Aurelius Podcast – Episode 70 highlights with Jessica Nelson Kohel:

• How UX Research fits into both large and small company product organizations
• The role of Product Manager, its evolution and common misunderstandings
• Importance of “the art” of product management like communication style, culture, context and relevance
• Product strategy and the critical inclusion of UX research
• Measuring the success of your product strategy

In this episode we have Jessica Nelson Kohel, a product expert, consultant and founder. Jessica’s career includes managing products and building successful product strategies from very large enterprises like Nike, all the way down to budding startups.

We talked about product management and the true essence, or art of what product management and product strategy really is. Jessica shared her perspective and experience about how the role of a product manager has evolved over the years and more importantly, how that role is successful in very different ways depending on a host of factors like company size and industry.

User research is an integral part of building any successful product or product strategy and Jessica shares exactly how to approach research depending on the situation you find yourself in, such as the difference between a large mature company and a small fast-paced startup.

Jessica has a wealth of experience building great products, processes and strategies, particularly using UX research and I’m sure you’ll walk away with some tips from our chat together.

Links from this episode:

• Jessica on Linkedin
• The PMX Group

Episode Transcript

(this transcript was automatically created using our very own transcription feature in Aurelius and has been minimally edited 😀 )

Hey Jessica. Hi there. How’s it going? Doing pretty good. How about yourself?

Yeah, I’m good. I’m really good. Appreciate you jumping on, taking the time to chat with me, be on the podcast, and hear a little bit more about your background perspective. Yeah, thanks for having me. I’m calling in from Portland, Oregon today where it is once again raining after a very lovely spring week.

Um, let’s see. I’ve been here for 15 years. I grew up in Eugene. I spent quite a while early in my career in LA. And that’s how I found my way into the product management and technology world.

Working for a small startup down there and then eventually making my way up here to Nike, which was my first foray into the big enterprise technology space and then my last foray into the enterprise Fortune 500 technology space. I’ve been improvised for close to 20 years now, mostly in startups, but like I said, a bit of time at Nike. And now we work with companies of all shapes and sizes, providing fractional product management consulting services. So we go in and do everything from, you know, advisory hours to early stage startups looking to figure out kind of how to do any sort of product to developing their first product strategy or roadmap, all the way up to large companies looking to do, you know, a full turnaround of kind of a struggling product or a pivot of their product strategy or gap coverage for someone going on parental leave. So kind of anything in that product realm that they’re struggling with or that they have a gap with.

So that was born out of seeing a lot of struggling product orgs over the course of my career and kind of being almost beat up in different ways in house as a pm and seeing it done so differently in so many orgs. You know, sometimes you’re a glorified project manager, other times you’re brought on and you’re just kind of an order taker. Even though you’re supposed to be empowered to be really driving that strategy and listening to customers and acting on their behalf. But really it’s a top down situation and you have no power to do any of that or use that feedback to enable change in the product. And it’s really a misunderstood discipline.

And so, yeah, that’s a little bit about kind of me and what we’re doing and all the things. Awesome. Appreciate that background. I usually ask, uh, you went right into it, which is helpful because I think, you know, if somebody hasn’t already heard of you or followed your work or anything like that, it’s always helpful to kind of know somebody’s perspective before we jump into a conversation. And one of the things that I’m really glad you brought up, because I actually had in the back of my mind to ask you, is product manager, and you even said it yourself, sometimes you’re a glorified project manager, sometimes you’re like the owner of it all, and then there’s everything in between.

I would love to hear a little bit more on your experience with that, your personal experience with that, but then also kind of what you’re seeing. And is that changing? Is it maturing or is it still really, really diverse depending on where you go on what product manager means? Both, if that’s even possible. I mean, I definitely think it’s come a long way.

Right. It’s better understood in general terms, right? More people know what it is. There is more product out there. More companies have a product function in the traditional sense, which I use air quotes because it’s still kind of not very well understood.

