Joining Mik in this episode of Mik + One is Professor Mohan Sawhney, Associate Dean of Digital Innovation and a Clinical Professor of Marketing at Northwestern University. ​

Sawhney discusses the evolution and importance of product management as a discipline. He emphasizes the need for formal training and frameworks in product management and highlights the role of product managers as mini CEOs and customer advocates. Sawhney also explores the challenges and opportunities in implementing product management in different industries, including technology companies, B2B industrial companies, and service-based organizations. 

Listen as Mik and Sawhney explore the impact of generative AI on product management, and highlight its potential to enhance day-to-day tasks and improve efficiency and effectiveness

Key discussions include:

• Understanding customer problems and exceeding customer needs
• The product manager’s crucial role as orchestrator, mini CEO, and customer advocate 
• The discipline of product management 
• The potential for growth and adoption in various industries
• Executive sponsorship and implementing organizational structure 
• Expansion of product management beyond tech companies to B2B and services industries
• Rethinking structure, incentives, and process
• Exploring how to implement product management in organizations
• How Generative AI can improve persona development, wireframing, and roadmap optimization
• AI Product management and how it is redefining efficiency for the future

Subscribe to the Mik + One podcast today so you never miss an episode and don’t forget to leave your review.

Follow Mik on Twitter:

@mik_kersten #MikPlusOne

Additional Resources:

• Portfolio SAFe
• Dean Leffingwell on the Mik + One Podcast: Part 1, Part 2
• MarTech
• Dave West - podcast episode
• Scrum Studio
• Greenfield project
• Skunkworks
• Bimodal IT
• Agile Release Train
• Mik + One Podcast Episode 20: Justin Watts
• Join the Flow Framework Community

Joining Mik in this episode of Mik + One is Pallab Chatterjee, a visionary entrepreneur and technology expert. Pallab is currently the chairman of 3Lines VC, a boutique VC firm specializing in investments in AI-focused companies in the US and India. Pallab shares his journey from running a research lab at Texas Instruments to becoming the CEO of IT Technologies and Symphony Retail AI. Mik and Pallab discuss the TI-84 and TI-86 calculators, which Pallab helped bring to market, and how they revolutionized the industry. They discuss the importance of understanding waste and its impact on organizational capacity and the role of finance in driving digital transformation. 

Mik and Pallab also discuss the importance of actionable visibility and the challenges of implementing predictive and prescriptive models in organizations.

Key discussions include: 

• The story behind the Ti 84 and Ti 86 calculators
• Understanding waste and its impact on organizational capacity 
• The role of finance in driving digital transformation
• The role of AI and digital disruption in shaping the future of work
• Advice for organizations looking to embrace digital transformation
• The PDCA cycle and the importance of actionable visibility
• The challenges of implementing predictive and prescriptive models in organizations
• Understanding waste and rework cycles in software organizations
• The need for a metadata layer to operate on an enterprise relational database
• How organizations can avoid stagnation or falling behind
• The importance of customer-centricity and quantifying pain levels

Subscribe to the Mik + One podcast today so you never miss an episode and don’t forget to leave your review.

Follow Mik on Twitter:

@mik_kersten #MikPlusOne

Additional Resources:

• Portfolio SAFe
• Dean Leffingwell on the Mik + One Podcast: Part 1, Part 2
• MarTech
• Dave West - podcast episode
• Scrum Studio
• Greenfield project
• Skunkworks
• Bimodal IT
• Agile Release Train
• Mik + One Podcast Episode 20: Justin Watts
• Join the Flow Framework Community

Joining Mik in this episode of Mik + One is technology visionary George Kadifa to discuss generative AI and its potential impact on the tech industry.

George discusses how generative AI has changed the conversation with machines, allowing them to generate new content, code, images, and videos in a multi-modal fashion. This development is expected to be even bigger than all the previous tech transformations combined. George Kadifa has a long history of predicting tech trends and capitalizing on them. He believes that generative AI is set to revolutionize the scientific method by being able to comprehend complex situations with billions of parameters, which could have huge implications for medicine and other areas of science. 

Mik and George also discuss how the development of deep learning has led to a shift from workflow-based software to information-based software, with the ability to create predictive and generative capabilities.

Key discussions include: 

• The Impact of Generative AI on the Technology and Enterprise Landscape
• Generative AI and its Implications for the Creative Industry
• The Impact of AI on the Future of Technology and Workflows
• The Potential of AI to Transform Software Development
• The Benefits of Value Stream Management and AI for Improved Productivity
• The Power of Data in Generative AI
• Workflow Automation and Insight-Driven Analytics on Business Processes
• The Increase in Complexity of Software Development 
• Interplay Between Cloud Vendors and AI Model Development
• The Future of Language Modeling and Information Protection

Subscribe to the Mik + One podcast today so you never miss an episode: https://www.planview.com/lp/mik-plus-one/ 

Follow Mik on Twitter:

@mik_kersten #MikPlusOne

Additional Resources:

• Join the Flow Framework Community

In this episode of Mik + One, we’re flipping the script!

Debbie Konrad, an early Value Stream Management advocate, interviews Mik. The two discuss a new report, the 2023 Project to Product State of the Industry Report, that analyzed anonymized data from 2022 of 3600+ software delivery teams representing over 38,000 business product owners and engineers combined with 326 targeted survey respondents in 34 of the world’s leading enterprises. It revealed that five years into the shift from project to product, following the publication of Mik's seminal book on the subject, only 8 percent of sample have operationalized the product model.

