In this episode of Product Momentum, she joins hosts Sean Flaherty and Sean Murray to discuss how she became a leading light in the rapidly evolving field of AI – specifically, embracing firsthand the connection between business needs and technology solutions and using that mindset to break from convention to foster creativity and innovation.

“Early in my career, I always looked for a role that connected the dots from business problems to technology solutions,” Shikha says. “And when I came across product management, it was clear to me that PMs are at the intersection of engineering, business, and design. They get to participate from end to end in solving user needs, anticipating market trends, and building the solutions we must deploy to get there.”

Now, as Meta’s Head of Product, Gen AI for Recommendations, Shikha Kapoor applies this product management mindset to balance long-term vision with agile execution. Her team often works in six-month planning cycles to develop big-picture AI-driven tools and then works backward from that distant horizon to maintain nimble and adaptable to emerging technologies and market shifts.

Shikha highlights emerging trends in AI across various industries, such as legal and healthcare. She points out the potential for automation to drive dramatic increases in productivity and business value. As AI continues to disrupt traditional workflows, she says, product managers must remain open-minded and proactive in adapting to these changes.

Catch the entire conversation with Shikha Kapoor to gain insights into the strategies she employs to stay ahead of the AI curve, including the importance of grounding your assumptions and embracing a culture of experimentation. Shikha also shares valuable advice for new and seasoned product managers alike on how to leverage AI to enhance user experiences and drive innovation.

The post 149 / How Curiosity + Passion Deliver Next-Gen Innovations, with Shikha Kapoor appeared first on ITX Corp..

Too often in product development, we become so focused on heads-down requirements building that the act of launching the product feels like an afterthought. And to many, it’s become a lost art. James says that success requires a companywide, comprehensive plan for managing internal handoffs and bringing clients deeply into product development and launch.

The development-to-sale process offers “many rakes to step on,” James says. And even the most well-intended teams make mistakes, often manifested in these critical areas:

Client Listening. We tend to sample only our most favored clients; we limit discovery efforts to a specific segment of our market; and too often we wrongly assume that internal team members possess the domain knowledge to speak on behalf of the client.

James underscores the critical role of continuous client listening and says that that every sales interaction is an opportunity for market research. “Maintaining a dialogue with clients both before and after the market launch is crucial for refining the product and addressing client needs effectively.”

The Product-to-Sales Handoff. Software launches start with innovation and product design, followed by value-added activities within the product function, James says. But then there’s this completely separate activity that happens over here in Sales. The gap between those functions is where many products fail to launch.

The best organizations integrate these activities into a holistic approach where sales and product teams work closely together rather than operating in silos.

The Sales Cabinet. There’s a solid collective understanding that we should listen to our clients and that we should work collaboratively with our colleagues. But why don’t these things happen in the real world?

James introduces the concept of a “sales cabinet,” a group of trusted senior sales representatives who provide early feedback on product ideas and help profile new offerings.

Be sure to catch the entire episode with James Whitman to deepen your understanding of the LAUNCH process: Listen, Assess, Unify, Navigate, Control, and Hone.

The post 148 / 3 Remedies that Boost Product Launch Success, with James Whitman appeared first on ITX Corp..

That’s exactly what happened when ITX was deploying a new API to access a MySQL database. The codebase was supposed to go into multiple databases, create a report of ITX employees and their roles from the data, and then deliver that report. However, the site would always mysteriously crash about six hours after the report was delivered.

The team was stumped; a lack of error management in the code prevented them from figuring out what exactly was failing. If your car just shut down while you were driving without showing something like a check engine light, anything could be the problem.

So, that’s what Ale was tasked with. The problem? Python. Although Ale had experience with C#, PHP, and Java, the project was written in Python, a programming language that he had never even touched before.

Very early on, Ale decided that he would use ChatGPT to help diagnose and solve the problem; however, he realized the AI would be best used not as a magic box that spat out code, but as a learning tool. “It’s cool to say AI fixes everything, but when it comes to technical things, like coding, there are still a lot of errors,” Ale said. “When I moved my mindset to not having the AI do the work for me, but be there for me and enable me, that’s where I found it to be most helpful.”

Ale started by putting little snippets of code into the AI, asking for an explanation of them. As ChatGPT explained the different elements to him, Ale started to understand the structure of the code and what each line of code was actually doing. “I frequently am brought onto projects where I don’t know the project, the language, the architecture; I need to learn everything. I’ve been through this experience without ChatGPT, and this was way less stressful.”

After he got a grasp of what was going on in the codebase, Ale had a hunch: maybe it was something to do with the database connections. Plugging the relevant code into ChatGPT, Ale asked if that was the case. ChatGPT replied that it was customary to run the script on the database and then afterward close the connections to prevent a crash. Ale double-checked the code: no script to close the connections.

His hunch proven and the problem identified, it was a simple matter for Ale to write some new code with his newfound knowledge. Ale became comfortable reading and writing Python because of how he used ChatGPT. The AI wasn’t doing things for him; rather, Ale was using it as a mentor: almost like coding during your professor’s office hours, able to look up at any time and get clarification or advice.

Ale implemented his fix and created a robust error management system to prevent future confusion. The project reminded Ale of something he once heard from one of his own professors: “You either prevent it from failing or make it fail gracefully.” In coding, that can be the difference between a helpful error message and the dreaded blue screen of death.

When asked about why he didn’t just use ChatGPT to solve the problem for him, Ale was quick to answer: he wanted to learn Python. “I didn’t go into this asking, ‘hey, write this code for me’ because I knew there was a huge chance that there were going to be mistakes in the code that it gave me,” Ale said, “I didn’t have the tools to understand, if ChatGPT got it wrong, how to fix it.”

According to Ale, the codebase ended up much healthier; the code was of a higher quality and far more secure. In addition, it could now handle even more connections to the databases than ever before.

ChatGPT doesn’t just have to be a magic box that solutions come out of. Ale’s genuine interest in his work led him to use AI in a way that not only sped up his work on this project but left him with lasting skills that he will be sure to use again the next time ITX needs something fixed.

Andrew Tyrell-Smith is a UX Writer at ITX. He graduated from the University of San Diego with a BA in English, and has spoken every word he has ever written out loud.

The post Enhancing Python API with ChatGPT appeared first on ITX Corp..

Is there such a thing as the rightamount of Content? Of simplicity? Of clarity? As with all writing concerns, the right answer requires more than a prescriptive, one-and-done response. So much is audience dependent. Human nature is amazingly complex and sometimes confusing; it requires us as creators to explore each creation subjectively, mindful of each audience’s expectations.

One thing we do know: bombarding website visitors with walls of text, over-explained content, or a confusing website structure is a sure-fire way to deliver them an unpleasant experience. In this blog, we’ll explore why a “less is more” approach – with the right balance of content, simplicity, and clarity – is essential to effective content creation and management. You will find tremendous value in simplifying website content while simultaneously prioritizing quality.

Over-explanation: What’s the Point?

Give your readers credit where it’s due; they understand more about a topic than you imagine. It can be difficult as a writer to know how to communicate to a general audience without making assumptions about their experience with your chosen topic. Oftentimes, it can be especially hard to not try to cater to a wide range of readers, especially with public-facing website content. After all, visitors from all over the world might be reading your content. Narrowing your target audience and leveraging research to anticipate their needs are preferred as opposed to padding your writing with unnecessary, obvious, or too much information.

Think about what needs explaining – I call this my “Once upon a time” theory. What happens in a classic fairytale? The narrator describes time, place, characters, and the significance of their situation. Website content may not be the same as a work of fiction or a type of narrative, but we can extrapolate these principles and use them to our benefit. Think: What does my audience need to know in order to understand what I’m writing about and where this piece of content is going? How can I best communicate this content to my readers?

Removing Obsolete Content

When was the last time you took a good, hard look at your (or your client’s) website content? Have you ever gone on a website and wondered, “Hmmm….I wonder why they left that there.”? My sense is that the website admin probably forgot to review the site and purge obsolete website content. It’s easy to let a website’s content go unchecked without a clear and actionable process for review. By consistently reviewing content for accuracy and timeliness, website admins and writers will ensure that readers are provided with relevant, up-to-date, and correct information.

It’s important to review a website with an open mind, especially if you created the content. It’s also tempting to view the removal of something you spent your blood, sweat, and tears on as a personal affront. However, content is an ever-changing and evolving life force, and removing content that isn’t essential for a site’s functioning is not a personal failure (as much as it can feel that way).

Analytics are a great resource when considering whether your content has exceeded its shelf life. Website analytics, including how many visitors a website has, the location users access your website from, and the average amount of time users spend on your site, offer helpful insights regarding what they find useful or interesting. Is there a webpage you notice is rarely used by site visitors? What are the hot spots for traffic on your site? Your audience’s site usage sends an important message about what content is necessary and useful, and what content is redundant and not needed.

Simplifying Your Site

Giving site visitors the freedom to choose their own path brings them a sense of independence and an opportunity for discovery. However, an excessive number of pages, content pieces, and links frustrate what could easily be an intuitive site and a pleasant experience. Users benefit from ease of navigation, instinctive search functions, and refined clarity. Imagine you’re reviewing a dinner menu at a local restaurant; do you prefer making your selection from a limited list of excellent options? Or flipping through a chain restaurant’s 30-page menu? Most welcome a more limited list of alternatives, as many become overwhelmed or stressed by an excess of choice.

While a webpage is certainly not a restaurant menu, we can apply the principle of simplicity to both examples. It’s important to consider the content you can remove from a website without adversely affecting the visitor experience or their ability to understand the products and services a company is offering. A colleague of mine refers to this as “condensing content without diluting the message.”

Likewise, managing a site with fewer pages makes administrative work less burdensome, allowing a smoother pipeline for removing obsolete content as the site ages. Time is a precious commodity, and it’s a demonstration of respect for your audience to deliver content in a meaningful, thoughtful way. Producing original, well-researched content enhances your authority and reputation in your field.

SEO Benefits

In the highly competitive online space, good SEO placements on Google are extremely important. Google prioritizes high-quality content over high-quantity content. By consolidating pages and removing excessive or otherwise unnecessary content, you can improve your site’s SEO ranking, which generates more visibility for yourself or your client (after all, isn’t that what we’re chasing here?). There is a delicate balance between SEO and user experience, so including important keywords while prioritizing the site’s usefulness is key in satisfying both.

Sharing appropriate, relevant text on your home page and other key webpages helps to increase the importance of your content on search engines. Keyword bloating and working to push your content to the top of SEO rankings can prove to be counterintuitive, as, while your site may end up at the top of the results list, users will not want to parse through repetitive or confusing statements. Frequently updating and revising content will help your site gain favor – content quality and organization are essential to a website’s success. Annual (even semi-annual) content audits are a great place to start.

The Simple Facts

If you’re feeling stuck with your website, it’s high time to take a deeper look at the roots that hold it up. Are the roots twisting, overlapping, and creating an overall confusing visual and content management tangle? If so, simplification will fast become a great friend to you and your audience. Understanding what your visitors need to know will aid you in delivering relevant and engaging content. Simplifying the website experience respects your audience’s time and enhances your authority as an authority in your field. Less is more when it comes to delivering interesting, clear, and helpful information, and an organized webpage will lead to a truly delightful user experience.

Lydia Pejovic is a UX Writer at ITX. She enjoys creating informative and engaging content for all audiences. Lydia received her BA in English from the University of San Diego and a dual MA & MFA in English from Chapman University.

The post Content Creation and Management: Why Less is More appeared first on ITX Corp..

In today’s conversation, Itamar looks back on his early career that – he readily admits – includes ‘not that many big wins.’ As he explains, “The engineer in me kept whispering, ‘you don’t really know. You’re just faking it.’ And the results spoke for themselves.”

It was then, while still at Google, that Itamar realized the power of discovery and user research. What he called, “all these good things that we now take for granted.” Once he embedded these techniques into his work, his perspective changed, and he started to consider a new product leadership playbook. What he came up with has replaced the traditional Plan and Execute model “that may have worked in the 20^th century,” with an outcome- and evidence-based intuitive approach.

“We used to believe that if we spend enough time creating the perfect top-level plan, and build a set of cascading plans, and then execute well on these plans, we will achieve greatness,” Itamar says. “It simply doesn’t work that way.” Even ideas from the most visionary leaders were informed by research and evidence, hypothesis and testing, he adds.

In his book, Evidence Guided, Itamar presents an actionable model for bringing evidence-guided development into our organizations. Nested within Itamar’s larger framework are the GIST model, which leads to the ICE model, which then leads to the Confidence Meter. In this conversation, Itamar explains the role each model plays in specific detail and provides easy access to them.

Be sure to catch our entire episode with Itamar Gilad and consider this famous quote from the late British statistician George E. P. Box: “All models are wrong, but some are useful.”

The post 147 / ‘Useful Models’ That Boost Product Launch Success, with Itamar Gilad appeared first on ITX Corp..

As we face the integration of design and developer tools, we seek new ways to approach our work. The increasing popularity of Artificial Intelligence (AI) provides opportunities to test how well these new tools can translate our designs into code for specific web components. We began thinking of an experiment that would test the viability of such tools. We hypothesized that we could deliver higher quality code in less time compared to traditional coding using AI plugins available through the Figma community.

Builder.io was one plugin that we turned to, after reading reviews of its use by other designers. The software boasts an impressive ability to take a Figma file and translate the designs to code. In theory this would not only significantly reduce the time it takes to deliver frontend code, but would also reduce the time required for the design-to-dev handoff. With 9,300 “likes” in the community and over 720,000 users, we believed this was a good place to start.

