Building a Virtual Board of Directors with AI featuring Victor Njoroge

In this conversation, Dave Prior interviews Victor Njoroge about the intersection of AI and product management. Victor shares his background and role at Clarion, emphasizing the importance of optimizing workflows for sales development representatives. They discuss the concept of Sidebar, a platform for brainstorming and sharing ideas among professionals. Victor explains how he built a virtual board of directors using AI to gain diverse perspectives on product management challenges. The conversation highlights the significance of trust in AI tools, the need for continuous learning, and the enduring value of human skills in the age of AI.

Video: https://youtu.be/Z1oVjbl6V8Y

Audio: https://on.soundcloud.com/7SpXAA8EZRsxKiwP6o

What's The Next Most Important Thing to Learn with Scott Sehlhorst

 

I’m testing out the AI Generated Summary…

Click here to go straight to the podcast

In this conversation, Dave Prior and Scott Sehlhorst discuss the importance of improving the product plan while executing it. They explore the common problem of companies jumping straight into execution without considering what they should build and why. Scott emphasizes the need to shift from a mindset of control to one of influence, where product managers focus on solving problems and creating value for customers and the business. They also discuss the concept of uncertainty and sensitivity and how to navigate it using impact mapping to identify needs and changes. In this conversation, Scott Sehlhorst discusses the importance of shifting into a business model and the need to create changes and hypotheses. He emphasizes the process of narrowing down the target population and quantifying the impact of changes. Scott also highlights the significance of determining sensitivity and making connections between cause and effect. He introduces the confidence rubric and explains how to prioritize experiments. The conversation concludes with the idea of constantly improving the plan and focusing on the next most important thing to learn.

You can find the podcast here.

Assumptions Mapping with David Bland

Assumptions are often the Achilles heel of any development effort. These are the things we’ve unintentionally decided are true and unfortunately, far too often, our assumptions are wrong. If you’ve based the success of the work you are doing on incorrect assumptions… VERYBADTHINGS.

In this episode Founder David Bland has joined me to talk about why we need to pay attention to assumptions and how to use Assumptions Mapping to determine which of our assumptions present the biggest threat and need to be addressed first. During the interview, we review how to use the Assumptions Mapping approach that is included in Testing Business Ideas, the book David co-wrote with Alexander Osterwalder.

You can find the interview here: https://bit.ly/3DhlVcR

Does Your Team Really Understand What Is Valuable? w Adam Weisbart

In this episode of the podcast Adam Weisbart and I take on the topic of how you can get clarity on value, how can you make sure your backlog reflects that understanding of value and how can you ensure the team has awareness of what “value” means to the organization.

You can find the interview here.

Adam also shares some details about his upcoming Agile Virtual Summit (Bite Size) which is taking place on October 14, 2021. The event is free and there are going to be some great speakers, including people like Jim Benson, Richard Cheng, and Melissa Boggs who have all been guests on the podcast. You can learn more about the Agile Virtual Summit (Bite-Size!) here.

The Product Goal with Ryan Ripley

Agile for Human co-host and Fixing Your Scrum co-author, Ryan Ripley joins me to try and sort out the Product Goal and how it fits in with the other ways we talk about the Product Backlog. 

You can find the interview here.

Multiple Product Owners with Competing Priorities w/ Jeff Howey

In this LeadingAgile podcast, Jeff Howey and I take on a question from a student about what to do when you have multiple POs working on one product, shared resources, and all the PO's have competing priorities. 

You can find the podcast here.

Product Ownership and Online Education with Braden Cundiff

Braden Cundiff  works in the International Division of McGraw-Hill Education serving in a Product Ownership role for international education products. His work involves creating tools and products that are used in collaborative, educational environments all across the globe. He also has a background that includes teaching, agile coaching, and transformation. This allows him to offer a unique perspective on how to create an effective online environment for your teams. 

We also spend time at the start of the interview discussing something which is asked about in every Certified Scrum Product Owner class  I teach:  how to say "No".

You can find the podcast here.

Getting Better at Saying No with Tim Wise

One of the hardest parts about being a good Product Owner is saying "No" all the time. No matter how much experience you have, or what your reasoning is, telling people you aren't going to give them what they want is never easy. 

My friend and colleague, Tim Wise, joined me for a podcast where talk all about how to get better at saying No to people.

You can find the interview here.

The Perfect Product Owner w/ Richard Cheng

My interview with Richard Cheng on his presentation "The Perfect Product Owner". Richard gave his presentation earlier this week at the 2019 North American Global Scrum Gathering.


https://www.projectmanagement.com/blog-post/53427/The-Perfect-Product-Owner-w--Richard-Cheng

Roman Pichler : Strategy and Product Ownership

Roman Pichler, one of the leading voices in Agile Product Ownership has released a new book, Strategize: Product Strategy and Product Roadmap Practices for the Digital Age. Roman's new book presents a number of tools and techniques Product Owners and Product Managers can use to gain a deeper understanding the product(s) they are developing in order to stock and maintain a better product backlog.

This was a special treat for me. I've been saving up questions for this interview for long time and Roman was kind enough to tolerate all of them.



Show Notes

• Why the wrote Strategize 00:26
• Adding Product Strategy to Agile Planning 2:46
• Vision to Strategy to Roadmap 5:37
• How to use the Go Product Roadmap to feed Release Planning 6:00
• Who you need to create the Roadmap? 8:40
• How Strategize should help Product Owners and Product Managers 10:30
• Is the focus on Product Ownership increasing and maturing? 11:50
• Explaining the difference between and Product Owner and a Product Manager? 15:20
• The key elements of Product Strategy  19:20
• Aligning products across the portfolio 21:24
• Product Owner at the Portfolio level 23:00
• How often should you update your Vision Board and Roadmap? 24:05
• How important is it that Team Members know the Product Vision? 25:50
• If there was one misunderstanding about Product Ownership that you could fix, what would it be? 27:54
• How to get in touch with Roman 30:00

If you'd like to get in touch with Roman, you can reach him at http://www.romanpichler.com
If you'd like to pick up a copy of Strategize, you can find it here.