Debbie and Mik discuss how the report’s findings are timely and relevant, as technology leaders are under increasing pressure to match tech giants and unicorns on digital innovation and wrestle the competitive advantage from the hands of a few companies. In this episode, Mik shares how to shift the management approach in digital portfolios from a project to a product-based model.

Debbie and Mik also address the importance of combining systems data with survey data in order to provide additional insights into the adoption curve of value stream management.

Key discussions include: 

• The 2023 Project to Product State of the Industry Report
• The seven dimensions of change required for a product operating model
• Product Management Maturity
• Insights from the 2021 State of Value Stream Management Report
• The Journey from Product Experimentation to Operationalization
• Survey Responses and System Data on Product Operating Model Transformations
• Autonomy and Dependencies for High Performance Teams
• The Benefits of Value Management for Software Development Teams
• Implementing Build and Run Teams for Software at Scale
• The Importance of Backlog Management and Prioritization in Product Management
• Creating an Effective Product Management Function: Strategies for Success
• Exploring the Benefits of Flow Metrics for Improved Efficiency and Time to Market

Subscribe to the Mik + One podcast today so you never miss an episode and don’t forget to leave your review.

Follow Mik on Twitter:

@mik_kersten #MikPlusOne

www.planview.com

Additional Resources:

• Download the 2023 Project to Product State of the Industry Report and connect with Debbie
• Portfolio SAFe
• Dean Leffingwell on the Mik + One Podcast: Part 1, Part 2
• MarTech
• Dave West - podcast episode
• Learn more and join the Flow Framework Community here
• For more information on the 2023 Project to Product State of the Industry Report, go here: https://projecttoproduct.org/podcast/mik-kersten-interview

Joining Mik in this episode of Mik + One is Mark Fields, Senior Advisor to TPG Capital, a member of Planview's board of directors, and former CEO of Ford Motor Company. Mark has presided over three decades of strategic and digital transformations at global businesses and shares how he consistently succeeded with a focus on product. He discusses the value of possessing agility, a unified vision, and a rallying cry as a business to create a product that delivers more value and potentially diverts a company off more common value streams. 

In this episode, Mik and Mark also discuss drive-by-wire and how a point of view on what the future is, creates a demand for businesses to create organizational structure that can support strategy.

Key discussions include: 

• Early steps in Mark’s career
• Turning Mazda around in Japan
• Functional divides between business, technology, and operations
• Focusing on product is how you get customers
• Unifying vision and having a rallying cry in a business
• Turning products into platforms 
• Diverting off common platforms to deliver customer missions
• ECUs in vehicles and the cost
• AWS and Azure bills for organizations
• Ford’s Mach-E
• Digital companies Mark is on the board of and how he is helping them thrive
• Learnings and agility

Subscribe to the Mik + One podcast today so you never miss an episode and don’t forget to leave your review.

Follow Mik on Twitter:

@mik_kersten #MikPlusOne

www.tasktop.com

Additional Resources:

• Connect with Mark
• Portfolio SAFe
• Dean Leffingwell on the Mik + One Podcast: Part 1, Part 2
• MarTech
• Dave West - podcast episode
• Scrum Studio
• Greenfield project
• Skunkworks
• Bimodal IT
• Agile Release Train
• Mik + One Podcast Episode 20: Justin Watts

For more information about Mark Fields and to view the full list of resources mentioned in this episode, as well as download the transcript, visit:

https://projecttoproduct.org/podcast/mark-fields/

Joining Mik in this episode of Mik + One is Brendan Hopper, is the CIO for technology at Commonwealth Bank Group. He is responsible for ensuring the bank has a world leading IT engineering capability and is making the right technology investments and decisions. Brendan shares what drives his passion for driving innovation and flow at organizations and why technology should become an accelerator, not a disruptor for organizations and their customers. 

In this episode, Mik and Brendan also discuss org structure and the core principle that to be evolutionary means focusing on small increments and not just major redesigns.

Key discussions include: 

• Brendan’s professional journey in strategy and engineering
• How velocity can drive safety
• Building technology that real people delight in
• Creating a transformation network that is course correcting
• Lessons Brendan has learned in shifting from project to product 
• The need for feedback cycles in transformation
• Understanding data that bottlenecks at the value stream level and the organization level.
• Restoring and repairing organizational design
• Why org structure has to continually change
• Moving teams between value streams when roadmapping what is next
• What Brendan is focused on today

Subscribe to the Mik + One podcast today so you never miss an episode and don’t forget to leave your review.

Follow Mik on Twitter:

@mik_kersten #MikPlusOne

www.tasktop.com

Additional Resources:

• Connect with Brendan
• Portfolio SAFe
• Dean Leffingwell on the Mik + One Podcast: Part 1, Part 2
• MarTech
• Dave West - podcast episode
• Scrum Studio
• Greenfield project
• Skunkworks
• Bimodal IT
• Agile Release Train
• Mik + One Podcast Episode 20: Justin Watts

For more information about Brendan Hopper and to view the full list of resources mentioned in this episode, as well as download the transcript, visit:

https://projecttoproduct.org/podcast/brendan-hopper/