Experiment Setup

In the first half of our experiment, we wanted to test how well AI-generated code performed; it was important to create a test environment that wasn’t overly complicated but not too easy either. We created a sample authenticated login screen user interface (UI) for our experiment; it’s a common design request and would include basic UI controls that would weed out AI tools that couldn’t handle simple design files.

Our test authenticated login screen included the following design components:

• Layout (responsive)
• Cards
• Fonts (h1-body)
• Buttons (all states)
• Links (all states)
• Input (all states)
• Validation error
• Checkbox

The second half of our experiment required comparing the quality of code that comes from a more traditional coding method versus that of the AI-generated code. Two of our developers stepped in to join the experiment: one to assume the standard procedure of creating traditional code “from scratch,” and the other taking the AI-generated code (with AI prompts) and making whatever changes necessary before the code was ready for release to production.

We evaluated not only whether the code produced by Builder.io would result in a functioning page, but also other key metrics. These included the page’s accessibility score, Lighthouse audit rating (which helps with improving the overall quality of a webpage), time to produce usable code, responsiveness, code quality (peer-reviewed), design fidelity, code agnosticism, and UX support time.

The Results

The experiment yielded some interesting results.

From the data, we can see that Builder.io’s time to usable code was significantly longer compared to traditional coding. If you consider the steps of creating code from start to finish, Builder.io’s AI-generated code got us through 80% of the steps in only 4 hours. However, it took longer to debug the code output to ensure that deployment would create a functional experience.

When reviewing the responsiveness of the code, which refers to how quickly and efficiently the code responds to user inputs or external events, we found that Builder.io’s code was responsive right out of the gate. The developer who worked with the AI-generated code did not have to tell the AI to be responsive and add breakpoint classes, which are essential to creating layouts that automatically adjust to the screen size.

This is interesting to note because the developer who created scratch code in the traditional process manually incorporated those breakpoint classes. A required, manual step in the traditional coding process is an automated standard practice for Builder.io; using the AI-generated code mitigates the risk of forgetting to add those breakpoint classes and ensures the responsiveness of the code.

Our Recommendation

Our results show that while Builder.io’s AI-generated code performed on par with traditional code development, and even outperformed in some respects, we don’t believe it is a viable substitute for traditional coding at this point in time.

Builder.io is great out of the box if you’re using it within their content management system (CMS) and for landing and marketing pages. If you’re using its Figma to Code feature in your own development environments and as a base for more complex products, we found it takes more time in the long run.

Nonetheless, we were thrilled to discover that using Builder.io got us 80% through the process extremely fast. Unfortunately, the final 20% of the process took longer than standard coding to deliver our desired level of quality. For that reason, we don’t find it to be a viable solution for now.

Our experiment highlights the future potential of AI-generated code. We’re looking ahead and finding the next AI tool to experiment with. The only way we are going to definitively know whether AI-generated code is worth it is by trying, testing, and experimenting. With over 3,000 Figma plugins available, the possibilities are endless.

Discover key insights

Explore more of our research and innovation stories.

Brian Loughner is a Lead UX Designer at ITX. He works to connect with clients, understand their problems and find solutions to meet their needs. Brian co-organizes meetings for Upstate UX Meetup, aimed to facilitate conversation on various UX topics for professionals and students.

The post Figma & AI: Testing the Viability of AI Plugins appeared first on ITX Corp..

August 21, 2024 Rochester, NY. ITX Corp., an award-winning custom software development firm, announced today it has earned Systems and Organization Controls 2 (SOC 2) Type II compliance after passing an independent audit conducted by MHM Professional Corporation. The report cited “no deficiencies or remediation issues,” presenting ITX with a completely clean report. SOC 2 compliance for service organizations is attained only through a rigorous and thorough review of processes and controls by an independent third party. 

SOC 2 compliance is an essential component of a service organization’s cyber security framework; this is especially true as their clients’ technology’s footprint expands. “The benefits of technological advancement come with certain risks,” said Jonathan Coupal, VP of Security and Infrastructure at ITX. “If our clients are to realize the full benefits, ITX needs to demonstrate that we have the organizational maturity to help manage the risks associated with them. A powerful part of that effort is SOC 2 Type II compliance.”

“ITX achieved Type I compliance a year ago, which demonstrated the presence and reliability of the controls we have in place for security and confidentiality,” Coupal added. “Passing the SOC 2 Type II re-affirms the trust our clients place in ITX to protect their sensitive information and brand reputation.”

SOC 2 Type II compliance marks the next significant milestone in ITX’s ongoing commitment to maintaining strong controls and high levels of governance over them. “Throughout the process, we really leaned into our Values,” said Lisa Young, ITX Director of Process & Compliance, “especially Integrity and Mastery. Having an independent auditor reconfirm that we do what we say we’re going to do – and we do it very well – is super-powerful.”

ITX’s pursuit of SOC 2 compliance aligns with their long-term growth strategy. Whereas Type I compliance recognizes the presence of these controls at a snapshot in time, Type II is evidence of the company’s sustained operational effectiveness. “SOC 2 compliance reflects the quality and value that our clients expect from us,” Coupal added. “This Type II compliance reinforces that high level of trust and satisfaction.”

About ITX Corp. 

ITX helps mid- to large-sized companies tackle complex business challenges through custom software product development, delivering solutions that build trust, loyalty, and advocacy among clients and their users. Founded in 1997, the company has expanded beyond its roots in Rochester, NY into a team of nearly 300 talented product professionals and technologists throughout the Americas and beyond.  

Career inquiries: 585.899.4888  

Media Inquiries: Kyle Psaty, Vice President of Marketing | 585.899.4895 

The post ITX Earns SOC 2 Type II Compliance appeared first on ITX Corp..

In her return visit to Product Momentum (having joined us from NY Product Conference, back in April), Denise reveals to hosts Sean Flaherty, Paul Gebel, and a standing-room-only audience of Product + Design Conference attendees how Product Operations unlocks the value of our organizations’ collective work.

What Is Product Ops?

Product ops provides the essential systems and supports that capture, review, and analyze data.

“It’s really about surrounding product managers with the tools they need to make faster and better-quality decisions,” Denise offers. It’s based on three key pillars:

• Business + data insights. Quantitative measures like revenue, engagement, and market performance.
• Customer + user insights. Qualitative research about customers, users, and they markets they comprise.
• Processes + practices. Best practices and methods, combined with the systems thinking that complete your operating model.

“Product ops fine-tunes existing ways of working – not by being prescriptive, but by helping people understand how we work so we can work faster, smarter, and hopefully in a more pleasurable way,” Denise adds.

What Product Ops Is Not?

Product ops isn’t designed to take jobs away from product managers; nor does it seek to undermine their efforts. Product ops isn’t about building systems and processes for their own stake. And it isn’t necessarily a formalized role as much as it is an approach to efficient product building. In fact, as Paul suggests, “Even if we don’t have the title, even if we don’t have a product ops team, we can always bring a little bit of it to our daily work to make things a little bit better.”

Be sure to check out the full conversation with Denise Tilles; if you prefer the video experience, you can find our episode with Denise on the Product Momentum YouTube channel!

The post 146 / How To Use Product Ops To Make Better, Faster Decisions, with Denise Tilles appeared first on ITX Corp..

Product Momentum will be onsite recording live podcast episodes with hosts Sean Flaherty and Sean Murray.

Learn more about INDUSTRY Global

Learn more about Sean Flaherty’s Workshop

Learn more about Product Momentum

The post INDUSTRY Global 2024 appeared first on ITX Corp..

Whether you call it “user experience research,” “UX research,” or just “UXR,” we’re taking about the practice of gathering insights about users’ behaviors, needs, and pain points through observation techniques and feedback methodologies. Put another way, UX research is asking the right questions at the right moment.

From an episode of Product Momentum, Jared Spool said: “I think the number one thing that a strategic UX team needs to do is make sure that the organization is the world’s foremost experts on who the users are and what the users need, what their current experience is like, and what their future experience could be like.”

This expertise is acquired through extensive research. With it, teams are empowered to make well-informed decisions. Even in scenarios where the first thought isn’t to lean on UX research, there are at least two major pain points that this practice can help alleviate.

“I don’t know what the problem is.”

This is typically the first problem for companies that are witnessing a lagging performance in their products. They understand that their product is not as performant as it might be, but don’t know where exactly the problem lies. The key to delivering the right solution is solving the right problem, but when you can’t put your finger on the problem, identifying a solution feels out of reach.

This includes wide-sweeping statements from those far removed from the product that may declare, for example, the need to refresh your website or overhaul the product’s interface to make up for a lack of interaction. When these declarations are made, these folks are working in the solution space, bypassing the problem space. However, UX Research needs to begin in the problem space so that researchers can accurately craft a workable solution.

This problem can plague any organization regardless of size or goals. Take, for example, Measures for Justice, a nonprofit organization dedicated to bringing transparency to the United States criminal justice system. MFJ delivers high-quality data for defense attorneys, public defenders, judges, and legislators to help them make smarter data-driven decisions in their work.

Given how their work contributes to policy reforms that lead to society reform, it’s crucial that their message reaches the right people. But they were struggling to get their message and mission to resonate with that audience. Beyond communicating how their work could make a significant impact in the communities they serve, their message may have been missing the mark with those who could truly benefit. Measures for Justice faced an unknown adversary; they needed someone to help them understand what that challenge was – and how to solve it.

Measures for Justice contacted ITX’s team of experienced UX researchers to partner again with their team to uncover the disconnect between their message and their internal and external stakeholders. After close consultancy and deep discovery, clues were leaning towards issues with the website’s usability. However, it wasn’t only due to the UI of their site – it came down to an incomplete understanding of who Measures for Justice’s audience is. Without knowing who those people are, the website messaging failed to resonate with their audiences. The next steps became clearer, and the teams knew which tests and research methods to deploy to begin crafting a solution.

This deep digging to identify the real core problem is where UX research pays off. Instead of preparing various mockups and drafts that could maybe make the website easier to use, UX researchers went further with their discovery to unearth the core problem. This thoroughness provides the information to address the correct problem and save time and resources later. With the various tests and knowledge at their fingertips, they’re ready to gather insights that will provide a long-lasting solution that better addresses the core problem.

“We know what we need to find out, but we don’t know how.”

Let’s take the problem from above and go one step further; common indicators point to a product’s poor performance, but until it’s been responsibly explored, our sense of what might be wrong remains just a feeling. In the absence of research, we have little data to back it up. There is a myriad of quantitative and qualitative research techniques to deploy that can provide insights into a solution. Enough to overwhelm someone who isn’t well-versed in UX research.

That’s a problem that another client was facing. For the S&P 500 company with a large and global workforce, they understood the importance of keeping teams connected. When they discovered unfavorable user experiences within their intranet, leadership had to get to the bottom of it.

They discovered the issues plaguing their team members – struggles with tedious site navigation, an intranet structure missing key features, a diverse userbase feeling unrepresented. These problems were brought to them, but what to do with them was less clear.

After reaching out to ITX, the team of UX Researchers deployed a series of UXR techniques to uncover the details surrounding the larger problem. Interviews, surveys, focus groups, card sorting; the right tasks needed to get the right information. They took their findings and identified key user themes, needs, and niche pain points. With this information, our UX Researchers shined light on the precise challenges our client was facing.

UX Research Goes Further

This blog highlights how UX Research can help solve two product problems, but the practice brings much more to the table. It’s one thing to realize the financial benefits of UXR, but we need to look beyond the bottom line to understand its full impact.

UX Researchers take time to help clients uncover real problems. Instead of blindly accepting “the website needs a refresh” as the underlying problem, they seek clarity on why the problem exists. Uncovering specific issues helps us to find the root cause of the problem. From there, they label issues if they fall under certain categories, such as qualitative, quantitative, behavioral, or attitudinal. Walking through this level of analysis with UX Researchers will serve as a guide in selecting which future research techniques to apply.

Through UX Research methods, which included stakeholder interviews and competitive analysis, UX Researchers presented Measures for Justice with new user personas and a sound product vision. Taking these new anchor points, Measures for Justice adopted a new website that helped users navigate the page and encouraged engagement. Additionally, these changes came with new internal efficiencies so content managers at Measures for Justice would have an easier time making necessary updates.

With a reinvigorated outpost and sophisticated means to maintain it, Measures for Justice continues its work to push for data transparency. A beacon of information in a vast ecosystem deserved more than “a website refresh.” And UX Research aided in finding the solution that organizations like Measures for Justice, and their audience, deserve.

Ready to uncover insights?

Contact our UX Research specialists to get started.

Megan Lawson is a Marketing Content Specialist at ITX. She focuses on creating content that solves problems and engages audiences. Megan received her BA in Communication from the State University of New York at Geneseo.

The post Two Big Product Problems That UX Research Can Solve appeared first on ITX Corp..

About Patricia. In addition to hosting the Future of UX podcast, Patricia Reiners is a distinguished UX innovator and a prominent voice in the field of user experience. Based in Zurich, she works to develop advanced UX methodologies in emerging technologies like AI, focusing on future UX design industry trends.

How do human skills compare with AI capabilities?

AI can analyze content, generate ideas, and present options far faster that humans can, Patricia says. But it lacks the creative spark, personal judgment, and sense of empathy that only humans possess. Creativity involves emotional intelligence through lived experiences that AI cannot replicate – even with the best training. “Those are uniquely human traits that are critical in tech, particularly in leadership roles where you’re working with people.”

AI tools also lack the ability to perform critical thinking and demonstrate sound judgment, which Patricia says is “a super-important skill – especially for designers.” Unlike humans, she continues, AI struggles with making complex decisions that involve ethical considerations and subjective judgments. Designers often draw on research to make informed decisions based on values, principles, and context.

As a UX designer, how can I prepare for my future with AI?

