In this episode, our guests are Chris Shinkle and Mike Cronin from SEP to discuss how the company approaches product strategy engagements with clients. They explain SEP's philosophy of clarifying the problem, defining a guiding policy, and outlining coherent actions - going beyond just creating a PowerPoint strategy deck. They share examples of helping clients align stakeholders, refine roadmaps to reflect the true strategy, and rapidly validate technical feasibility through prototyping. They emphasize the importance of a roadmap as a "prototype of strategy" and a starting point for productive strategy conversations. Some key points:
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In this episode, we sit down with April Dunford, founder of Ambient Strategy and author of the books "Sales Pitch" and "Obviously Awesome". She is most known for her expertise in market positioning, having personally launched 16 products and influenced many others. Our conversation covers several key insights from Dunford's work:
This episode offers valuable lessons for anyone involved in product marketing, sales, or positioning - whether at a tech company or any other type of business. Dunford's insights provide a framework for crafting more effective, customer-centric sales and marketing narratives.
A big thank you to our guest co-host, Josh Colter. Josh is the CEO of Cardboardit and has great experience in marketing and positioning.
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You can find more information about this podcast at sep.com/podcast and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening!
In this episode, Zac and Noelle Webster-Milam delve into the world of design, aiming to demystify its complexities and shed light on its significance in building great products. Noelle shares her thoughts on how design brings value to software product development as a key team member, alongside engineering and product management. She also shares how SEP thinks about design and has organized our practice to serve our clients.
Key Takeaways:
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You can find more information about this podcast at sep.com/podcast and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening!
This episode features a dynamic conversation with Oji and Ezinne Udezue, both Chief Product Officers at Typeform and WP Engine, respectively. The Udezue’s draw from their extensive experience as product leaders to discuss the concept of customer listening and its role in full stack product management. They emphasize the shift from treating product releases as fixed-time projects to ongoing products that require continuous tracking, support, and market engagement. The discussion centers on the importance of balancing business demands with customer delight and the need to build a "listening machine" within organizations to continuously gather and integrate customer feedback into the product development process. Our conversation provides practical insights for product leaders on how to effectively listen to customers, drive product improvement, and enhance customer retention.
A few highlights:
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You can find more information about this podcast at sep.com/podcast and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening!
SEP's Director of Engineering, Jon Fuller, explains his starting points for helping customers make intentional choices before they build applications in cloud environments. Whether you're building a brand new application or need to migrate from something deployed on-prem, these areas will help you make a more thoughtful choice. Jon lays out 3 areas you should think through:
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You can find more information about this podcast at sep.com/podcast and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening!
This episode’s guest is Josh Haines, he is the Global DevSecOps Capability Manager & Software Factory Founder at Rolls-Royce. In this episode Josh shares his journey over the past few years focusing on Digital Transformation within the Defense organization at Rolls-Royce. His mission has been to empower the development of modern applications to both serve his business partners within the organization and their customers. Josh hasn’t done this alone and he shared many of the things he’s learned and the resources that have helped he and his team to reach many milestones.
We talk about many things but a few to point out:
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You can find more information about this podcast at sep.com/podcast and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening!
Our guest is Christine Itwaru, she is the head of Product at Vitality.io. Christine recently gave a talk at Industry: A Product Conference on utilizing AI in the Product Management Lifecycle and we dove into this subject a little deeper. Our conversation took a few turns into:
Christine has a wealth of experience and her road to Product and organizational strategy was really interesting to me. Anyone heading in either of those directions would benefit from hearing her thoughts.
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You can find more information about this podcast at sep.com/podcast and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening!
Our guest is Jeron Peoples, he’s responsible for strategy at ARI and Sports Tech HQ. Wearing multiple hats within two organizations is fun and challenging. Our conversation focused on a few areas:
The most interesting part of conversation to me was his view on strategy. As someone who loves to learn and challenge my own thinking in this area, I really appreciated his candor and perspective. This conversation left me thinking a little differently for one of the hats I wear here at SEP.
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You can find more information about this podcast at sep.com/podcast and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening!
