General Assembly since 2015, bringing product management training and classroom fun to new students and enterprise teams alike.
Jay Stansell
I’m a product person, who is grounded in design, shaped by technology and inspired by profitable business models. I “cut my teeth” in a travel start up in 2007, and grew it into one of Australia’s leading travel products. I’ve since been fortunate to craft products and product experiences for some of Australia’s largest brands. Today, I take my start-up learnings, attitude and culture, into coaching Agile, Lean Startup and Design Thinking methodologies at Australia’s most innovative insurer, IAG.
Teresa Torres
Teresa is a product discovery coach who helps teams gain valuable insights from their customer interviews, run effective product experiments, and drive product outcomes that create value for their customers and their businesses. She teaches teams how to connect the dots between their research activities and their product decisions, inspiring confidence that they are on the right track. Recent clients include Allstate, Capital One, The Guardian, and Snagajob.