Remember that AI is a tool, Patricia advises. “So, designers should get their hands dirty with AI and learn to collaborate with these tools so that we can better understand how they can make our work easier. When we understand their limitations and leverage them to improve our work, we become better designers.”

Dive into AI, she continues. “It’s so new, and things are changing all the time. AI works best when it augments our human abilities,” Patricia advises. “So, look for ways to integrate AI into your workflows to enhance your productivity.” Patricia also recommends that fellow designers join a UX meetup [like Upstate UX Meetup] to learn from others about the latest trends and technologies, and be willing to share your challenges and your knowledge with others.

How can I make sure the AI tools I use are ethical, protect PII, and are free of bias?

As John Maeda explained during his podcast episode, “We often forget that accepting the bad with the good is a theme of every new technology story.” That is, we understand that AI – like every new technology – is no panacea for all that ails the world. But we cannot discard them because they are flawed.

With respect to ethical considerations in AI, Patricia says that designers should do their best to find and use AI models that are trained with unbiased data. In the interim, she adds, “advocate for ethical practices; develop strategies for using AI before building products that might have been trained using questionable data.” And perhaps most importantly, Patricia says, “designers need to speak up to ask the tough questions about the quality of data AI tools have been trained on and where personal data (used by AI systems) are stored.”

Special thanks to Patricia Reiners for sharing her expert insights in this podcast episode, and especially for delivering an amazing workshop at ITX’s 2024 Product + Design Conference. Unable to attend this year? Check out what you missed!

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July 23, 2024 Rochester, NY — ITX Corp., an award-winning producer of custom software products in Rochester, NY, was named recipient of the 2024 Pinnacle Award for Internal Communications Initiative at its annual ceremony in late June. The Rochester chapter of the American Marketing Association praised ITX’s 2023 Yearbook for its innovative approach to keeping their team informed of accomplishments in serving clients. ITX boasts nearly 300 global team members across the United States, throughout the Americas, and around the world.

The AMA Pinnacle Award for Internal Communications Initiative showcases excellence in the area of campaigns or strategies that demonstrate innovative approaches to keeping employees informed, motivated, and aligned with company goals. Recognition of ITX’s communication best practices exemplifies their commitment to creating a rewarding and psychologically safe work environment.

As a remote-first organization since its inception in 1997, ITX deploys strong systems for communication and collaboration. They regularly provide their team members with insightful updates on the company’s general direction and major initiatives. Additionally, they highlight significant accomplishments from team members delivering top-level services and solutions to clients.

About ITX Corp. 

ITX helps mid- to large-sized companies tackle complex business challenges through custom software product development, delivering solutions that build trust, loyalty, and advocacy among clients and their users. Founded in 1997, the company has expanded beyond its roots in Rochester, NY into a team of nearly 300 talented product professionals and technologists throughout the Americas and beyond.  

Career inquiries: 585.899.4888  

Media Inquiries: Kyle Psaty, Vice President of Marketing | 585.899.4895 

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Ryan Rumsey is the CEO of Second Wave Dive, an on-demand strategic consultancy, and the founder of Chief Design Officer School, a learning platform for design leaders.  He is also the author of two books and – as conference attendees can attest – a captivating speaker.

Assess Workplace Power & Influence

Ryan also highlighted the significance of power and influence in the workplace, especially within the design and creative domains where his expertise lies. He pointed out that people in design roles sometimes lack influence within corporate structures, leaving them with a sense that their ability to contribute value is somehow diminished.

“We can’t really talk about any of this without talking about power. In this sense, we’re talking working inside of corporations, where power typically doesn’t reside with people who are more on the creative thinking, artistic, exploratory, empathy side of the spectrum,” Ryan says.

Reframe the Meaning of Value Metrics

Designers and creatives can escape this perception by reframing what it means to deliver value and be successful, Ryan adds. We need to shift the focus from traditional metrics like lifetime value (LTV) and return on investment (ROI) to the emotional and personal aspects of work, he explains, stressing that personal fulfillment and how we make ourselves and others feel are crucial in our professional journeys.

“For a lot of us, we don’t tend to see value through our own eyes,” Ryan comments. “Instead, we tend to see value in ourselves as others see value in us. So if the culture is of LTV and that’s not your domain, it’s really hard to feel validated in value if that’s not your love language.”

Prioritize the Human Element

When we prioritize the human element, Ryan offers, we begin to focus on the well-being, motivation, and development of individuals within the team, and we create an environment where people feel supported, trusted, and empowered to contribute their best work. But even then, individuals working alone have limits to what they can achieve.

Invite Others To Be Right with You

“That’s why I embrace the advice I received from a friend and mentor some years ago,” Ryan shares. He said, ‘Look, you know what you’re doing. You’re doing all these things that, you know, are right. But you can’t reach your potential on your own; you’ve reached the limits of your aloneness here. You need others to be right with you.’  And I absolutely felt that double entendre aspect of other people are right, too, just from different angles.”

You can also catch the episode with Ryan Rumsey in video on the Product Momentum YouTube channel!

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Held at Rochester’s Memorial Art Gallery, attendees experienced hands-on workshops, in-depth keynotes, intimate live podcast recordings, and casual fireside chats from our largest-ever lineup of speakers.

Artificial Intelligence Takes Center Stage

The topic this year – to the surprise of no one – was artificial intelligence. But we weren’t treated to excessive commentary on how to use the technology (although our speakers provided plenty of real-life applications.) Rather, the speakers leaned into the human side of AI.

“All of the speakers spoke from the human-perspective,” shared Emma Rizzo, ITX Content Strategist. “There was more emphasis on being a human with a job and using AI as a tool, instead of assuming AI will take our jobs.”

John Maeda, VP of Engineering, Head of Computational Design & AI Platform at Microsoft, spoke outright about people’s fears with using AI. During his live recording with Product Momentum, he made the case that it is our lack of understanding AI as the reason we fear it. “We think too often about the negatives,” Maeda said, “and we forget about the great positives that new technologies bring.”

Patricia Reiners and John Haggerty shared their insights around AI during their workshops on Day 1 of the conference and on Keynote Day’s fireside chats. With each leading a workshop in both the design track and product track, respectively, attendees experimented with tools that can help us in our everyday tasks.

Patricia Reiners advocated for designers to embrace AI and the help it provides. About her workshop experience, ITX UX Designer Natania Allan said, “Patricia Reiners empowered us as the users. She presented AI in a more approachable manner, citing that AI can only do what we tell it to do.”

Also, from ITX Senior UX Designer Mimi Ace, “Patricia said in her workshop about how AI will not replace humans – but it will replace designers who don’t use AI correctly. It made me realize that there’s a whole area to experiment with that doesn’t mean solely relying on AI or not using it at all.”

Patricia shared similar thoughts during her fireside chat, discussing the future of our work. It was a fitting conversation the host of the Future Of UX podcast. She placed great emphasis on embracing the future and preparing ourselves for it, and our attendees felt the call. “Patricia said ‘everything you’re working on today is static. But our work in the future is not, and we have to be ready for it,’” said Travis Texido, ITX Senior Business Analyst. “I immediately thought about the work that I do, and I know that change will come and the best thing I can do is be ready for it.”

Haggerty’s product-management-focused fireside chat echoed similar sentiments. In his conversation, John presented more perspectives to understand AI, rather than through a negative lens. “Yes, we have machines that can do the machine work. But there are parts of a Product Manager’s job that can be automated, and should be automated, because otherwise it’s humans acting as machines.”

As the world ventures further into AI, John Haggerty stressed the importance of taking a step back and ensuring we’re doing things right. And by right, he means ethically and fairly. “AI is a big part of our lives, but we don’t know how ethical people are being about it.” ITX Product Manager Matt Bush said, “We’re basing a lot off biased history, and we have to make sure we’re not embedding those views into our AI models. It was an important topic that John [Haggerty] spoke about in his workshop.”

Trends In Product Practices

Another major topic at the Product + Design Conference was the idea of Product Operations. From Denise Tilles, co-author of Product Operations with Melissa Perri, attendees were given an in-depth analysis during her keynote, Product Momentum recording, and fireside chat.

Setting the baseline in her keynote, Denise explained the main goal of Product Operations, which is to provide cross-functional visibility and the insights needed to define winning product strategies. While Denise thoughtfully explained how Product Operations works, she was also vocal about what Product Operations doesn’t do.

For one, it doesn’t take away jobs from the Product Managers, nor does it seek to undermine them. Product Managers and Product Ops Leads work together to create products, and responsibilities attributed to them remain with them. Those in the Product Operations field are striving to bring clarity around business & data insights, customer & user insights, and best processes & practices – by doing so, they empower the Product Managers and Product Owners to make informed decisions about the products they’re creating.

Speaking of customer insights, product workshop attendees took a closer look at how to gather customer insights from Prerna Singh. In her workshop, attendees worked through four discovery methodologies, working to understand which was the best for different scenarios. More than theory, Prerna made sure that the tools attendees learned would be applicable to their current roles and help get deeper insights into their customers’ minds.

Thinking Outside Of The Office

Over two days, our heads filled with new ideas and ways of working. But the practical and theoretical information about the work we do wasn’t all that we learned.

In an informative and colorful keynote, Ryan Rumsey took us on a journey through his career. Not as a history lesson, but more of a cautionary tale – one that could happen to anyone who gets too deep into their work and forgets to think about the person doing that work. Our growth is not limited to the work we accomplish, but also to the way we build our personal and emotional skills.

Ryan’s keynote wasn’t the only one discussing topics outside of practical work. Cliff Gilley, a VP Research Analyst from Gartner, spent the first portion of his keynote explaining why product managers are unhappy in their work (a notion that resonated strongly with our attendees.)

His talk may have begun on a bit of a downer, but Cliff quickly brought the energy back up when he shared different ways in how we can find the joy in our work again. We can decide to change the way we approach our work, and we can rethink how we personally define the jobs we perform.

With frequent reminders that designers and product managers are more than our jobs, conference keynotes marked a refreshing change of pace from the practical knowledge gained.

Even in the simple moments, our speakers found ways to make significant impacts on our attendees. One of these moments came during the Panel Q&A with our Keynote speakers. An attendee asked about something that a speaker gave up to be where they are today, and Denise Tilles answered: “I gave up my dream job at a non-profit that helps people on the spectrum. It wasn’t the right fit, and the environment was not what I anticipated, so I had to make the difficult choice to leave. But by doing so I’m able to be here with everyone.”

“The last comment from Denise about leaving her dream job really stuck with me,” ITX Product Owner Brandon Pierce said. “As someone on the spectrum, I respect her for choosing to go somewhere that will make an impact in people’s lives. But I also relate to the empathy of others, and I can only imagine how hard it must have been to leave that role behind.”

This conference brings so many people together. Whether we’re product- or design-focused, local or out of town, seasoned in our careers or just starting out – there’s power in sharing our stories and knowledge with each other. There are more opportunities for us to strengthen our communities; as our tools and practices evolve, we will only grow stronger.

Find your next product and design community.

Connect with others at Upstate Product Meetup and Upstate UX Meetup.

Megan Lawson is a Marketing Content Specialist at ITX. She focuses on creating content that solves problems and engages audiences. Megan received her BA in Communication from the State University of New York at Geneseo.

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John Maeda, VP of Engineering and the Head of Computational Design and AI Platforms at Microsoft, joined the Product Momentum team to record a live podcast episode on the heels of his conference-opening keynote at ITX’s Product + Design Conference, in late-June.

Humans Are ‘Wired for Creativity’

“I think creativity is the foundation of creating capital,” John says. “That capital is emotional capital or sometimes financial capital. But it is a thing that maybe we humans are wired to do.”

Risk-versed vs. Risk-averse

Creating does not come without risk, however. Because the act of creation is a choice, it requires a competitor’s mindset. Deep down, true competitors don’t play to win; they play to maybe win. Like product managers, designers, and engineers who devote their expertise to create things that do not yet exist, they understand the risks that come with innovation. And they approach their work from a risk-versed mindset — an approach that drives our pursuit of innovation while recognizing the inherent risks.

Within the context of AI, we enjoy a vast ocean of opportunity to tap into, John adds. But to take advantage of AI tools in this way, we need to understand the difference between risk-versed and risk-averse. “To pursue that blue zone of possibility, you need to be risk-versed,” John explains. “AI is understandable; It just takes your attention to go there.”

Understanding AI Requires “The Player’s Mindset’

“Going there” is to embrace the player’s mindset – not the victim’s. While some see AI and grumble, “It’s going to take my job” or “It’s going to be a competitive force against me,” others see the blue ocean of opportunity.

“Anyone who’s afraid of AI is afraid of it because they don’t understand it,” John says. “Positives and negatives are a part of every new technology; we tend to focus on the negatives so much that we forget that everything technological is not always bad. If we are to truly understand [AI], it’s important for us to continue to ask these questions.

Be sure to catch the entire episode with John Maeda to hear him discuss the following topics:

(04:02)    Life is lived in 4 quarters: 0 to 25 years, 25 to 50, 50 to 75 years, and 75 to 100. Make the most of the 2^nd quarter.

(06:43)    I like to pursue things that I don’t know; when you have no reference for how things are done, you’re kind of free to make your own way.

(9:22)      What mindset do you choose: will you be a victim of AI? Or invite AI to be your co-pilot?

(10:39)    The potential of AI to augment human capabilities: what humans can do by themselves, what AI can do for humans, and the new possibilities that arise when humans leverage AI.

(11:42)    To understand and embrace AI, we need to be risk-versed, not risk-averse.

(14:04)    How powerful art is! Creativity is the foundation of creating capital – both emotional capital and financial capital.

(17:57)    Powerful tools in the hands of the wrong people is a theme of every technology story.

(19:17)    Everyone seems to be talking about AI. But why isn’t AI everywhere already?

