post

B2B product management

Artificial Intelligence (AI) & Machine Learning (ML)

Building Product Teams

Business Strategy

Data Driven Product Management

Digital Transformation

Diversity and Inclusion

Minimum Viable Product

OKRs

Prioritisation

Product Design

Product Research

Product Development Process

Product Ethics

Product Discovery

Product Leadership

Product Management Career

Product Strategy

Stakeholder Management

🌎 <a href="https://www.mindtheproduct.com/world-product-day/" style="color:#FFFFFF;text-decoration:underline;">Happy World Product Day!</a> Be sure to celebrate product, yourself, and your peers today! 🎉

What to do when it’s time to pivot in product: Lessons from Bumble

Clarity: The key to product success – Arne Kittler (Product Leadership Sidekick, Product at Heart)

Ditch the PRD template and embrace the PRD checklist

Product management books to read this summer and beyond

Bridging the gap between data, product, and analytics 

Footer About

Footer Contribute

Footer Get Involved

Footer Links

Mind the Product

Podcast

Why can’t we get accessibility right? Claire Bauden (SVP Global Product Design, Global Payments Inc.)

Guest Post

What it means to be a product manager in the pharmaceutical industry 

Director Mobile Product at XING, the leading professional network in the German speaking markets. Co-Organizer of ProductTank Hamburg and Curator of MTP Engage Hamburg.

Arne Kittler

<p>In this talk I gave at ProductTank London I share some of my personal learnings of scaling mobile teams at XING to a distributed setup with currently 8 teams who contribute in parallel to fortnightly releases of our iOS and Android apps. While some of the topics I address are specific to web-era companies most of them apply to any company that needs to move beyond a single mobile product team.</p>
<h2>Our Goal: Full Stack Product Thinking</h2>
<p>Today’s users expect to use services on whichever platform they chose to use in a given moment. To address this perspective we have to abandon the silos of mobile/non-mobile that still exist inside many companies. Instead we need to move towards a state of Full Stack Product Thinking in which a Product Manager who’s responsible for a particular product such as the user profile is responsible for ALL representations of this product – because she will be the most knowledgeable person to understand the users, the market and the specifics of her product.</p>
<h2>Four Areas of Change</h2>
<p>In my talk I categorize the changes necessary to enable Mobile Scaling in 4 areas and give an example each:</p>
<ul>
<li>Staffing &amp; Setup: We needed to establish new roles and competencies within Platform and Full Stack Domain Teams</li>
<li>Patterns &amp; Ways of Working: We rolled out a modular design systems and processes for collaboration</li>
<li>Infrastructures: We introduced a set of new internal products and learned to manage them just like user-facing products</li>
<li>Common Plan: We established a bi-weekly Release Train as the backbone of a collaborative release schedule</li>
</ul>
<h2>Three Learnings</h2>
<p>From the many learnings we made over the course of the past 2+ years I highlighted the following three:</p>
<h3>Scaling Mobile does not mean more of the same</h3>
<p>It means a substantial change in roles &amp; responsibilities: The newly formed platform teams need to accept to leverage themselves through others and focus on internal products and communication instead of features. The full stack domain teams need to learn how to handle several platforms at once.</p>
<h3>Active alignment is crucial</h3>
<p>Because scaling mobile is such a substantial change process you need to make active alignment a priority! This starts with bringing everybody on the same page about new overarching initiatives (at XING we use a framework for collaborative alignment called <a href="https://www.mindtheproduct.com/alignment-framework-managing-stakeholder-communications">Auftragsklärung</a>). As a platform team it is also crucial to understand when to provide additional guidance or introduce or change processes.</p>
<h3>Standards vs. Innovation</h3>
<p class="gmail_msg">Possibly the biggest challenge when scaling mobile is the continuous balancing act between an efficient level of standardization and an environment that fosters innovation in a highly competitive market. We have decided to be consciously strict in areas where we would otherwise just re-invent the wheel – and by doing so save up time &amp; energy for real innovation from all teams involved.</p>
<p class="gmail_msg">Overall we have learned that Scaling Mobile is a middle-distance race: It takes endurance, is intense and does not offer quick wins – but it’s worth it because it offer opportunities to learn for all involved – and it is the only way to provide a relevant service to our users.</p>
<div class="g g-21"><div class="g-single a-170"><a class="gofollow" data-track="MTcwLDIxLDEsNjA=" href="https://www.pendo.io/pendomonium/"><img decoding="async" src="https://www.mindtheproduct.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/MTP-Footer_ad.png" /></a></div></div>

core/freeform

Video

Breaking down misconceptions to create healthier teams by Adrian Howard

Modern-day leadership by Janice Fraser

5 key practices to build a better product, Adam Mullett, ProductTank Perth

Experiment like a boss by Merissa Silk

From opinion-based to evidence-guided product development by Itamar Gilad

A quick look at decision supervision by Lucy Spence

The F words of highly successful product organisations by Saielle DaSilva

Identify and manage imposter syndrome by Phyllis Njoroge

The good, bad, and ugly of OKRs by Jenny Herald

Is your innovation project on track? by Tendayi Viki

Scaling Mobile is a Middle-Distance Race

ProductTank Valletta

ProductTank Philadelphia

ProductTank Palo Alto

ProductTank Tauranga

ProductTank Buenos Aires

ProductTank Pune

ProductTank Sydney

ProductTank Hamburg

ProductTank Exeter

ProductTank São Paulo

ProductTank Auckland

ProductTank Bratislava

ProductTank Brighton

ProductTank Santiago

ProductTank Tokyo

ProductTank Chicago

ProductTank Helsinki

ProductTank Berlin

ProductTank Belfast

ProductTank San Francisco

ProductTank Copenhagen

ProductTank Rotterdam

ProductTank Montréal

ProductTank New York

ProductTank Orlando

ProductTank Seattle

ProductTank Bielefeld

ProductTank Köln

ProductTank München

ProductTank Bangkok

ProductTank Edinburgh

ProductTank Los Angeles

ProductTank Bristol

ProductTank Norwich

ProductTank Brno

ProductTank Barcelona

ProductTank Bucharest

ProductTank Pittsburgh

#mtpcon @ Pendomonium