Hi there.

This week, I asked seasoned product expert in Silicon Valley Big Tech and author Jackie Bavaro to share some insights from her experiences. Within the interview, she talks about the product mindset, working to company goals, product methodology, and gives us some practical tips. This is good for both product leaders and their teams. I hope you find it as insightful as I did.

Q&A with Jackie Bavaro

Jackie Bavaro has over 15 years of product management experience, most recently as head of product management at Asana, a team project management platform. During her tenure, she grew the PM team to over 20 people, helped Asana go from zero to more than US$100 million in annual recurring revenue, and launched Asana’s associate product manager programme. She has also worked as a product manager for Google and Microsoft in a diverse set of product roles including consumer, B2B, platform, mobile, and growth. She has written two books: Cracking the PM Interview and Cracking the PM Career, which can be found on Twitter at @jackiebo. 

You talk about the product manager mindset. How do you define that?

Product management is a relatively new role, and it requires a special mindset. We need product managers who focus on problems, goals, and real people’s needs. 

Product mindset is the habitual approach of connecting all work to those goals and needs. It’s remembering to always ask: “What problem are we trying to solve?” and “What problem should we solve?” People with a product mindset notice problems everywhere, and they connect those problems to bigger goals to explain why those problems matter. They consistently think about what their goals should be and prioritise based on those goals.

To really understand product mindset ... CONTINUE READING

INMA Global Media Awards case studies: NZ Herald 

The INMA Global Media Awards have highlighted some excellent case studies (archived here). I have picked out a few I think will resonate with the Product Initiative Community. This week, we are looking at New Zealand Herald’s app relaunch. 

Dates for the diary

The INMA World Congress of News Media is coming up in May with 7 sessions over two weeks. Be sure to sign up, at least to the Product session on May 25 where we have an exceptional line up of speakers. More here. 

About this newsletter 

Today’s newsletter is written by Jodie Hopperton, based in Los Angeles and lead for the INMA Product Initiative. Jodie will share research, case studies, and thought leadership on the topic of global news media product.

This newsletter is a public face of the Product Initiative by INMA, outlined here. E-mail Jodie at jodie.hopperton@inma.org with thoughts, suggestions, and questions. Sign up to our Slack channel.

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