(24:07)    We’re in the Unknown / Unknown quadrant for how to manage AI.

You can also watch our episode with John Maeda on the Product Momentum YouTube channel!

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Christian Idiodi is a partner at Silicon Valley Product Group and co-author of TRANSFORMED, with Marty Cagan and partners at SVPG. He recently joined co-hosts Paul Gebel and ITX Product Manager Dan Sharp for a conversation exploring the two sides of product sense and why its human component is essential to product success in the context of today’s AI-focused world.

Informed Decision-Making + Intuition

Product sense combines informed decision-making with intuition that great product managers develop over time, Christian says. “It’s about having an intuitive feel for what makes a product valuable, which requires a deep understanding of your users and how they experience it.”

Product Sense Is ‘Not Some Magical Gift’

But it’s not some magical gift that we’re born with, he adds. Product sense involves synthesizing data, everything from user feedback to market trends, and making quick, effective decisions that align with both user needs and business goals.“People who have product sense have worked hard to practice and fine-tune it,” Christian explains.

The Essence of Product Management

In this way, product sense lies at the very heart of product management: solving real problems for real users rather than focusing solely on commercial success. Companies lose their way, Christian says, by shifting their focus from helping people to extracting value from them. Product sense helps us maintain a balance between making customers happy and generating revenue for the business.

This episode marks Christian Idiodi’s second visit with Product Momentum. Check out his initial conversation with the team, Product Problems Are People Problems.

Marty Cagan and his partners at Silicon Valley Product Group, wrote INSPIRED, EMPOWERED, and (most recently) TRANSFORMED for product managers and teams; product leaders; and C-suite executives, respectively. Be sure to listen to the entire episode, as Christian explains how each book aligns with purpose to these audience segments.

You can also catch our episode with Christian Idiodi in video on the Product Momentum YouTube Channel!

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Perhaps it was the recent conversations with Petra Wille and Jared Spool that inspired the idea for this up-close look at communities of practice. Or maybe we’re just eager to spread the word about our communities and support our colleagues. And, of course, it could be that we’re ramping up to host our upcoming Product + Design Conference, where the primary focus is always on bringing our communities together for learning and sharing knowledge.

Whatever the reason, the underlying theme of today’s episode is this: work as a designer or product manager is challenging enough; none of us should feel we need to go it alone. So spend a few minutes with ITX CoP leaders Paul Gebel (VP of Delivery), Christina Halladay (Director of UX Design), Sean Murray (Director of Product Management), and Brian Loughner (Lead UX Designer) and catch their advice about how to find (or start from scratch) your own Product or UX community of practice.

5 Tips for Building + Growing a Community of Practice

1. The community is about the members – first, foremost, always. The first question organizers should ask, Brian advises, is ‘What are you interested in?’ or, better yet, ‘what do you care about?’ Organizers should focus on serving their community, not their own agendas.
2. Don’t be afraid to fail. Accept the fact that not everything will work out as you expect, Sean says. “That’s totally okay. As CoP leaders, our job is not to direct the community; it’s to facilitate the effort on their behalf based on the direction our members say they want to go.”
3. CoP Size Doesn’t Matter. The CoP you launch or join doesn’t have to be large. “Upstate Product Meetup’s first gathering was like five people,” Sean says. “But it worked because the people who attended were there to talk about what they were doing as product managers – a topic we all shared and wanted to talk about.”
4. Balance in-person and virtual events. When you first get going, start with in-person events, Brian says. Then, as your community matures, you can mix in virtual events to ease some of the logistical challenges.
5. Provide a safe, inclusive environment. Attendees, especially first-timers, will be anxious. You can help relieve some of that social anxiety by doing the little things: provide directions and signage to help folks find your location, supply name tags and markers, show excitement about greeting your guests and introducing them to others, and stay positive.

Communities of practice offer opportunities beyond honing your craft. Sure, you’ll have lots of opportunity to learn and to give back to others. But maybe the greatest discovery you’ll make is how to create real human experiences that foster enduring relationships among your community.

The bottom line is this: Come with an open mind. Expect to make a connection. And remember: you have to play if you want to win.

You can also watch our conversation with Paul, Christina, Sean, and Brian on the Product Momentum YouTube channel!

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In his role at Gartner, Cliff collaborates with product teams to offer practical research and guidance to product leaders in enterprise organizations. Cliff’s insights are grounded in 5+ years at Gartner, complemented by boots-on-the-ground experience as a product manager. 

Cliff was then and remains today a big believer in user-focused product management. Like other leaders in the product field who share this philosophy, he worked with his team members to become the resident experts on their customers and work to understand the end user point of view. By doing so, team position themselves to ensure the products they create are for the customer, not at the behest of someone in their organization. 

While Cliff’s work today is not entrenched in building products, he’s advising teams and clients on how to continuously improve the products they build. He’s a proponent of Agile methodologies and applies them to product management processes, which helps balance the innovation and evolution aspects of product planning and development. 

In addition to delivering a keynote, Cliff is hosting our Fireside Chats, a new segment added to the Product + Design Conference this year. Joining him will be some of our other conference speakers and workshop leaders, including Denise Tilles, John Haggerty, and Patricia Reiners. Cliff will guide conversations around topics that explore more deeply the topics covered in their keynotes or workshops.  

With his data-driven expertise and a knack for sharing insights – evident from his blog writing as The Clever PM – Cliff Gilley is a fantastic addition to our 2024 Conference lineup of thought leaders. This year’s conference promises to be one of our largest gatherings of product and design knowledge-sharing enthusiasts yet. 

This month brings the 2024 ITX Product + Design Conference.

Join us on Keynote Day to learn from Cliff Gilley, Ryan Rumsey, Denise Tilles, John Maeda, and more. 

Megan Lawson is a Marketing Content Specialist at ITX. She focuses on creating content that solves problems and engages audiences. Megan received her BA in Communication from the State University of New York at Geneseo.

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Rich remains a good friend of ITX; he delivered a workshop and keynote at the 2023 ITX Product + Design Conference, and this episode marks his second visit to the podcast — his first visit coming 4 years ago.

Know Your Audience: Speaking the Language of Business

“Anytime I talk to business folks about something that doesn’t have currency symbols in it, I’m pretty much assuming they’re not listening,” Rich jokes. So it’s important for product managers to back up whatever you’re saying with economics. Explain why the company cares, instead of why the product team cares. “It’s a basic ‘know your audience’ thing,” Rich says.

Translating Use Cases into Financial Cases

Folks in product, engineering, and design could talk for hours about how we build stuff: the features and workflows, the algorithms and sequence, the code deployments and backlogs, Rich says. “But the go-to-market folks don’t really care what happens in the kitchen. They just want to get their meal on time and have it be hot and tasty.”

What they care about is the outcome of all that work. Will it lead to more customers, lower churn, and opening new markets? And then, of course, will it lead to more money?

Someone Has To Lead This Dance

Even in the absence of a company strategy, product teams can still build a really good product. But if it doesn’t fit the market we’re in or doesn’t meet the needs of our users, it just wanders out there.

Rich provides guidance on how to manage product strategy when there isn’t a clear company strategy from above. “The company strategy is bigger than the product strategy,” Rich observes. “But if nobody else is pushing, then I’m pushing so that everyone around the table can see the options we have. Someone has to lead this dance.”

You can also watch our conversation with Rich Mironov on the Product Momentum YouTube channel!

In July 2024, Rich Mironov is offering a class for product managers wondering about how to move up the management ladder. Rich is also speaking and conducting workshop events in the Fall 2024 in Hamburg and Lisbon. Learn more.

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John and Prerna will conduct a pair of workshops at the ITX Product + Design Conference, in Rochester, NY on June 27-28.

Leveraging AI for Customer Research

John’s workshop will include a comprehensive overview of AI applications in product management, covering key topics like product feedback analysis, churn prediction and retention, risk assessment, competitive intelligence, etc. “AI is really good at doing things like sentiment analysis, topic modeling, named entity recognition,” he says. But it can be a lot to take in. “The best, fastest way to get familiar with AI is to just play with it. Just have fun, go out and use it, whatever it is.”

Embracing the Data We Already Have

Prerna’s workshop in Rochester will help attendees understand the data we already have — and how might we leverage it to make better customer decisions. Gathering customer research doesn’t need to be some extensive, intensive effort, she says, “but is really something that we should be doing on a continuous basis to make higher quality decisions.”

Bias, Ethics, and AI

Both John and Prerna stress the importance of understanding AI biases, ethics by design, and ensuring equity in training data. They also highlight the significance of “preserving human elements in user research,” such as non-verbal cues and emotional feedback, to maintain genuine human connections.

Be sure to catch the entire episode to grab a few tips from John Haggerty about AI prompt engineering, and learn why Prerna Singh believes humans are becoming more comfortable responding to an AI researcher than to another person — and the new frontier of opportunity this creates. You can also watch our episode with John Haggerty and Prerna Singh on the Product Momentum YouTube Channel!

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Recently, I had the pleasure of hosting Christian Idiodi, of Silicon Valley Product Group (SVPG) on Product Momentum, ITX’s award-winning podcast. Christian’s insights into product management are inspiring and practical. As a top contender for the nicest person in product, he was generous enough to share a map to chart one’s growth that strikes a balance between the essential elements of business health and human empathy.

The Essence of Product Management

Product management has traditionally been seen as a discipline rooted in solving problems, creating value, and fostering innovation. Christian reminds us time and again that frameworks and methodologies are important, but human problems (not software solutions) are at the core of product management . Our work is about understanding the customer, empathizing with their needs, and crafting solutions that not only meet those needs but also delight and inspire.

Balancing business versus customer does not have to be an either-or scenario. Sacrificing value for one at the cost of the other would cause teams to miss the multiplicative effects of a both-and approach. Christian talks about the delicate balance between a product’s objective value and the perceived value felt by its customers. He argues that focusing solely on one over the other is likely to lead to suboptimal outcomes. But when we’re able to connect each through powerful stories, he continues, we can establish trust in most users – maybe even inspire a few. The most successful companies are those that find a way to make their customers happy while also driving business success.

In product management, what are often termed “soft skills” are better described as “human skills.” Emotional intelligence, self-awareness, and the ability to build and maintain relationships are critical in fostering a collaborative environment where great products can be built.

The more we develop these human skills, the better we hone our product sense. Product sense is a term often misunderstood, but it can be simply described as a deep, intuitive understanding of what makes a product successful. It involves insights into the market, the customer, and the product itself. It’s not something we’re born with; it’s a learned behavior that’s cultivated over time. Product management is a career of continuous learning that comes from exposure to and experience in new and challenging environments. Cultivation is informed by data, but it’s felt through experience.

Practically speaking, Christian knows how to enroll you in his vision for a better world through product management. After we concluded the recorded portion of our conversation, he said, “Always happy to support your work.” And then challenged us with, “By the way, why are you all not doing stuff in Africa?”

Why indeed? Christina Idiodi’s global perspective of helping everyone – yes, everyone – confronted me head-on. I had no good answer.

His work through the Innovate Africa Foundation, founded by Jean-Claude Bastos in 2009, highlights the importance of context in product management. It also highlights the consistency of value he displays in walking the walk.

Assumptions that hold true in one market might not apply in another, so it’s not about helping the aggregate or the average. It’s about helping one person at a time. This underscores the need for product managers to be adaptable and aware of cultures and peoples outside of stereotypically corporate environs.

Applying These Ideas

I left the conversation encouraged to apply what I’d learned, so I’d like to summarize for you here what I’m going to try to apply in my conversations going forward.

Foster a Human-Centric Culture

• Encourage empathy within your teams. Understand your customers deeply and create products that genuinely solve their problems.

• Promote human skills development, including emotional intelligence and relationship-building.

Balance Business and Customer Goals

• Strive to meet business objectives while also ensuring that customer satisfaction is at the forefront of your strategy.

• Use customer feedback to inform business decisions and drive product improvements.

Cultivate Product Sense

• Invest in continuous learning and exposure to different markets and customer segments.

• Encourage your team to immerse themselves in the customer experience and gather insights directly from users.

The product manager’s journey is one of continuous learning and adaptation. By balancing the needs of the business with those of the customer, and by fostering essential human skills within our teams, we can create products that not only succeed in the market but also make a meaningful impact on people’s lives.

Are you ready to optimize your product teams for human skills? Join us for a workshop to explore these concepts further and learn how to implement them in your organization’s products. Methodologies, templates, and models are helpful, but the map is not the territory. During the course of our workshop, we’ll uncover effective discovery approaches, methods of building empathy, and driving meaningful outcomes for people through the technology solutions you’ll build. Schedule your workshop today and start humanizing your approach to product management.

Paul Gebel  is Vice President of Delivery ITX Corp. and co-host of Product Momentum, ITX’s award-winning podcast. He earned his BFA and MBA degrees at Rochester Institute of Technology, where he currently serves as Adjunct Professor. Paul’s experience also includes extensive project and product management experience and consultancy. At ITX, he works closely with high-profile clients, leveraging technology to help solve business problems so they can move, touch, and inspire the world.

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3 Pillars of the Product Science Strategy

The product managers who develop this intuition have learned real, tangible skills, benefitting from an evidence-based scientific approach to get there. In her keynote, Holly touched on the three pillars of her product science strategy: 

• Evidence-based product strategy. A plan for how you will win in the marketplace. 
• Continuous Discovery + Delivery. Gathering evidence and new learnings with every build. 
• Empowered teams. Aligned on outcomes, trained and supported with context and tools. 

Product managers, regardless of experience or seniority, can develop their own product intuition by applying the methods embedded in this strategy to learn more about their customers, their market, and their product. Evidenced-based decisionmaking helps validate our assumptions, test ideas, and measure outcomes. 

Holly’s Key Takeaways

We’ve only summarized them here, so you’ll want to watch or listen to catch every nugget:

1. Not every outcome is equally important or equally uncertain. You need to prioritize the outcomes that matter most to your customers and your business, and assess their risks.
2. It is not enough to be right; you also have to be persuasive. Evidence strengthens your hand as you seek buy-in from stakeholders and team members.
3. Practice the Built-Learned-Planning demo. “Planning” is another way of saying what you ‘intend to learn.’

Check out our conversation with Holly Hester-Reilly on the Product Momentum YouTube channel!.

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Product Momentum caught up with Zoia Kozakov following her talk at the 2024 NY Product Conference, where she shared her observations on change management (and resistance to it) within the context of innovation and organizational culture. In her keynote and during our conversation, Zoia offered 3 key takeaways:

Embrace the Momentum

Not surprisingly, everyone here on the podcast team believes strongly in the power of momentum; Zoia builds on this notion, encouraging product managers to establish a mindset of continuous wins to keep team members motivated. “Building momentum with continuous wins is a way to keep everybody well-spirited,” Zoia says. “But remember that what keeps you well spirited is likely very different from what keeps me well spirited.”

Recognize the Symptoms of Resistance

Zoia highlights the dangers of organizational apathy as a symptom of momentum-sapping resistance. “To me, disassociation is the worst one,” Zoia adds, “and it shows up when that person who derails your meeting (or doesn’t speak up at all) becomes the villain of your whole change management effort.”

Find Your Innovation-Culture Fit

Zoia introduced the NYPC audience to the notion of innovation-culture fit – and maybe even coined a new term in the process. Product managers often experience resistance to change because the organization’s culture of innovation doesn’t align with their own. “PMs need to evaluate the innovation fit,” Zoia advises. “If working on process enhancement feels like innovation to you, then you should go work at the company that sees the world that way. But if you want to build a rocket ship, there are some that do that too.”

Zoia’s journey reminds us that change management is not just about implementing new strategies, but also about fostering a culture of continuous improvement, proactive engagement, and innovation alignment.

Be sure catch our episode with Zoia Kozakov on the Product Momentum YouTube channel!

The post 137 / 3 Tips for Fostering a Culture of Change, with Zoia Kozakov appeared first on ITX Corp..

To change the narrative around design leadership.

Ryan is coming to Rochester to lead a Design workshop on day 1 of the P + D conference (June 27) and deliver a keynote on day 2 (June 28). Attendees can expect to hear about innovative, new approaches to visualizing, collecting, and interpreting metrics to drive impactful product strategies. They can also expect to benefit from his insights around integrating design, statistics, and business methodologies for transformative insights and breakthroughs in their work.

Ryan’s dynamic career, enriched by experiences at companies like Apple, Google, and Zillow, is sure to provide real-life, tangible learnings for attendees of the upcoming workshop and keynote in Rochester. His journey has been marked by adaptability and rapid learning, particularly in the field of user experience (UX) design. His success soon became a catalyst for growth, guiding him toward a more balanced and fulfilling career. This journey instilled in him a renewed sense of purpose and passion for clarity in design leadership.

Ryan founded Second Wave Dive, a strategic consultancy that offers specialized Product + Design services but with a unique subscription-based model that avoids the hassle of back-and-forth negotiations and the pressure to buy additional services. This flexibility allows organizations to access assistance on individual projects, freeing up time for deeper discussions on design leadership challenges.

Second Wave Dive is the lifeline that Ryan would have appreciated during the early stages of his career – access to a leader with hands-on experience in design leadership who offers tailored solutions to complex problems and guidance around organizational politics.

It seemed almost natural that the second business he launched, Chief Design Officer School, would help train the design leaders of the future. Courses, content, and targeted resources aimed to help professionals develop the skills to become impactful leaders. In theory, when it comes time for those students to pursue a more senior role, they won’t need to call Ryan at Second Wave Dive; they’ll be well-equipped to handle any problem that comes their way.

In addition to his consultancy, Ryan authored two practical guides for designers: one that compliments his coursework and shares even more about his learnings, and a second that helps designers advocate for their work and highlights the importance of it. Both books are available for free download, which is yet another helping hand offered to designers in need of guidance.

The mission of the ITX Product + Design Conference is to learn from industry leaders – and to share the knowledge gained to progress our entire community forward. When we come together with a professional foundation centered around improving the lives of others, we reinforce the community-centric knowledge-sharing environment the event pledges to deliver.

Just over a month until the 2024 Product + Design Conference.

Join us on Keynote Day to learn from Ryan Rumsey, Denise Tilles, John Maeda, and more.

Megan Lawson is a Marketing Content Specialist at ITX. She focuses on creating content that solves problems and engages audiences. Megan received her BA in Communication from the State University of New York at Geneseo.

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In this episode of Product Momentum, recorded live at the NY Product Conference, Denise introduces us to this fairly new phenomenon called product operations (aka, “product ops”). She says that exploring product ops solely through the lens of sustained market challenges is short-sighted.

Establish Strong Product Culture

“We all need to be more operationally efficient and crisp when we’re doing more with less,” Denise says. But it’s more than survival; it’s also about establishing the strong product culture that will enable organizations to scale for growth, she adds, “which is the goal.”

Part of it is just having a core understanding of what product operations is, Denise continues — and what it is not. “Product operations is not supplanting product management; it’s enabling it.”

Helping PMs Contribute Real Value

Product management still makes the decisions, she says. Product operations facilitates that process; it’s all about giving product managers the leverage and flexibility to contribute opportunities that offer real impact.

Product operations relieves product managers of time spent on “the work around the work” – by providing (as Denise and co-author Melissa Perri write in their new book, Product Operations) providing three key pillars: data insights, customer market research, and process/practices.

You can also watch our conversation with Denise Tilles on the Product Momentum YouTube channel!

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Sharing the Mindset Shift

The power behind this approach is that the burden for the mindset shift is shared by both the project manager (or project management office (PMO)) and the business executive. As the PMO works to understand the business leader’s desired outcomes (and to speak their language), the business leader begins to see the PMO as a strategic partner in solving their challenges.

“There’s actually a world where product people, project people, and business leaders happily coexist because they’re all doing their part to achieve business goals,” Laura says. “If you’re wasting time and energy defending turf and protecting egos, your business leaders won’t take you seriously. “The only thing they care about is, ‘what are you doing to help us achieve our strategic goals,’ Laura adds.

Shifting Left

A few episodes back, cybersecurity specialist Paul Connaghan spoke about embedding a security mindset into your software as early in the development process as possible. This “shift left” approach works for project management too. Too often, eager executives begin to execute strategy before they have a project plan in place.

“If we set those projects up for success before they start, we’d have this positive ripple effect of benefit to the rest of the life cycle of strategy delivery, project execution, and strategy realization, where you get those better business outcomes,” Laura says.

Facilitating Complex Change

Effective change management is about helping people understand the reason for change, and then bringing them along with you through the process. The secret, Laura continues, is to make the change about the people we’re serving in a way that puts them in the driver’s seat instead of feeling like they’re being dragged behind the car. People want autonomy, freedom, a sense of control, and the ability to be a part of the solution, Laura adds. “People aren’t resistant to change; they’re resistant to having change done to them.”

You can also watch our conversation with Laura Barnard on the Product Momentum YouTube channel!

The post 135 / The New PMO: Strategic Partner in Business Transformation, with Laura Barnard appeared first on ITX Corp..

It’s a buzz word, it’s a new concept. It’s certainly an idea that has many different definitions, depending on who you ask and where they work.

At its core, Product Operations provides product managers and product teams with the support they need to make faster, better-quality decisions. These inputs can come from business and data insights, customer and market research, and processes and practices.

For Denise Tilles, it’s a powerful practice that any organization that wishes to scale should seriously consider.

Denise is a product leader, consultant, and coach, helping organizations strengthen capabilities around Product Operations, Product Strategy, and Product Operating Models. And she’s coming to the 2024 ITX Product + Design Conference to share more about Product Ops.

A Lightbulb Moment of Innovation

Before becoming a consultant, Denise could be found deep in the product world with years of experience leading product teams. At one important point in her career, she had the opportunity to add to the team at her organization – specific roles, in fact, that would help the product managers do their jobs. The new capabilities that were brought on spurred more innovation and creation, and at the end of that year the company launched a new product that brought in more revenue than predicted.

The thrill that came with this real-life case study stayed with her for a while. And it wasn’t until she began consulting with Melissa Perri, CEO and founder of Produx Labs, that she understood what had occurred back then. As she learned more about Product Operations, Denise realized that it was the exact same thing her previous team experienced that had produced such impressive results. A lightbulb moment indeed.

Isn’t that often how new concepts develop? Even Denise sought clarity around Product Operations at the organizations where she consulted. Her clients were asking the same questions: what is it? why is it important? can it really help our organization?

Denise saw an opportunity to come up with a common understanding for Product Ops. So, with Melissa Perri, they wrote a book called Product Operations. It arms product leaders with the information they need to define winning product strategies using the right metrics, implement structures and processes to scale, and measure the success of those actions.

This June, Denise will bring her insights and knowledge on Product Operations to our P+D Conference Keynote Day. Her talk will reveal even more about Product Operations and dig deep into how it can help. As an added bonus, Keynote Day attendees can go home with a complimentary copy of Product Operations to continue their learning.

Learn more about Product Operations.

Join us on Keynote Day to learn from Denise Tilles, John Maeda, and more.

Megan Lawson is a Marketing Content Specialist at ITX. She focuses on creating content that solves problems and engages audiences. Megan received her BA in Communication from the State University of New York at Geneseo.

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Communication Is a ‘Soft Skill’?

This is especially relevant for product teams and their leaders, Gabi continues, because “product problems are people problems, and a lot of them are solved by really good communication.”

More than mere words and delivery, good communication is about timing (when to communicate). It’s about volume (how much to communicate). And it’s about perspective (audience context).

And they call communication a “soft skill.”

Timing and Context Matter

Regardless of where you are in your product management career, Gabi adds, understanding what to communicate, when to communicate it, and what that communication means in the context of your audience’s experience is vital to your effectiveness as a leader.

In our world of building software – often accompanied by lengthy, overlapping time horizons – you have to balance what you say about the long-term product vision with what you say in the short term about the next MVP release. All the factors that drive your what, when, and how – i.e., message, tone, sense of excitement vs. urgency, audience, etc. – create all sorts of variables that require close attention.

Start With Why

Perhaps Simon Sinek said it best with his book, Start with Why – a sentiment Gabi echoed during our conversation.

“Before product managers can get to how, we need to ask ourselves why. That is, ‘why am I communicating this? What am I trying to achieve?’ And if the answer doesn’t feel like something that’s helpful, is it right for me to communicate this now, or is there a different way that I can say it?”

Missed Gabi’s keynote? No worries; you can catch our conversation here, recorded live with Product Momentum! You can also watch our episode with Gabi Bufrem on the Product Momentum YouTube channel!

If you were unable to attend the New York Product Conference in person, find out what you missed by reading our conference summary: Product Perspectives: Recapping the 2024 New York Product Conference.

The post 134 / Lessons in Product Leadership: The Art of Communication, with Gabrielle Bufrem appeared first on ITX Corp..

Recording Live at NYPC

Recording live from the New York Product Conference, April Dunford (author of Sales Pitch and Obviously Awesome) explains further: it’s not that buyers have determined that status quo is the better option. It’s that buyers simply can’t get to the level of confidence they need to pull the trigger.

How can product managers and salespeople work together to make the buying process less ominous?

From Positioning to Sales Pitch

“I think we need to approach it with the idea of ‘how can we be helpful to prospects,’ to help them make [these tough] decisions,” April says. “But at the same time, our mission is to sell stuff, right? So we need to communicate: ‘Why pick us over the other guys? What’s the value that we can deliver that no one else can?’ If we’re going to do that, we need a structure.”

Crafting a Compelling Story

April explains that the structure begins with understanding your positioning and then building a pitch that reflects that positioning. From that framework, “product and sales can work together to build a pitch that meets the needs of the Sales team in terms of doing discovery, handling objections, and crafting a compelling story that accurately reflects our product.” Perhaps as importantly, it also helps the buyer make a difficult choice and feel confident about it.

Learn more about how this structure works when you catch the entire podcast episode with April Dunford. You can also watch our conversation with April Dunford on the Product Momentum YouTube channel!

Want to hear more from April? Check out our earlier episode, How To Get the Positioning Right.

The post 133 / From Positioning to Sales Pitch: How to Make the Buying Process Easier, with April Dunford appeared first on ITX Corp..

ITX’s EVP of Innovation Sean Flaherty kicked off the 2-day event with NYPC’s only in-person workshop: Influencing Without Authority: The Power of Product Leadership. Sean led a discussion for product leaders who carry much of the burden for product success, but little of the authority that comes with titles and organizational hierarchy.

In another part of the event space, the Product Momentum team was geared up to record live podcast episodes with conference keynote speakers April Dunford, Gabrielle Bufrem, Zoia Kozakov, Holly Hester-Reilly, and Denise Tilles. These insightful thought leaders touched on topics valuable to product people of every stripe: from product positioning to product ops, change management and product discovery. After each presentation, Product Momentum co-hosts Sean Flaherty and Paul Gebel sat down with our guests to drill deeper into their philosophies and practices; we captured these conversations here and in our live podcast episodes.

April Dunford. From Positioning to Sales Pitch: How to Make the Buying Process Easier

If you think B2B selling is hard (full disclosure, it is), get a peek from the other side of the transaction. Make the wrong purchase decision, and it may be your last. Call it what you want: purchase dissonance, doubt, second-guessing. The anxiety that comes with it can be paralyzing.