So more companies, no product. More companies have product orgs, but it still really varies depending on the maturity of the company, the maturity of the product, how they utilize product, or how it’s defined within that can really vary. A product at meta is going to look really different than a product at a pre seed startup or a series. A startup, right. A product manager from an enterprise company is not going to do as well if they go to a small startup and have never worked in that environment before, or vice versa.

Right. Because they’re going to be used to a very different set of functions and process and timelines and resources than the alternative or the other situation. So it’s really not a one size fits all thing. It’s very nuanced, depending upon the environment, size, stage, etcetera. So I think that also goes for how people understand it and how you apply those methodologies.

People often are like, product is a science. You have to learn the methods, the process. That’s true, but it’s more of an art. I would argue all day long that it’s the art that makes you a good pm or a great pm. You can’t take a methodology and apply it equally everywhere.

You have to take the context of where you are and all the factors that make this situation what it is, and draw out the relevant things from a methodology or a process or a situation, and apply those relevant things to this situation to make it work. You can’t put a blanket process over this. Cause what worked here is not necessarily gonna work here. So that’s the art and it’s the relationships, and it’s talking to the people that are there and looking at that situation and how this is gonna work and applying it correctly. And that’s how the art piece of it comes into play.

So that’s the nuance. And I think that’s why it still has a long way to go and it’s gotten better, but it’s still really hard, and that’s why it’s just still kind of one of those misunderstood things, or it’s just still a really hard discipline to get. Right. Yeah. A couple reactions I have to that one.

It’s really interesting. It’s almost a martial arts reference. It’s like Jeet Kune do, right? Like, you know, all of these different martial arts, but, like, take what is useful, disregard what isn’t, and apply your own technique to that situationally dependent. And it almost sounds as if product managers need to know or good product managers should have that awareness or will have that awareness to apply what works and what, what doesn’t.

Again, kind of go back to almost a martial arts reference. Fighting different styles, for example, require different approaches and techniques. Right. And it’s kind of the same thing. It sounds like you’re suggesting this.

It’s the same thing for or any good product manager. Yeah, it’s just context and it’s relevance. Right. You can’t just take the same thing and apply it the same way everywhere. Like, you gotta look at the factors in each situation and just pick out the parts that are the most relevant to that people.

You know, you can’t take the same communication style and expect that it’s gonna work for every person that you meet. Right. You can’t go, like, if you have a super busy CEO that needs an update, you can’t give him a three hour detailed version. Right. You’re going to need to give the cliffs notes with the highlights and the one thing you need an answer on that day.

Right. You’re not going to give everything because they’re going to be like, come on, come on, come on. I got to go. If you have the finance person over here, you’re going to need to give the version that has the numbers that they care about and. Right.

So it’s the same kind of, same kind of thing. You got to pick out the relevant things for that time for that person and kind of. Right size it. So same is true for product. Yeah, for sure.

And I want to go back to something else that you said it’s going to be. That’s going to look a lot different. If you’re in a startup, maybe a scaling startup, as opposed to, you said something like meta. You know, just for folks who maybe haven’t had those roles before, I’m curious, how would you describe the difference between those two and the kind of like skills and approach you might need to bring to each one of those situations? Well, in one, you’re going to have like a person in a role for every single part of what you might need, right?

At like a meta, you’re going to have data analysts, business analysts, you’re going to have finance, you’re going to have architecture, you’re going to have data and project management and product management and, you know, QA, and you’re gonna have a, you’re literally gonna have like people endlessly, which might be a good thing. It might also make everything way slower. Cause you have so many more cooks in the kitchen at every little part of every process that you have to involve at a small startup, you’re gonna be really lean and really scrappy. You might have one engineer, you might not have any QA. You surely don’t have a data team.

You might not even have any data to work with at that point. And you’re guessing, you’re making educated assumptions. You’re, you know, you have no user research, you have no project manager. Surely you might have one example. I mean, you just have like, no people.