A new format for Behind The Product, this episode features Jordan Thayer and Raman Ohri with SEP. Jordan is the AI Practice Lead at SEP, with a PhD in artificial intelligence. Raman is SEP’s CEO and has been at SEP for over 30 years. We asked each of them to share their perspective on the recent executive order on AI, including the effect on our industry, who may or may not be impacted, and some things you may want to consider for yourself or your business.
A quick disclaimer: this is only our opinion as product development leaders. We are not legal experts, so please seek proper counsel when making decisions for yourself or your company.
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You can find more information about this podcast at sep.com/podcast and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening!
Our guest is Kirsten Moorfield, she’s the cofounder and COO at Cloverleaf. We got to hear Kirsten on a panel at a conference here in Indy and really resonated with a lot of what she shared. Our conversation went a few directions but a few things stood out to us.
The most surprising thing we talked about was how she discovered that less time for users on their platform was a good thing. Cloverleaf is an automated and scalable coaching platform for companies who want to help their employees be the best versions of themselves. You can find out more information about them and even try them out for free at Cloverleaf.me.
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You can find more information about this podcast at sep.com/podcast and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening!
In this episode, Drew Beechler from Holder shares why he wanted to build a Web3 tech company in the marketing space. He left us with some new insights and thoughts on preconceived notions of Web3 anonymity. Whether you’re a blockchain expert or new to the space, Drew had interesting thoughts on why more people should learn about this world. He also shared some ideas on why this technology is a barrier for some folks and what might need to be true to overcome them. If Marketing is your thing or you find it interesting, Holder’s platform offers some unique advantages due to the underlying technology it’s built on.
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You can find more information about this podcast at sep.com/podcast and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening!
In this episode, Jim Sorgi and David Smith from ProTeam Tactical share why ProTeam came to be and their mission of serving First Responders with the best mental health app. They take us through their journey to tackle the behavioral health aspects of the job for First Responders by applying technology to an underserved group who greatly need the support and resources!
Jim and his partner Joey Vandever, also a former professional athlete, knew they needed to up the level of care for these men and woman who serve our community. They spent the first years focusing on the physical needs of the job with tremendous success. And most recently they saw the need to care for the behavioral health side of the job for these First Responders. So they embarked on building SHIELD, a mobile-first product that launched earlier in 2023 to help First Responders assess where they are in 6 key categories.
ProTeam is not a typical tech company, they are more tech enabled; and yet their journey to build a digital product to aid in this pursuit was one of learning and compromise. There will always be more features than time and money allow for. This team learned how to focus on the most important features to get the most for the users they serve. There are practical take-a-ways from this conversation: why deciding to say no to a feature is good, why a solution in search of a problem can hinder success, and the power of getting feedback from your target users.
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You can find more information about this podcast at sep.com/podcast and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening!
In this episode, Courtney Cantor Soice and Ben Cleland from Hamilton share insights from the world of event marketing. Join us to learn how Hamilton adapts ideas from diverse industries, tackles challenges, and responds to change.
Courtney and Ben share how they balance ambitious visions with budget constraints through "objective development," aligning event goals with practical booth designs. They also discuss how Hamilton quickly adapted during the pandemic, pivoting to remote immersive experiences that lower friction for both clients and attendees.
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You can find more information about this podcast at sep.com/podcast and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening!
To celebrate three years of the Behind the Product podcast, we're revisiting the top three episodes from the past year.
Speaker, trainer, and coach Lindsay Boccardo shares how we can navigate generational divides and bridge the gap between a variety of perspectives. You can find our full conversation with Lindsay on Episode 26.
Author, speaker, and thought leader Bob Moesta shares tools, philosophies, and practices for optimizing product management. You can find our full conversation with Bob on Episode 30.
Abhishek Nayak, Co-Founder and CEO of Appsmith, shares what he's learned through founding multiple startups and how he pursues simplicity at scale. You can find our full conversation with Abhishek on Episode 25.
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You can find more information about this podcast at sep.com/podcast and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening!