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In this episode, I talk with Marco Chan, Product Ops Lead at Shopify, about what it is like starting out in Product Operations in a new role or a new area of the business. We talk about building context and rapport with teams to make sure you are building a relevant backlog that will have an impact. Marco leads Product Ops for the Ecosystem team at Shopify which operates the App and Theme Stores. He works closely with Product, Engineering, UX, and Data teams to coordinate initiatives across Shopify. He focuses on providing structure without introducing excessive structure to drive team velocity and culture. Prior to Shopify, he spent time at Uber in Operations / Launch roles and management consulting. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/product-ops-people/message

In this episode, I talk with Radhika Dutt, Author of Radical Product Thinking, about the elements of what a practical strategy is and the common pitfalls that organisations have when developing it. This approach sets operations up for success when strategy is clearly articulated and enables greater alignment and autonomy within teams. Radhika Dutt is the author of Radical Product Thinking: The New Mindset for Innovating Smarter which is being translated into several languages including Chinese and Japanese. She is an entrepreneur and product leader who has participated in four acquisitions, two of which were companies that she founded. She advises organizations from high-tech startups to government agencies on building radical products that create a fundamental change. She is currently Advisor on Product Thinking to the Monetary Authority of Singapore, Singapore’s central bank and financial regulator. Radhika has built products in a wide range of industries including broadcast, media and entertainment, telecom, advertising technology, government, consumer apps, robotics, and even wine. She graduated from MIT with an SB and M.Eng in Electrical Engineering, and speaks nine languages. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/product-ops-people/message

You may have noticed that we haven't had an episode in a few weeks and that's because I've been working on something pretty special. I want to share with you today. I have launched my playbook for Product Ops called "Product Ops Pillars". Product Ops Pillars provides an accessible summary of what modern Product Operations looks like. You'll learn how to improve your team's performance, which tools are essential, and how to design an operating model that will keep your company on top. Download your copy at https://www.simonhilton.co/productopspillars Please vote for us today on Product Hunt at https://www.producthunt.com/posts/product-ops-pillars --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/product-ops-people/message

In this episode, I talk with Layla Selick, Senior Director of Professional Services at Productboard role of tools within our product organizations and how they fit into the changing and evolving maturity of that team. Productboard is the leading customer-centric management platform, helping product teams to deliver the right products to market faster with over 5500+ customers. Layla has built a team of professionals that provide deep expertise and engagement with organizations making a transformation within their product teams. Prior to Productboard, Layla was a Customer Success leader at Hootsuite and has held roles in the media and entertainment industry. She holds two business degrees, including an MBA in New York University where she specialized in Media, Entertainment & Technology. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/product-ops-people/message

In this episode, I talk with Srinivas Somayajula, Head of Product Ops at Calendly, about how strategy and operations influence each other. This relationship is key to not only being ambitious but also making strategy practical so teams can align themselves but still maintain autonomy. Prior to Calendly, Srinivas was the Product Director for the core marketing platform at Mailchimp and spent a majority of his career in management consulting serving as a trusted advisor to product and technology leaders in hospitality, technology product, financial services, and financial technology companies. Srinivas holds an MBA from Emory University's Goizueta Business School and a BSc from Pennsylvania State University. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/product-ops-people/message

In this episode, I talk with Chris Butler, Global Head of Product Operations @ Cognizant, about the value of good decision making and how we can train this skill within the product team in low cost and safe ways. Chris Butler is a chaotic good product manager, writer, and speaker. He facilitates critical decision making for teams that build new and innovative products. Chris focuses on bias, uncertainty, and randomization to help build robust and resilient teams. He has over 20 years of product management leadership at Microsoft, Waze, KAYAK, aand Facebook Reality Labs. He is now Assistant Vice President, Head of Product Operations, at Cognizant where he PM's the PM experience. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/product-ops-people/message

This is a special episode recorded at the Product Excellence Summit where I hosted a panel about "Building & Scaling a Product Operations Team" at Productboard's Product Excellence Summit. We had some great insights from Anabela Cesário from OutSystems,  Jodi Alperstein from Segment Srinivas Somayajula from Calendly. It is an excellent discussion on how this function ensures that the product team can function smoothly, support the product team to move faster and focus on customer needs in a more consistent fashion. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/product-ops-people/message

In this episode, I talk with Becky Flint, CEO at Dragonboat, about the recent conversation of if Product Ops is a force of good or bad in developing an excellent product function. Hint, its not a simple answer :). Becky Flint is the founder and CEO of Dragonboat, the product portfolio platform for outcome driven product ops and product teams.  Prior to starting Dragonboat, Becky has built and scaled product operations and product portfolios for fast growing companies like PayPal, Shutterfly, Bigcommerce and Feedzai, when they were pre-unicorns or early unicorns. In addition to leading Dragonboat, Becky is a big champion for women in tech and outcome driven product practice. She is the founder of ResponsivePPM.org and outcome focused product HQ Slack community for product ops and product leaders. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/product-ops-people/message

Hugo Froes, Product Operations Principal at Farfetch, joins me to talk about what it is like starting a Product Ops function. We discuss how treating your work like any other product can improve your success and hone your skills. With over 20 years in the field of product and design, Hugo has explored user centered methodologies applied to product development (ex. UX, Design Thinking, Service Design and Lean UX). His main focus is helping teams reach their full potential to build better products. As a teacher in various institutions, a co-founder of UXDiscuss and board member of the Global ResearchOps community, he strives to also contribute to the community and help shape young minds towards user centered methodologies.  He loves solving problems and spending time with family, reading a book, listening to some tunes or watching a movie. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/product-ops-people/message

Rhiannon Gaskell, Director Delivery and Product Ops at Culture Amp, joins me to talk about how to organise delivery so your product teams can focus on discovering customer problems while still being connected to delivery. Rhiannon is a product leader with over 10 years of experience in delivery and product management related roles and has previously been part of teams at Australia Post, Carsales and Message Media. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/product-ops-people/message

Brian Swift, Head of Product at Dovetail, joins me to talk about how to integrate a space for research into the Product Ops model. We discuss how to encourage a research culture with open repositories that helps bring customers into product decisions. Brian is a product leader with over 10 years experience in product management and strategy. He is currently the Head of Product at Dovetail, and has previously been part of product teams at SafetyCulture, Atlassian, Twitter and Zynga, among others. Brian has helped build products like Dovetail, iAuditor, Confluence, Fabric, Crashlytics and FarmVille. You can find more at https://dovetailapp.com/blog/ --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/product-ops-people/message

Denise Tilles, CPO at Grocket, joins me to talk about the emergence of Product Ops from her experience in a wealth of environments across fintech, healthcare, finance and many others where she advises on how to embed a great Product Ops function. Denise has over 10 years of product leadership experience working with startup, growth stage, and enterprise organisations to transform opportunity into a crisp product vision, strategy, and building the org to enable execution.You can find Denise at at denisetilles.com --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/product-ops-people/message