You’re super lean, you’re super scrappy. You’re working with very, very little in order to get there. You’re moving very quickly. So it’s just a really different set of circumstances and resources that you have to work with. And so, you know, you get things done very differently on a very, at a very different pace.

And you need to be comfortable with a lot of unknowns and with being very proactive on your own and finding, you know, information in different ways and, you know, seeking information in different places. I think you have to be a lot more resourceful. I think on the flip side, you have to, so, like, I, for example, myself at Nike, I was used to small startups. I went to Nike and they wanted to move really fast. And I was like, I’m really bored.

I feel like we’re moving really slow and I’m just kind of sitting here waiting for people all the time because meetings were required to make decisions to share information with people. And, you know, it was just a lot of waiting because, you know, you had to gut check everything with all these different parties along the way in order to, you know, to do everything. And it you know, that just slowed everything down. But that was the red tape. That’s the bureaucracy.

That’s the process that has to be, you know, gone through in order to get things done. And so, you know, it’s just a very different working model and it’s, neither is right or wrong per se, but like, it, you know, the personality and the style and the day to day is, it’s very different for the people involved. So it’s not necessarily, it does require different skills, I think, especially on the lean side. Like, you have to be a lot more self reliant, a lot more proactive, a lot more, you know, resourceful, just in yourself and going out and doing those things and not sitting there and waiting for someone to do it for you or waiting for it to fall in your lap. And on the flip side, you have to be patient and know kind of when and what to do.

And it’s just a very different style. So, yeah, it sounds like the big thing that really changes is your style and approach to communication and working with other people because, I mean, a lot of what will probably make you successful as a product manager in either situation is very similar. But your approach to it, your communication style and definitely the speed at which you do those things is probably going to change a lot. Definitely. And I’m definitely not knocking, like, large company PM’s.

It just wasn’t for me. And I’ve only been, I’ve only done it really the few years that I was at Nike. And I know a lot of people do very well in those environments, but it was not my jam. I like the scrappy, I like getting my hands dirty and getting into all the stuff and like being all over the place. So that was definitely more my speed.

So I just ran back that direction and never looked back. But yeah, I mean, I think there’s tons of folks that love and do super well in that and, yeah, so it’s just, you know, it’s really just that I think a lot of companies are like, oh, you know, we’re going to do great. We’re a small startup and we hired this, you know, this PM from this big company and we’re so excited to have somebody with this type of history on their resume. And then they wonder why it doesn’t work out. And, you know, and it’s very clear, I think to me at least, why it doesn’t work out because it’s, there wasn’t any of the experience that they really needed in that person’s background.

And if you only have the one type and then you go to a very different scenario and you don’t know what to expect, then it’s a really challenging switch. And so I think that’s something to always look for when you are making that change. Totally. Culture matters a lot people. Theres not necessarily a way to design culture.

It kind of just happens I think. But yeah, a really important point that you just brought up there too, because somebody who may have that great experience at a very successful company, thats not a one to one translation. And actually I dont think it matters if its a product role, if its a Ux, if its a design role, if its a research role. Those cultures are very, very different and somebody, as you said, might thrive, might love that. They come into this and they feel like they got, you know, dropped out of a helicopter feeling totally.

And product at small startups can be really lonely too. Like if you’re coming from a big team and you get dropped in and you’re like on an island and you’re the only one, like especially if your first hire situation at one of those small startups, you have no support, you have nobody to commiserate with when it is hard and you literally are the only product person. Maybe you have a designer ux person like fractionally, maybe you have a dev, maybe they’re off short. Like you’re kind of literally like by yourself and nobody is there that gets it. And you have a non technical founder and you’re, you know, you’re literally fighting the battle kind of by yourself and it can feel real lonely sometimes.

So yeah, it can be a kind of a rude awakening at times. So there’s lots of, lots of ways that can go wrong, but yeah, it’s hard. Yeah, definitely. Well, a couple of things I want to ask you because you referenced this early on, and I love when somebody talks about product strategy. I love it because it’s my background and I, and I’m very interested in it, but then also I love it because everybody has a slightly different definition of that.