In fact, as April Dunford explained, 40-60% of the average B2B sales person’s pipeline is lost to ‘no decision’ (source: The JOLT Effect, by Matt Dixon). But it’s not that buyers are determining that the status quo is the better option. Instead, April continues, in the majority of cases buyers simply can’t bring themselves to make a decision they feel confident about. Understanding that dynamic is critical to understanding the challenge. And then, of course, taking the steps to resolve it.

How can we make the buying process less hard? What can salespeople (and their product manager colleagues) do to help prospects and customers make a confident decision?
The answer is simple, but not easy. Learn more when you catch the entire episode with April Dunford on our Product Momentum YouTube channel.

Gabrielle Bufrem. Confessions of a First Head of Product

Hindsight is 20/20, right? We’ve been in situations where we wish we knew more before jumping into a new project or job. It helps to know what we are going to be dealing with, so we can handle it the most effectively.

For today’s product managers, they can turn to Gabrielle Bufrem for those insights. She compiled many lessons she learned from her experience in working in product into a cohesive, engaging talk that brings light to some situations that don’t seem to get much attention.

And for Gabrielle, a valuable insight she learned was the importance of timing. Recognizing the right moments for important conversations and information sharing is vital, and it requires an understanding of audience needs. On the flip side, dealing with the pressure of delivering products takes balancing long-term vision with immediate demands. By nailing the timing just right, we ensure effective timing for achieving both our short and long-term goals.

When it’s time, we’ll share more of our conversation with Gabrielle – more conversations can be found on our YouTube channel here.

Zoia Kozakov. How to Drive Change Management (…when no one wants to change)

Any product manager who’s ever tried to pivot their organization’s approach to a new strategy knows the change management struggle – when no one wants to change. The reasons for resistance are many, and they’re real.

In her keynote, Zoia Kozakov, Vice President, Product Manager at JPMorgan Chase, cited fear of the unknown, mistrust in the organization’s leadership, lack of awareness around the reason for change, being excluded from change-related decisions among the leading candidates.

In response to these challenges, Zoia offered five tactics that help your team, as well as internal stakeholders, navigate the change you’re proposing. Taken together, they reflect the advice offered by recent Product Momentum guest, Jared Spool. “If we want [the change] to succeed,” Jared said, “we have to have a clear definition of what the outcome looks like of how it really does make things better in people’s lives.”

We’ll be dropping our podcast with Zoia in a few weeks; sign up for our Continuous Innovation newsletter so you can be on the lookout for it.

Holly Hester-Reilly. Setting Your Team Up for Success with the Product Science Principles

The tech landscape is ever evolving. For Holly Hester-Reilly, in the 17 years of working on the spectrum of organization size, the way we take what we learned, and use that evidence to help us make informed decisions will not change.

It was a pleasure to speak with Holly again, after hosting her on the podcast and having her as one of our keynote speakers at the 2022 Product + Design Conference. Her keynote focused on product science principles and using evidence to make data-informed decisions.

Like many professionals, Holly ensures to take stock at the end of every sprint, but she uses a specific phrase for this activity – understand what was built, what was learned, and what are we planning. Maybe the verb tense isn’t something to consider, but to Holly, it’s a valuable point (even one that she possibly made subconsciously.)

You can find our previous Product Momentum conversation with Holly here, and in a few weeks when her episode is live on our YouTube channel.

Denise Tilles. A spontaneous chat with a 2024 Product + Design Conference Keynote Speaker.

We were thrilled to see 2024 Product + Design Conference keynote speaker Denise Tilles at the event, and even more excited when she agreed to a spontaneous chat for the podcast!

What’s on her mind? Product Operations. The idea of bringing cross-functional information and insights forward to help align and create winning product strategies. In an era of tech industry layoffs, Denise sees organizations losing Product Operations teams, those orgs citing teams “working on the work” instead of “doing the work.” In her mind, this is an error in judgement.

Having focus on the operations of product teams helps organizations stay crisp and ensure that their practices are aligned with their goals. It’s not just hyper-fixating on processes one team makes, it brings to light all areas in an organization – including those that are end-of-the-line and customer-facing, to help companies make informed decisions.

It’s an area she’s passionate about sharing with others and giving them the resources they need to keep their product strategy in line. Her book Product Operations, co-authored with Melissa Perri, also brings real-life examples that helps readers understand the concepts in their book.

Our podcast episode with Denise is only a fraction of what she’ll talk about at our conference this June, and you can even take home your own copy of Product Operations when you register for our Keynote day.

A huge shout out to Product Collective co-founders Mike Belsito, Paul McAvinchey, and all the team members we worked with, for allowing ITX and Product Momentum to share this great event with you. And to the growing community of product people whom we serve, we’re grateful for your leadership and listenership.

If you couldn’t join us in person, tune into the Product Momentum podcast on ITX.com or YouTube in the coming weeks to hear the episodes.

Find your next learning opportunity.

Join us for the 2024 Product + Design Conference this June.

Peter Sullivan is Producer of ITX’s Product Momentum podcast and a student of Product and Design processes that work. As ITX’s Marketing Content Lead, he spearheads our efforts to deliver thought leadership that helps Product makers and UX designers understand and shape the future. 

Megan Lawson is a Marketing Content Specialist at ITX. She focuses on creating content that solves problems and engages audiences. Megan received her BA in Communication from the State University of New York at Geneseo.

The post Product Perspectives: Recapping the 2024 New York Product Conference appeared first on ITX Corp..

April 24, 2024 Rochester, NY — ITX Corp., an award-winning producer of custom software products headquartered in Rochester, NY, announced it has been named a Great Place to Work® – Certified company, a national recognition that celebrates organizations who create an outstanding employee experience. The GPTW certification marks the company’s first such national honor; ITX is a five-time recipient of Rochester’ Top Workplace Award, was selected as a 2023 Best Company to Work for in New York, and was named a winner of Elevate Rochester’s 2021 ETHIE Award.  

“We’re proud to earn this certification, and I am proud of the environment we have created here,” said ITX CEO Ralph Dandrea. “At ITX, we lean on our values to ensure a positive, supportive workplace where experimentation and innovation can thrive, so we can deliver great value to our clients. Most of all, I am grateful to our entire team, who work so hard to strengthen the culture we have built; it gives me great confidence for the future.”  

To be considered for Great Place to Work® certification, ITX underwent a rigorous process that included surveying employees and completing a questionnaire about workplace culture and environment. Requiring at least 90% participation, the survey measures the employees’ level of trust in the organization and the consistency of their survey responses.  

“We are honored to receive this national certification from Great Place To Work,” said ITX Vice President of Global Talent Collene Burns. “Not only does it acknowledge the strength of our workplace culture, but it also echoes our commitment to creating an environment where everyone feels welcome and where our team feels safe to experiment, grow, and learn in pursuit of client value.” 

Earning the Great Place To Work® certification positions the company alongside other leading organizations across the United States, including leading area employers like Paychex and Wegmans. It validates ITX’s concerted efforts to create a rewarding and psychologically safe environment. And it demonstrates unwavering commitment to the ITX mission: to deliver technology that solves challenging problems so our clients can move, touch, and inspire the world. 

About ITX Corp. 

ITX helps mid- to large-sized companies tackle complex business challenges through custom software product development, delivering solutions that build trust, loyalty, and advocacy among clients and their users. Founded in 1997, the company has expanded beyond its roots in Rochester, NY into a team of nearly 300 talented product professionals and technologists throughout the Americas and beyond.  

Career inquiries: 585.899.4888  

Media Inquiries: Kyle Psaty, Vice President of Marketing | 585.899.4895 

The post ITX Receives Certification as a ‘Great Place To Work®’ appeared first on ITX Corp..

In this episode of Product Momentum, Janna rejoins Paul and ITX Product Manager Sean Murray to discuss how AI tools are driving the transformation of Product Management. (Catch our first conversation with Janna here: The Product Leader’s Dilemma: Balancing Possibility, Predictability).

Swap Out the Grunt Work To Focus on the Premium

So much of what we do is just grunt work, Janna says, repetitive tasks that require little in the way of expertise. “AI tools remove a lot of that pain,” she added. “That’s the sort of thing that product managers can easily outsource to a GPT-type agent to help us reduce our effort on.”

But the real power of AI comes not in streamlining existing tasks, but in “creating time for higher-level tasks that require human interaction, like talking to customers and stakeholders and using those conversations to figure out what our strategy should be.”

AI as Strategic Copilot

Janna sees AI as more of a sidekick than a replacement for human engagement. “I really like the term ‘copilot’ that’s been flying around,” she says, highlighting an AI strong suit in providing insights and feedback that guide product managers’ decision-making and strategy development.

“[AI] is a copilot, an assistant. a sidekick,” she adds. “And it’s there to help us get to the point that we can communicate or make decisions faster and better. It’s all about making sure the whole org is making better products, and the product team is empowered to do so.”

Lowering Barriers of Entry Into Product Management

Years ago, would-be product managers steered away from the role – voluntarily and otherwise. As Janna explains, “The assumption was that we needed a computer science degree or that we should know how to code.” AI tools have lowered that barrier – maybe even removed it – attracting a more diverse range of talent. “It’s going to open product management up to people who otherwise weren’t going to look down this path.”

Learn more from Janna Bastow by reading her blog and checking out her webinars, talks, and podcast.

You can also watch our conversation with Janna Bastow on the Product Momentum YouTube channel!

The post 132 / 3 Ways AI Is Transforming Product Management, with Janna Bastow appeared first on ITX Corp..

Compared with other software development disciplines, product management and user experience (UX) design are still pretty young professions. That said, they’re maturing rapidly and growing more specialized every day. As their evolution continues, it isn’t always clear who’s responsible for what on a product team and how best they can work together (we offered guidance on this topic in a post last year). Maybe it’s no surprise, then, that UX designers and product managers seem to get in each other’s way on the road to success.

This post canvasses the views that Roman Pichler (PM) and Jared Spool (UX) recently shared in consecutive podcast episodes of Product Momentum. What’s most intriguing about both conversations is how they each arrive at the same desired outcome – improving the lives of end users – despite taking parallel paths.

Jared calls that desired outcome a better future, while Roman describes it as the positive change a product should create. But both agree that whatever the solution, it’s less about building shiny new features or making things look pretty (i.e., outputs). Outcomes always trump the digital knickknacks we create along the way.

From Tactical UX to Strategic Influence

“Most UX teams, if they have any UX effort at all, it’s tactical UX,” Jared said. “And by tactical UX, I mean a bunch of folks who have really great skills and can create designs and do usability tests and write fantastic content. They typically work at a very low level in the organization. And if they’re seen by the upper levels of the organization, it’s as sort of a ‘make it pretty’ team.”

As important and essential as their work is to the final outcome, designers are limited to how much they can contribute to it. Jared’s advice to UX designers is simple, but powerful: reach beyond your tactical design activities and embrace strategic UX.

We can call it a movement, an approach, a transformation in the way organizations actually start using all the things that UX has to offer – the obvious talent and technical capability, the knowledge, the experience, the expertise – but strategic UX makes sure the organization is competitive, that the organization is actually solving big problems, and that the organization is providing the best possible solutions.

Product Strategy Is a Shared Objective

Roman argues for the empowerment of product managers to make strategic decisions. But not unilaterally. Instead, he advocates for a shared strategy developed with the extended product team that includes UX design, engineering, internal stakeholders, and development team representatives.

His collaborative approach to developing and articulating product strategy ensures that it’s not just a directive from the top – but instead is a shared vision that leverages the collective intelligence of the team.

It’s not enough that product strategy resides in the head of the CPO or Head of Product. Nor is it sufficient for the strategy to be articulated to the product team; both are necessary, but neither is sufficient by itself.

Unless the people involved in progressing those products actively participate in determining what the product strategy is, Roman added, there will be fatal disconnects in its execution.

“For me, that’s a real issue because it means that in the worst case, teams miss out on the benefits that a strategy delivers: an understanding of the positive change in the user experience that leads to a better future for all.”

UX and Product Strategy as Collaborative Pillars

An overlay of Jared’s and Roman’s insights presents a compelling, even hopeful, narrative. It doesn’t necessarily reject the well-chronicled antagonisms between Product + UX. Instead, by making this more about why and what (the desired outcome) than how and by whom, it may serve an even brighter purpose by providing guidance to help navigate the interplay between the Product and UX design roles.

The integration of strategic UX into product decisions, coupled with the shared formulation of product strategy, is not just complementary. It is essential to each other’s success. This cohesive approach ensures that products are not only designed with a deep understanding of user needs but are also strategically positioned to achieve the organization’s business goals.

At the 2023 Product + Design Conference, Radhika Dutt opened her keynote address by describing the limitations that challenge effective product development approaches. She spoke of –

• Engineering-led teams that build solutions in search of a problem;

• Sales-led teams that build whatever it takes to generate revenue;

• Design-led teams that focus empathy on the lived experiences of real people; and

• Product-led teams that are guided by the product’s potential, dissolving the line between “the business” and “the product.”

The fact is, as Radhika pointed out, each approach by itself is insufficient to deliver the outcomes our users desire. Even a product-led approach, which at least tries to find a balance on the path to transformation, falls short. To be successful, Radhika emphasizes a vision-driven approach, which most closely aligns with Jared’s and Roman’s recommendations.

As Jared explains, product vision is the delta between two possible futures: the “do nothing different” future you get when you embrace the status quo, and the “do something different” future you get when your outcome-driven focus is inspired by the change you want to bring to the world.

Bridging the Gap: Product + Design Building Better Outcomes Together

Taken together, Jared’s and Roman’s insights underscore the reciprocal, even dependent, relationship between UX and product. It’s a holistic approach, where strategic product decisions are informed by deep user understanding and collaborative effort; it’s what sets apart successful products from the also-rans.

Okay, so how do we get there? A few tips from Roman and Jared:

1. Exploit the Tension. It’s important to embrace the creative tension that exists organically between UX design and product management. Rather than viewing this tension as a hindrance or constraint, use it as a catalyst for creativity and innovation. This tension, when navigated collaboratively, can lead to the discovery of novel solutions that are both user-centric and strategically sound.

2. Shared Understanding and Ownership. Effective product development requires the combination and balance of skills that lean on a cohesive working relationship among team members and stakeholders, cemented together by a common, well-articulated vision.
Suppress the urge to grab (or cede) power. Bridging the gap between UX and product occurs when we share ownership and accountability for addressing user needs. Software solutions are not created in a bubble, as Radhika pointed out. A shared vision not only aligns our efforts, but it also ensures that decisions are made with a 360-degree view of the product’s impact on users and the business.

3. Continuous Evolution. As user needs grow more complex and the tools we use to address them become more sophisticated, so too does the professionalism and maturation of product management and UX design as disciplines. This continuous evolution offers yet another point of convergence; in a rapidly changing market, an organization’s agility in adapting and refining strategies based on user feedback and market trends is crucial.

Product is much stronger when paired with good designers, and design is much stronger when paired with good product managers. Perhaps design leadership coach Jesse James Garrett said it best, in his keynote also at the 2023 Product + Design Conference, when he offered the following advice to product people and his fellow designers:

• Turn toward the center, not the extremes; that is where you’ll find your partners.

• Lean into the overlap; you have more in common than you think.

• Product done right is user-centered; design done right is product-minded.

By bridging the gap between UX and product management, organizations can create products that both delight users and drive business success. This integrated approach is not just a strategy; it’s a philosophy that champions collaboration, empathy, and continuous innovation as the cornerstones of product excellence.

Register now for ITX’s 2024 Product + Design Conference, June 27-28. Early bird pricing ends April 23.

Peter Sullivan is Producer of ITX’s Product Momentum podcast and a student of Product and Design processes that work. As ITX”s Marketing Content Lead, he spearheads our efforts to deliver thought leadership that helps Product makers and UX designers understand and shape the future. 

The post How Product + Design Work Together To Build ‘A Better Future’ appeared first on ITX Corp..

Currently the Vice President of Artificial Intelligence and Design at Microsoft, he is also a LinkedIn Top 10 US Influencer , and was named one of the most influential people of the 21^st century by Forbes. John served as the President and Chief Executive Officer at the Rhode Island School of Design; he’s been on advisory boards at eBay and Google, and he also served on the board at Wieden + Kennedy and Sonos.

His CV paints a picture of a brilliant mind, teeming with knowledge. Imagine learning from an authority with his depth of experience and unique way of looking at our world. John Maeda is driven by a passionate commitment to elevate the experiences of others by sharing what he has learned, from others. Clearly evident through his notable accomplishments at the Rhode Island School of Design and his annual creation of the comprehensive Design in Tech Report, John Maeda gathers information and finds innovative and impactful ways to share it with others.

Our team is so excited to bring a thought leader of his caliber to our event, opening a world of possibilities for product and design professionals. The ability to learn and connect with others eager to absorb as much as possible from John Maeda and our other invited speakers is an opportunity that doesn’t come often. While much of our work in the technology space spans across the globe, that doesn’t mean we can’t connect with those who celebrate the power of these two disciplines locally.

John Maeda is speaking on Keynote Date, Friday June 28.

Visit our conference page to learn more about this year’s event, read what happened in previous years, and stay informed about what’s to come.

Megan Lawson is a Marketing Content Specialist at ITX. She focuses on creating content that solves problems and engages audiences. Megan received her BA in Communication from the State University of New York at Geneseo.

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Celebrate the power of UX design and product development with a 2-day conference experience and learning from industry thought leaders.

Visit the Conference Page to Learn More

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April 4, 2024 Rochester, NY – ITX is honored to celebrate the fifth-consecutive year of being named a Top Workplaces in Rochester, NY. The company commemorated the achievement at the Rochester Top Workplaces award ceremony on Wednesday, April 3.  

ITX ranked 42nd in the small-sized category, which highlighted 47 Rochester-area organizations. 

Companies rank on the Top Workplaces list based on internal team member surveys conducted by a third-party service called Energage. The survey includes questions about topics like culture, growth, and leadership. Businesses receive their position based on the results of the survey, comparing answers from each organization to others of similar size in the Rochester area. 

ITX continues to experiment, learn, and grow, while eagerly sharing its knowledge along the way. The company is always seeking to meet outstanding technology professionals and product specialists; to learn more about our workplace, visit: www.itx.com/careers. 

About ITX Corp. 

ITX helps mid- to large-sized companies tackle complex business challenges through custom software product development, delivering solutions that build trust, loyalty, and advocacy among clients and their users. Founded in 1997, the company is recognized as a Best Company to Work For in the State of New York. ITX has expanded beyond its roots in Rochester, NY into a team of nearly 300 talented product professionals and technologists throughout the Americas and beyond. 

Career inquiries: 585.899.4888 

Media Inquiries: Kyle Psaty, Vice President of Marketing | 585.899.4895 

The post ITX Honored To Be a Rochester Top Workplace for 2024 appeared first on ITX Corp..

EVP of Innovation Sean Flaherty is leading a workshop on April 17, and Product Momentum will be recording live podcast episodes during Keynote day on April 18. ITX is sponsoring the Official NYPC After Party.

Read our Event Recap Blog

Learn more about Product Collective

The post The New York Product Conference 2024 appeared first on ITX Corp..

In this episode of Product Momentum, Paul sat down with Paul Gebel and Jonathan Coupal, ITX’s VP of Infrastructure, stressing the importance of moving security considerations to the earliest possible phase of the SDLC (software development life cycle).

Shift Left
“Shift left has been something of focus for clients a few years now,” Paul says. “Once we’ve actually written some code, we want to test that code as soon as we can.”

Paul’s passion for app and system security, and threat modeling specifically, is obvious. It’s a task typically performed by security folks, Paul adds, as it can be quite involved to produce threat models for things that we don’t entirely understand. Nonetheless, he advocates for teaching product teams to do this for themselves.

Build a Security-Focused Culture
“It helps us address the skill challenge, because there’s just not enough people in cyber to effectively secure all the applications and products that are out there,” Paul shares. “But it also gets teams into the habit of having daily conversations about security, which is fundamentally really the thing that’s going to help close the [security knowledge] gap and build a security-focused culture.”

Question: within each sprint, how much capacity does your team allocate for security? None? 5%? More? Be sure to catch the entire episode to learn Paul Connaghan’s expert recommendation.

Learn more about application security and threat modeling by catching our earlier Product Momentum episode, with guest Chris Romeo.

You can also watch our conversation with Paul Connaghan on the Product Momentum YouTube channel!

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March 19, 2024 Rochester, NY – ITX is proud to announce that Product Owner Felicia Zimmermann and Innovation Lead Jessica Peters have been selected as finalists in TechRochester’s 2024 Technology Woman of the Year Awards.

Technology Woman of the Year recognizes, celebrates, and brings visibility to the achievements of women in high technology fields. Selection criteria included a review of individual contributions to the technology profession and community activities supported by the finalists.

As finalists, Felicia Zimmermann and Jessica Peters exemplify the core values of the Technology Woman of the Year awards. They deliver first-rate service to clients and solve challenging software product problems, thus providing valuable contributions to the organization and the Rochester technology community.

TechRochester will name the recipients of both Technology Woman of the Year and Emerging Technology Woman of the Year at the awards ceremony on April 24. Wendi Heinzelman, Dean of the Edmund A. Hajim School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at University of Rochester, will keynote the event, taking place at Casa Larga Vineyards in Fairport, NY.

A local non-profit organization, TechRochester focuses on bringing technology professionals together within the community. By supporting professional growth on an individual level, the organization works to encourage the expansion of technology within the Rochester region.

About ITX Corp.

ITX helps mid- to large-sized companies tackle complex business challenges through custom software product development, delivering solutions that build trust, loyalty, and advocacy among clients and their users. Founded in 1997, the company is recognized as a Best Company to Work For in the State of New York. ITX has expanded beyond its roots in Rochester, NY into a team of nearly 300 talented product professionals and technologists throughout the Americas and beyond.

Career inquiries: 585.899.4888

Media Inquiries: Kyle Psaty, Vice President of Marketing | 585.899.4895

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Defining Product Strategy

Strategy means different things to different people, Roman says. “I would suggest the strategy is a high-level plan: it describes the approach that we’ve chosen to make or keep a product successful.” Strategy and vision are not the same, he notes. “Strategy encompasses crucial elements such as the value proposition, target markets, business goals, and standout features. Without a clearly articulated strategy, product teams risk missing out on the benefits that strategic alignment brings.”

Responsibility, Ownership, and Influence

Traditionally, product strategy formulation has been viewed as the sole responsibility of top management. Roman advocates for a different, more inclusive approach, where product managers and cross-functional teams actively participate in strategic decision-making.

“A single person hardly ever has all the right information, the right data to make the right decisions,” Roman says. “I find it’s better to delegate the product strategy – or the decisionmaking authority around product strategy – to the people who are in charge or who work on those products, and then coach them.

“Empowering product managers to own and evolve strategies not only fosters motivation, but also prevents bottlenecks and promotes continuous adaptation.”

Empowerment and Trust

When it comes to empowerment, two factors are at play, Roman offers. “One we refer to as ‘personal power; that’s aligned with the organizational aspect. But when we look into what individual contributors and  product people can do to empower themselves, that would be strengthening our expert power: the ‘referent power.’

The better we are at earning and exhibiting referent power – at crafting and setting a vision, creating and evolving a product strategy, and at understanding the specific markets and market segments our product serves – the more people are likely to trust us.

Be sure to check out our episode with Roman Pichler on the Product Momentum YouTube channel!

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By 2034, Generative AI may well be on its way to Artificial General Intelligence, capable of outperforming humans at most economically valuable tasks. Possibly this AI boom will pop like another dot-com-style bubble, inflated by hype. Or maybe we’ll be living underground, relying on dogs to sniff out machine infiltrators.

Unfortunately, we’re stuck in the present: a time where AI conjecture, hype, and fear swirls around the public sphere. To cut through this noise, we in the ITX User Experience Content team determined there was only one remedy: the scientific method. We put ChatGPT-4 through its paces to understand if it’s something that can add value to our clients’ products. Here’s what we found.

Experiment 1: Is an AI Strategy Viable?

In our first experiment, we measured the impact on productivity and quality produced by integrating ChatGPT into our processes. Our hypothesis? That a UX Writer assisted by ChatGPT could produce publishable content faster than an equally skilled UX Writer – working without artificial assistance – with no discernible drop in quality.

We kept things simple by pitting two writers against each other, head-to-head. One could use ChatGPT as much as their heart desired, while the other followed our existing process. We gave them both a brief for a theoretical client’s product and sent them on their way.

The experiment’s results proved our hypothesis in a surprising way: our Large Language Model (LLM)-assisted writer produced the deliverable faster, and in surveys their work scored higher for quality. This result fascinated us and generated considerable discussion throughout the team and among our internal stakeholders, like:

• Could we discount the qualitative difference in skill levels between the experiment’s writers?
• If this tool is as powerful as the results suggest, should we prioritize replicating these results? Or should we move ahead with implementing the tool in our processes (and, if so, where in our processes?)
• What are the risks to ITX, our clients, and the products we co-create with them?
• What will our clients think?

Cautious optimism carried the day, but risk was a major topic of concerns. We determined that the best path forward would be to run a second experiment.

Experiment 2: Addressing AI Plagiarism and Accuracy Concerns

Our second foray into the world of LLMs for content creation focused on an issue of crucial importance to many peoples’ work across a range of industries: the risk of plagiarism and inaccuracies in LLM output. The risk that a given LLM may output factually incorrect – or stolen – information would weigh heavily on our decision to adopt these tools or avoid them until such risks decreased.

We aimed to test a process to check work for plagiarism and accuracy and determine if that added burden would diminish the productivity gains that the first experiment’s results suggested. In addition to our focus on the LLM’s integrity, we also sought to replicate the first experiment’s results.

Iterating on our method, we expanded our number of subjects from two UX Writers to three and assigned them a blog post for a theoretical client. One could only use ChatGPT to generate their post, the second could use ChatGPT as an assistant, and the third was prohibited from using any LLM assistance.

The results were exciting on two fronts.

1. We found no evidence of plagiarism or factual inaccuracy in any of the deliverables, and

2. We replicated the first experiment’s results when considering both quality and efficiency.

This time, we discovered some important nuance. Before we go there, though, let’s first focus on how we evaluate efficiency and quality. Not surprisingly, we measured efficiency based on the effort and time required to complete the task. As for quality, ITX team members across a range of disciplines rated the content’s quality on two criteria: how easy it was to engage with the content, and how easy was to understand

Now, let’s return to the important nuance. The post created by our writer with LLM assistance – that is, the work not completely delegated to the machine – scored the highest in terms of quality , but required the most time and effort to complete . The post generated fully by the AI scored the lowest for quality, but required the least amount of time to produce. Our human-generated control scored in the middle of these two extremes.

Results: Should we use LLMs in content work at ITX?

The results of these two experiments have convinced us that yes, using these tools is a net positive that will drive greater value for our clients.

However, the question of where in our processes we should use these tools remains unanswered. Our results prove that simply adopting an LLM and relying on it exclusively would be undesirable when quality and readability are essential requirements . Instead, we should identify those points in our processes where we can maximize the effect of the LLM.

