22 NOV 2019 · What does good look like for a product veteran? In this episode, Maggie taps Lesley Mottla (former product leader at Microsoft, Zipcar, M.Gemi, and others) to find out. Lesley talks about how to get the mix right between qualitative and quantitative data, the importance of building relationships, the path that's now opened up to product pros, and what she's learned along the way in her product career.

8 NOV 2019 · A lot of companies treat onboarding as something that they set and forget (or they treat as a project instead of a team). Slack? Not so much. From the day the company launched, Slack put a big investment into onboarding to help their customers get into the product and understand it quickly. So in this episode of Build, Maggie talks to Fareed Mosavat (Director of Product at Slack) to learn about Slack's approach to onboarding and how it's evolved over time.

25 OCT 2019 · Maggie is not a fan of backlogs. So in this episode, she talks about what's wrong with working off backlog and feature-based roadmaps. Not convinced? Don’t worry. Maggie walks you through the top five most common objections to this approach – and tells you what it’s really like to work without a traditional backlog.

11 OCT 2019 · You get product, engineering, and design into a room to go through your one pager. Then you develop a list of open questions as a team. But as a PM, what comes next? In this episode, Maggie is joined by Tim O'Brien, Director of Product Design at Drift, to talk about what happens after story time and what each team owns in the build process. Because let's get one thing straight. It's not the kind of thing where the design team goes off into a dark corner to come up with a prototype all on their own. It's a whole team effort. Want to know what Tim says is the number one reason why most design projects fail? Listen to the full episode.

27 SEP 2019 · In product, you always want to do more discovery, be more customer-centric, and talk to the people who are on the front lines using your product every day. But it’s easier said than done. And it’s also pretty tough to find real-life examples of what the relationship between a PM and the customer should look like. So on this episode of Build, Maggie talks to a customer she’s been working closely with for nearly a year. Rob Stevenson (Product Growth Leader at Keap) joins Maggie live at HYPERGROWTH Boston to talk about what it takes to build a partnership with a customer, how not to ask for feedback, and what it really means to build with your customers in mind.

13 SEP 2019 · Struggling with prioritization? Want to know how the experts pick projects and scope work? Find out in this episode of Build, where Maggie talks to Ryan Singer, the Head of Strategy at Basecamp. Ryan has been shaping and building at Basecamp for over 16 years, and recently wrote a book on how they work called Shape Up. Maggie and Ryan dig into what it means to shape work, prioritization theater, how product decisions are really bets, and what happens when your product scope gets out of control.

30 AUG 2019 · There’s 10,000 different ways to do it. But when it comes to setting goals (and prioritizing and measuring them) which way is best? Find out in this episode of Build, where Maggie talks to Rachel Neasham, VP of Product at Lola.com. Before joining the startup world, Rachel was an officer in the U.S. Army. But after four years at West Point, two deployments, and five years in the Army, Rachel was ready for a new challenge and eventually found her way into product management. Maggie and Rachel talk about the things they say are really top of mind for product leaders – like how to go from strategy to individual team goals, how to navigate the balance between being super quantitative with just shipping what makes sense, and how to develop roadmaps. Want to know what Maggie and Rachel say is the the real job of product leaders? Listen to the full episode.

16 AUG 2019 · It’s underused, underrated, and often seen as a “soft” thing to focus on. But guess what? Product discovery is also critical in making sure you’re building the right thing – and the more thorough your discovery is, the more effective your delivery will be. So on this episode of Build, Maggie meets with Jocelyn Mangan, someone who has a ton of operational experience in product discovery. Before she was the co-founder & CEO Him for Her (an organization helping to get more women on for-profit boards) Jocelyn was the COO at Snag and the SVP of Product at OpenTable. Tune in to find out how much time product discovery really takes, what “good” discovery looks like, how to overcome challenges to getting your team to do more discovery, and how to establish discovery metrics to keep improving as a team.

2 AUG 2019 · You could have a field day researching the tactics, frameworks, mental models, and processes and then apply them to building better products. But David Cancel says most of us are doing this wrong. When you're picking a role model for your product, you can't cherry-pick the best parts – because then you end up with a Frankenstein product. So on this episode of Build, Maggie and DC talk about the importance of stepping back and using first principles. Want to know how DC says product managers should approach systems thinking? Listen to the full episode.

19 JUL 2019 · What works for some product leaders is often so company and culture-specific that it’s hard to see how you can take those best practices and make them work at your own company. So on this episode of Build, Maggie talks to Scott Williamson who is the VP of Product Management at GitLab. Before joining GitLab in 2019, Scott ran product management at SendGrid and CA Technologies, so he’s got first-hand experience developing a product philosophy at one company and then bringing it over to another company. Want to learn how Scott shifted from focusing on features to focusing on problems? Listen to the full episode.