And so I have to ask you, what is product strategy? So I believe that product strategy is sort of a subset of the overall company and business strategy that drives and anchors the product roadmap. So ultimately, you know, there’s never a shortage of ideas of new things to work on on a product. How do we anchor and prioritize what it is that we’re going to work on on a given sprint, on a given day, week, month and the product strategy, or, you know, how we set our goals is what does that. So, you know, if overall, the business is trying to achieve x, y and z in a given one, three, five year plan, the product strategy is a derivative of that.

And we set our goals and our metrics and our okrs and all of our things around that product strategy. And then every idea, every new feature, every new initiative that we are going to work on, on that product is a derivative and is stacked against or prioritized against that product strategy. So, you know, we work with a lot of companies that don’t have one. And, you know, they have a roadmap, and they have all these ideas coming in all the time, and they’re just all over the place and they don’t roll up to anything. And, you know, they just throw them on the roadmap in random spots, and they then they develop them and they release them, and then they try to measure them and it’s not against anything.

And so then they try to measure the performance of their team or their teammates or any of that, and it’s just kind of all, like, guesswork and there’s nothing to measure it against. And so really, it’s that kind of North Star that drives all that we do and then gives us that North Star to measure it back against. Were we successful? Are our users happy? Is our product growing?

Is it performing how we thought it would? Is it contributing to the business the way that it should? All of those things, yeah, love that. What’s your definition of it? I’m curious.

Never had somebody come back at me and say, well, yeah. Well, what’s your. Well, I don’t know if I explain it the way people expect. Like, I mean, I could also just, like, read out of a textbook answer kind of thing, you know? But I also try to explain it in terms like, my parents have been asking me what I do for, like, 20 years, right.

And, like, I still don’t think they could answer the question. So, like, I always ask people how they explain products. Totally. I think. I think all of us, that’s actually a very relatable point.

A lot of us that are, and I’m making some assumptions, we’re around the similar age, have been working and doing this, and it’s still new enough where, like, our parents, our grandparents have no idea what language we’ve been speaking. So that’s very relatable point. Yeah. Literally, like, two days ago, my mom was like, you’ve been doing this for almost ten years now, right? I was like, mom, it’s gonna be about 20 years now.

And you. I’m like, I’m guessing you’re asking me again to explain it to you now, and I’m. It’s, tonight’s not the night. Mom.

Always just says something with computers and that’s about what she goes, I. Know it’s an online thing. And I was like, oh, boy, totally. But I will definitely answer for you. So for me, the definition of product strategy I’ve always given is it’s a collection of decisions, hopefully in some, like, sort of priority rank order, that help us move the business forward in the thing that we say we want to do.

Right. So, very much like you’ve outlined in your definition is, I have to think you got to set some pretty clear goals and those things can change. That’s fine. And this does not have to be written on a stone tablet. But, you know, as a company, we ought to say, these are the things that, this is what our company is about.

This is what we aim to serve or put out in the world. And we have products and services that are meant to do that. So when you have that, then product strategy is literally a set of decisions and actions that you’re going to take to help make that thing ultimately funnel up to that goal. That’s pretty broad, and you can get into sort of different zoom levels of that. But to me, it’s always been about, like, really good decision making, the prioritization of that matters and others ways to do that.

Me coming from, you know, sort of a UX in research background, that’s been the way really sort of fine tune those prioritizations because I think things can get very quickly out of whack. Let’s say you’re really great as a business of being, having really clearly defined goals, that’s great. Lots of people aren’t. But if you’re really good at that only, and you’re not good at learning from your customers and balancing those goals, you’re only going to do the things that you can monetize. You’re only going to do the things that sell, but nobody may care about them.

Right. And so it’s just, it’s kind of playing this balance game between those things. And that’s, to me, always been what a good product strategy is. Yeah, definitely. Yeah.

Makes sense. As you were describing yours, too, I kind of, I had this, like, picture in my head of a company being like an octopus with all its arms, basically trying to pull itself in all these different directions, but going nowhere. If things are just getting thrown on the roadmap, if people are just like making roadmaps which I know in and of itself is a bit of a prickly subject depending on who you talk to. But you know, those things don’t matter so much other than to say movement does not equal progress. And there’s a lot of movement that can happen.

That’s just a lot of churn and a lot of waste. Indeed, there is so much. Well, I got to ask you, because I’m passionate about it. I know a lot of the folks listening to this are probably passionate about it to say, where’s research come into this? Right.

Understanding full disclosure, there’s different folks. Like if you’re in a completely net new zero to one type startup, maybe you don’t have that and you’re going to get it, or all the way up to a big company like meta or Nike or whoever that might be, that has more data than it knows what to do with. But what part does user and customer research play in creating a product strategy for you? I mean, it should play a massive part always. I think early on, especially, it has to play, ideally an ongoing part all the time.

You can only do so much with assumptions and hunches. I mean, I’m also a huge believer in trusting your gut and not overanalyzing things and turning into analysis paralysis by doing too much research and never taking action and then learning and iterating from that. Because I also think that that’s very important. There’s a balance between research action and then just iterating. But yeah, I mean, I think that you can trust your gut, you can do things, and then you can learn and then you can keep going.

But I think doing research, validating assumptions is obviously very critical. I think there’s also a lot of stigma around research where a lot of executives and founders tend to hear discovery or they hear research and they automatically think it’s going to take forever. Right. Or it’s going to slow us down. Like, for some reason it invokes this fear of just, it’s going to be slow.

And so I think, like, one thing we work really hard to do is dispel that myth by always saying, don’t worry, discovery can be really quick. Discovery can take 20 minutes. It can be like me pulling a couple data points and googling a few things to look for some supporting data. Or it can be six months of deep, deep research on very complex topics. Right.

Like, so we always try to really educate on that, like, up front because we see that a lot. So I think it’s super important. We do a lot of customer research with lots of our clients. I also think it’s really important because we encounter a lot of founders, especially, that just want the shiny object answer to their product situation, whatever it may be. They’ve got a successful product, but it’s just been kind of growing like this and not like this, you know, Orlando, they just, whatever the situation is, they can’t quite crack the nut the way that they want to.

And they know, they’ve done research in the past, they know roughly how their customers feel, and they just can’t quite get it to the next level. But ultimately, a lot of the time, we find that they know their customers, and there’s other things that they’re not paying attention to, whether it’s, there are learnings there, and they’ve just chosen not to act on those specific learnings. They’ve chosen to act on the other ones. And those aren’t the ones that are going to move the needle, or there’s a bunch of small learnings that they could be acting on that would collectively move the needle quite a bit. But they’ve been looking for the big ones that aren’t actually there.

So there’s little things like that that I think sometimes people are, like, looking for these aha moments. And in reality, it’s the sum of many, many small parts that are broken that make the biggest difference, especially if it’s a more mature product that’s, like, been around for quite some time. So I think there’s so many ways that research is impactful. I also think a lot of research that’s done, and it very much depends on who’s conducting it and how experienced they are. But the way that we ask questions is, can make or break the quality of the research that you do.

If you’re asking leading questions, if you’re asking the wrong questions, if you’re, you know, how you’re doing the research, if you’re watching someone interact with a screen versus, you know, asking them a question about something on the screen, if you’re, you know, just whatever the type is or how you’re kind of gathering information about what it is they’re doing or what they would do. So it just really very much depends. And there’s so many ways you can do it, and so many ways you can go wrong with it that you know what you actually get out of it and then what you do with what you get out of it, there’s just many nuances to it, like everything else. So getting companies to do it and invest in it, then getting it right then trying to learn the right things, and there’s just a lot to it, but it’s so valuable, and I wish more companies invested in it and did more of it. Totally, totally love that.

Love several points that you made. And I feel like my job in these conversations on a podcast is trying to distill everything down into succinct points. I know, because I keep talking forever, obviously. No, but it’s, but it’s really, really good because there’s a couple things here. The first one I love that you call it out, which is there’s doing research quickly, and then they’re spending a lot of time on stuff.

For me, I would distill all that down to confidence. How much confidence do you need to move forward on something? Can we get that from 20 minutes or do we actually need six months? The answer is yes to both, depending on the level of confidence you need. Or like, how big is the thing that you’re trying to learn?

Yeah, the risk. Well, so that was the other thing I was going to say. I was going to kind of package up the rest of what you’re talking about, too, is there’s always a certain appetite for risk. Now don’t get me wrong, having a big appetite for risk is fine, but things can go pretty wildly off the rails. Just having a big appetite for risk, that can be an ego thing.

Right. And I was just talking with somebody the other day about this, where I have often, especially recently talked about like, UX research, product research, specifically as risk mitigation. And the reason I’ve done that is because I feel like, to your point, like, I wish more people did it, wish more people invested in it. There’s one thing, and you even said yourself a lot of times there’s like initial aversion to this. Its going to take longer.

Its going to do this, its going to do that. I used the example recently where you dont hire a lawyer and say, whats the ROI were going to get from working with this lawyer? You dont ever ask that question because its not about the ROI, its about risk aversion. And thats actually the same thing with customer research and feedback and UX research, all that stuff that you would apply towards making product decisions, you know, so I package those two things up. I’ll ask you if I distilled those thoughts.

Well, and of course, any reaction you had to that? Yeah, no, you definitely did. You definitely did. I think the difference with the, with that example is that, like companies, at least where they have products that already exist, that are generating revenue and that are profitable, the risk is lessened. Or they don’t feel it because they’re already making money and they’re like, well, people already like our product, they’re already buying it, and, you know, we’re making money.

So, you know, if we do this, obviously we could just turn it off if it doesn’t go great or, you know, like that kind of thing. Like, it’s a little bit like that. They don’t feel the risk is there because I think for early stage startups it’s there more. But startups then feel. Founders then feel like, emotionally and attached to their ideas, and they feel so convinced by them that they’re, you know, they’re driven and they’re so focused and short sighted is totally the wrong word here, and I’m looking for a different word, but they’re just determined.

They feel passionately convinced that the idea is amazing and surely going to be successful. And it’s, you know, that’s why they’re the founder of this product or this business, you know, so. So, yeah, it’s a kind of a double edged sword. I don’t know, actually, two things that came to mind that you already brought up. One is, I think, communication style for each one of those, especially when talking about research’s importance and its application to there matters.

So your communication style on one end as opposed to the other, should change and adapt. But the second thing is, really interestingly so, I actually gave a talk about this of, like, how to convince people that your ideas are great. Right? Like, your decisions are great. And it’s clickbait.

Clickbaity title because it’s not actually that. It’s about understanding that person’s motivations. And so with an early stage founder, of which I have been, yes, you have full conviction that your vision and your idea for that is the right thing. But I think the conversation to have there isn’t so much that. No, you’re wrong, because it’s never met.

Well, but rather, yeah, that’s why we’re all here. We’re just trying to figure out the right way to execute on it because there’s all these different ways to execute on it. And as with life, we might be surprised on the best way of moving forward there. And it’s probably something we didn’t see. And we just want to, we just want to help understand the right way of executing your brilliant vision.

My clickbait title to that is, but will anyone pay for it like that? Because this is literally like, you know, I have like, I worked, I used to work in a couple creative agencies, so I have lots of creative director friends who are geniuses, truly. Like, I mean, some of the pitches that I have seen recently from these women are not only hysterical and amazing and beautiful, but just really, really wonderful. But then you hit a point where you’re like, okay, but will anyone actually buy this? Like, it truly is genius.

It’s funny, it’s catchy, it’s gorgeous, it’s all these things. But how do we monetize it? Like, how can we monetize this thing? Now you have to take this from this gorgeous pitch deck two. I’m sitting in a room with an investor and they’re going to tear us apart.

Like, how do you monetize this? Right? So that’s the flip side. It’s like, how do you take this from gorgeous, creative brand catchy idea to hell, yeah, I’m entering my credit card info. Let’s roll.

And so it’s the same exact kind of thing. It’s like, how do you take this and do a little bit of price test research and do that in a way that you don’t have to build out prototype that costs a bunch of money, or do something where you can create something testable that’s meaningful enough that you can do the research and do that in a way to get enough data to move forward in a way that you feel confident about.

Rubber meat road. Exactly. And so, interestingly enough, I actually, and I’m biased for sure, but I think that’s exactly where UX research comes in because, okay, let’s sell this grand vision. There’s nothing wrong with that. We all know the power of storytelling, especially to get to build alignment and motivate people.

That’s all great and super important, but UX research is often, product research is often very founded in existing behavior. Exactly. That’s the first place you can go, right. Is somebody who has those skills in doing that work to say, well, what’s the behavior we know and we can learn about today that matches up to say that aligns with that vision? And now let’s figure out how to, how to execute on it.

Right? Exactly. Exactly. Okay, so zoom, zoom a little bit out. Once we’ve got this product strategy that is hopefully informed by something we learned, how do we start prioritizing that stuff?

I hesitate to say, create a roadmap, because, again, not everybody does that. And frankly, not everybody probably should do that. But we’ve got, ideally, pretty clear set of goals. What we’re trying to do as a company, big or small, we have an idea of all these different decisions we can make. What next?

I think you got to look at where you are and where you want to go. Do we have an existing backlog? Do we have stuff in flight? Do we have bugs we know exist? Do we have requests that have come in from customers or from stakeholders?

Do we have ideas that have been floating around from the internal team or from the founder? The existing PM’s, depending on the stage of the company, the size of the team, et cetera. I’m guessing there’s stuff floating around in all sorts of, you know, form, email, notes, whatever, right? Slack. So in some semblance, there’s a roadmap or backlog existing in the universe all over the place.

It’s just a matter of documenting it however they choose to do so. So if whether or not you have a Jira instance personally, and I don’t have any official affiliation with Atlassian or confluence or Jira of any sort, but I quite like Jira product discovery and the roadmapping tools and the way that it links now into all the ticketing and epics and all the things. We’re moving many of our clients onto it because it actually is a pretty useful tool. So if you’re, especially if you’re already using Jared advantage sprints and things like that. So, big fan, but, you know, being able to just create that as just a list with epic level ideas and then breaking that down into feature level tickets and everything like that, and just starting to have a loosely prioritized top down list of ideas, and then going from there, breaking it down into ticket level work.

If you have certain things that are ready to go that, you know, are really high value, you know, and starting the process from there, I think creating a roadmap is great, right? I think it makes sense to have one. I don’t think it makes sense to build it out past two months, ever. Things change too quickly, unless you’re doing a massive replatform or you have much longer strategic initiatives in flight, which of course requires much farther in advanced planning, architecture, etcetera. Of course those things have to be planned farther out in a couple of months.

But I always advocate to have a roadmap that has a line on it where the stuff that’s in progress stops and everything else is up for fluctuation down below, because your priorities are going to change based on customer feedback, based on high priority hotfixes that come in, or new ideas that you quickly determine have a massive ROI that you want to get in there quickly or whatever. And so I think you want to stay agile in that sense and make room for those things to come in quickly if they need to. And that’s the nature of good product, is making sure you can accommodate those if you want to. So thats whats next. Yeah, really, really strongly agree with that.

And even with our own product, Aurelius, we have a lot of customers ask like, yeah, do you share a roadmap? And I said were always happy to talk about that. We dont typically plan beyond three months because anything after that is fiction. The world changes too much too quickly. And I think if youre stubbornly planning those things, if it makes you feel better, thats fine.

But its probably a waste of time and you’re almost certain to change it. Waste it all the time on like quarterly planning and like all these things. And it’s like, okay, so now we got to communicate to everyone that it’s changed again. And it’s just like all this time spent on planning and then changing the plan and then communicating the change, and it’s just overhead that’s unnecessary. So, yeah, and even just to really tie it back to something we’ve already discussed, is behaviors and expectation change enough and you should be constantly learning from those people and it should influence those changes that you should actually lean into that.

That’s a good idea. Yeah. Flexibility. Yeah, 100%. I realize that we’re kind of coming up close to the end of our time together.

I got to be respectful of that for you. Is there anything else that you want to share with folks today that we didn’t have a chance to talk about? Well, the last thing I would say, I mean, and I don’t know if you’ve encountered this, but we would hear a lot of people say product can’t be effective as a consultant or part time or not in house, and it’s just factually untrue. Trying to help people avoid the pitfalls of not having some help in lieu of full time help, because something is better than nothing. And to your point earlier about, you know, attorneys, it’s like avoiding risk.

I kind of think of product the same way. Right. If you’re not going to have full time product in house in your early stage, having some advisement is better than having nothing because it can help you avoid some of the huge mistakes and pitfalls that can make or break a startup early on. And, you know, you don’t have to go without it. There are options out there now available fractionally, part time consultant short term, flexible, all that kind of stuff that didn’t really exist, you know, a number of years ago, and it doesn’t have to be all or nothing.

So I think as this fractional rise has kind of taken place, there’s still a lot of people that are kind of skeptical, and, you know, we’ve built a decently sized business on that, and we do it every day, and it’s hugely helpful. So I would just say, you know, encourage people to learn more about that kind of thing and leverage it because it’s really valuable. And we’ve helped a lot of early stage startups kind of avoid some really huge missteps by leveraging that. So that’s. That’s awesome.

The same is true for UX design and research as well, by the way. Yeah, totally agree. Those folks also totally agree to, uh. And I love, I love that perspective, too, because even if it’s a huge company, I think having an outside, fresh set of eyes, it’s the whole reason you hire consultants to begin with. So.

Yeah, yeah, I do. I love. I think that there’s value in that. Yeah. That the objective perspective is one of the biggest things people get out of it that they don’t plan on.

Right. It’s just like, oh, you’ve had the same product team forever. Somebody goes on parental leave, they bring us in for, like, four months, and it’s a new set of very experienced product eyes that you didn’t have, and everyone else has been there for three, four years, and all of a sudden, this person’s like, oh, we could tweak this process just real a little bit like this. And everyone’s like, why didn’t we think of that? That’s exactly what we need to do.

Oh, my gosh. That just improved things with engineering. This has been broken for two years. We didn’t even realize why. I mean, it’s like light bulb moments right and left that people didn’t even recognize.

It’s like, it’s like low hanging fruit all over the place that people just were kind of missing because they have been looking at it forever, you know? Totally. Yeah, that’s definitely it. True for product ideas, team stuff, ops stuff. Yeah, definitely.

So, Jessica, one of the ways I like to end every episode is asking our guest if I fell off a cliff or developed temporary amnesia. And somebody came to you and said, hey, I heard you were on that podcast. What was that all about? How would you. How would you answer that question succinctly?

It was all about, let’s see the value of great product management, user research, listening to customers, making good product decisions in the environment that you’re in. I really appreciate you jumping on having a chat today. Yes, it was great to meet you. Great to talk to you. Yeah, likewise.

So we’re going to have links to Jessica’s company where you can find things that they write about, the work they do, and all that stuff in the show. Notes to where you listen to this episode and just have to say thank you again. Really enjoy the conversation. Thank you so much. All right, everybody, we’ll see you next time.