Despite all the hype, it’s important to know that LLMs have limitations. We need to consider them and evaluate their potential impact as we determine where in our content development process we should apply these tools.

For example, limited context windows – that is, the number of tokens that an LLM can hold in its “memory” – render them ineffective at creating content from a long list of inputs and prompts. Experiment subjects reported frustrations with this.

“You refine prompts by asking [ChatGPT] to change three things, and it’ll change two of them. But then it completely forgets about the one from two prompts ago,” noted one UX Writer at ITX.

Insights: Where to Adopt LLMs Today

With these limitations in mind, we’ve identified two broad areas where we’re investigating adoption.

1: Rapid outlining

LLMs can help us rapidly generate an initial outline for a content deliverable. We can adapt to issues with the context length (for example, a writer needing to comb through dense outputs to catch issues or discover forgotten prompts) by asking the AI to produce short outputs, such as outlines and brainstorms.

LLMs excel particularly at summarizing sources like scientific papers; these summaries help the content writer efficiently gather information they need to begin their work.

Hallucinations remain a real danger, but human intervention in the form of an expert writer is reduces this risk; with a human still responsible for writing the piece and citing their sources, there is little risk of a hallucination worming its way into the final output.

2: First-pass reviews

People are busy, which means that one key bottleneck in our process hampering overall productivity is peer review. We believe that leveraging LLMs like ChatGPT-4 to perform an independent, “first pass” review can reduce the impact of this bottleneck. Because LLMs are good at analyzing segments of text that fall within their context window limits, the tool is ideally suited for this first pass task.

Take caution, as more investigation is required here. Adopting an LLM for this purpose often requires prompting an LLM with client information, so it’s imperative to address information security in a way that ensures that no NDAs are violated, and no confidential client data inadvertently makes its way into an LLM’s training data set.

What’s Next?

New technology can be intimidating. The experience of seeing ChatGPT stamp out lines of copy seemed to conjure a connection through time to those British weavers of the 1770s, who at the very dawn of the industrial era witnessed mechanized looms spin the textiles that had been the source of their livelihoods. We use the example of the Luddites intentionally, as history demonstrates that there’s no sense in fighting breakthroughs that have the potential to improve your ways of working.

In the UX Content team, we’ve all been working hard to identify ways to use this new technology to the advantage of our clients, to help their products perform more powerfully for a smaller investment. At ITX, we don’t blindly believe the hype; one of our core values is Innovation through Experimentation. We live this value by way of our commitment to testing new technologies, like large language models, that have the potential to move, touch, and inspire the world.

Heading

This is only a tiny fraction of our findings. To read our experiment results in detail, which includes discussion on the future of these Generative AI tools incorporating the cutting-edge research in this space, reach out today.

Lydia Pejovic is a UX Writer at ITX. She enjoys creating informative and engaging content for all audiences. Lydia received her BA in English from the University of San Diego and a dual MA & MFA in English from Chapman University.

Tim Snedden leads the UX Writing and Content Strategy practice at ITX. His work revolves around the idea that excellent communication underpins every great digital experience.

The post Can You Use ChatGPT AI for Writing? Our UX Writers Think So appeared first on ITX Corp..

In today’s episode, Jared chats with Paul Gebel and co-host Christina Halladay, Director of UX at ITX. With his trademark wit and wisdom, he doubles down on that advice by describing what he’s been up to since we last spoke, as a Maker of Awesomeness at Center Centre.

“I’ve been helping UX leaders function at that strategic level, bringing out the value of their contribution and helping them think about the right problems.”

Strategic UX vs. Tactical UX

“Most of the UX practiced these days is tactical UX,” Jared adds, “by the folks who have really great skills who can create designs and do usability tests and write fantastic content. But there’s a limit to how much they can contribute to the organization.”

On the other hand, he says strategic UX helps us get to the root of our users’ problems. It’s about introducing the power of UX early in the product development process and focusing on shipping the right thing. Before we can do that, though, we first need to make sure we’ve identified the right problem.

Strategic UX Drives Outcomes

Tactical UX is output-driven; strategic UX is outcome-driven.

“With strategic UX, we’re finally applying all the great things that UX people do – their skills and talents, the capabilities, the knowledge, the experience, the expertise – to make sure the organization is being competitive and that we’re actually solving big problems for their users.”

Leaders + Vision

Be sure to catch the entire episode to hear Jared Spool discuss leaders (as opposed to managers) and vision: “Leaders inspire others to rally behind a compelling Vision, which is the story that articulates a possible future (as opposed to a ‘do-nothing’ future) and inspires action from all levels of the organization.”

You can also watch our conversation with Jared Spool on the Product Momentum YouTube channel!

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Petra Wille, an independent product leadership coach and author of STRONG Product People: A Complete Guide to Developing Great Product Managers, understands the value of product communities. So much so that she’s written a second book on the matter, STRONG Product Communities: The Essential Guide to Product Communities of Practice. On an episode of Product Momentum, she shared insights as to how we can find the right product community to further our goals and become better, well-rounded product professionals.

1. Establish Your Personal Goals

Before even considering attending a specific product meetup you might see advertised online, Petra encourages us to take the time to consider why you’re looking for a community.

There are many reasons to join a community – develop new skills, network with others in your local community (including the Upstate Product Meetup Group, a preferred choice among Rochester-area product managers), stay up to date on product trends. Connecting with others, even to share common stresses, can be cathartic enough to seek out others.

Determining your goals will help you understand what you choose to gain from a community. From there, it’s significantly easier to understand what group you should be searching for.

2. Define What Community Means To You

Community means different things to different people. Especially in the context of a professional community of practice, distilling community into a single definition may not be helpful.

The same goes for our individual ideas of what community means to us. We are all different people, so we’ll think of community differently. Is your community small or large? Does it meet up in person or virtually? Do you discuss recent learnings, professional challenges, or just talk shop?

On Product Momentum, Petra says, “So maybe it’s perfectly fine if it’s 12 people and it’s a local community and you can actually meet them for an hour and just talk about stuff. And it’s not as frightening as hanging out in a 300-person online Zoom call discussing the Jobs-to-be-Done framework, right? So I think that really helps to think about community size as well.”

The composition of our community is not the main feature to consider. What truly matters is recognizing that our community plays an important role in accomplishing our goals and enhancing our skills as product professionals.

3. Find A Group To Learn From

Even if skill set development isn’t your primary objective, you can still think of approaching a community as a learning opportunity. If you’re not directly trying to level up your PM game, you might still learn about the people you’re with and the passions they pursue.

Learners and learning come in different shapes and sizes, from more intimate discussions about methods and techniques, to large gatherings to capture an expert’s insights. Product conferences shine in this regard, as many accommodate everyone’s preferred learning environments.

Petra organizes the yearly Product At Heart Conference in Hamburg, Germany. The premise of this event is to tap into your curiosity and expand your knowledge about product. For those looking to go further down into the “why” of our work, events like this make for a great place to connect with those who share your curiosity.

Pendomonium is a unique festival celebrating innovative approaches in products. With multiple breakout sessions, different learning tracks, and thought-provoking keynotes, it offers product-led tactics and strategies. The event educates, inspires, and empowers attendees with hands-on Pendo team trainings, certifications, with nightly festivities capping off jam-packed days.

INDUSTRY Conferences, hosted by the amazing team at Product Collective, offer some of the largest and best gatherings of product professionals around the world. With four different events held during the year, including one virtual event, you’ll have no problem finding the right event for you will be a breeze.

The ITX Product + Design Conference is about learning with and from thought leaders, teammates, and clients too! A full day is dedicated to small in-person workshops and a second is reserved for the large-group keynotes – with plenty of breaks for networking and conversation. This unique community learning opportunity creates comfortable environments for different learners to learn differently.

4. Be Clear With Your Intentions

Let’s circle back to establishing your personal goals: it’s paramount to be upfront with yourself. There’s no right or wrong here, so trust your personal reasoning about whether to join a community and which one serves your needs best.

Be thoughtful about it; it’s okay to take time to decide if you’re going to stick with a group. But if you don’t clarify why you want to join, to those group members and to yourself, you may not find the right fit for you.

Here’s what Petra has to say on this topic: “It often helps if you let people know, ‘Hey, I’m just here to release some steam,’ or, ‘Hey, I’m here to actually seek guidance, and are there any tips and tricks?’ Because there’s nothing more frustrating than getting a lot of helpful tips when the only thing that you wanted to do was just to kind of release some of the steam, right? So, these are things that you could think about before you actually go to an event or join a community.”

A little extra research into the community or attending “trial” meetups can be great ways to understand if the product community aligns with your intentions and goals. By doing so you set yourself up for future success and growth.

5. Benchmark Against Your Peers

When you join a new product community, you’re going to meet product professionals at different points in their careers with diverse work experiences. These interactions bring a wonderful opportunity to network, and they offer a chance to see how you measure up in comparison to your peers. Not necessarily to check if you’re “better,” but more to know where others in your field are in their careers. A little informal “gap analysis” may help uncover new skill areas that you can grow and develop.

“So sometimes it just helps to understand where you’re currently at with your current company’s product management practices, right?” Petra notes. “So that’s another thing why people are seeking community just like to see, ‘Are we really that bad?’ Or, ‘We are not that bad, everybody’s struggling with similar things,’ right?”

And, without even realizing it, you might be serving as a benchmark for others! If someone else struggles with an area that you’re familiar with, you may be the “expert” who can provide ideas or thoughts and contribute insights to the community you sought out. It’s this willingness to share that makes communities of practice such essential components to our personal and professional growth.

Find Your Product Community

There is a whole world of product communities ready to be explored. Quite literally, we have pick of the litter when it comes to selecting our community. Using these tips narrows down our pool of options, which expedites our path for growth.

Take these insights and begin your journey. Cultivate relationships and broaden your horizons with new experiences to make social connections that can benefit you beyond the workplace.

A product community is waiting for you.

Learn and network with your community at the 2024 Product + Design Conference.

Megan Lawson is a Marketing Content Specialist at ITX. She focuses on creating content that solves problems and engages audiences. Megan received her BA in Communication from the State University of New York at Geneseo.

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The same goes for software programs. And first impressions for software programs come in the form of the onboarding process. 86% of people say they’d be more likely to stay loyal to a business that invests in onboarding content that welcomes and educates them after they’ve bought. It makes sense – if new users are trying a program for the first time and are given unclear direction on its use, their next step will be to exit out and never open it again.

Equipping a strong and clear client onboarding program is key, especially for programs that handle sensitive personal information. More of these companies, especially those in the massive payroll industry, are leaning on client self-onboarding strategies. Why? It allows users to move through the onboarding motions independently and often at their own pace, rather than needing support staff to lead them through it. This way, staff can devote more attention to other, high-priority areas.

Let’s explore different examples where a healthy balance of automation and personalization will benefit your client self-onboarding program.

Automation And Efficiency

Employees are looking for quick answers in our digital, fast-paced world. If a program can’t keep up, they’ll turn to the next available option. Companies may retain a dedicated onboarding team prepared to help. But with automation, less of their time is required to walk a new user through their program step-by-step.

Automation tactics allow users to go through the process at their own speed. Some of these tactics may include:

• In-program messages and educational guides. As users navigate to new sections in the program, offering a guide on what a button does and where a page leads to provides helpful guidance. Programs often use automated messages to help during steps in the setup that require more time to navigate and grasp – offering a helpful hand to them when they need it most.
• Onboarding checklist. Onboarding includes entering basic information before gaining access, but also involves many additional steps that users may not realize. A visual representation of what needs to be complete in onboarding alleviates their concerns about missing a crucial part. If it flows in the logical form of operations, there’s satisfaction in checking an item off the “to do list.”
• Pre-fill registration forms. Nobody likes to enter the same information three separate times on three different pages. Pre-filling forms solve this annoyance. Programs that remember user information can pre-fill additional forms that need completing. It’s a classic one-and-done situation for users.

Personalization In Onboarding

Personalization in client self-onboarding is about creating a tailored experience that addresses the needs of each individual user. It’s being fully in-tune with what they need to get from the program and making their first experience with a program one that they keep coming back to.

Personalization is not onboarding 1:1 or in group settings. Customers aren’t required to sign up for a timeslot to learn how to enroll in a program, nor are they expected to learn how to complete basic registration. Instead, we can expect:

• Engagement outside the platform. When receiving information from the client, it’s not meant to be tucked away into their profile. It offers an opportunity for outreach outside of the program. Personalized emails give users another way they can send feedback, or requests for assistance, if they don’t feel fully confident with the program just yet.
• User data throughout the welcome flow. Incorporating basic user data, such as the customer’s name, is an elegant feature in self-onboarding. This subtle inclusion contrasts with the generic text encountered in programs that don’t use a personal touch. Adding the customer’s name to the first message in onboarding is a welcoming touch to start things off on the right foot.
• Automated assistance. At the critical moment where help guides and checklists still aren’t cutting it, make it easy for the user to call for personalized attention from a human support representative. A timely pop-up that links to the help center provides a more engaging experience than users scouring the platform to find where they can ask for help.

Can’t Have One Without The Other

Client self-onboarding with a healthy balance of automation and personalization provides the ideal scenario. If you think about it, an over-reliance on automation may lead to a lack of personal touch. Research from McKinsey and Company found that 71% of consumers expect personalized interactions, and 76% get frustrated when they don’t get it. On the other hand, too much personalization means that human interaction happens more frequently. The time we would otherwise save through automation is wasted.

Beyond that, there are other reasons to balance automation and personalization. Solely relying on automation for a program means that every user will onboard themselves the same exact way. This is a flawed practice. Everyone is different, and not every person will take to certain automated factors the same. We aim to build programs that allow for client self-onboarding without human oversight, but we need to anticipate the edge-case scenarios.

Offering automated assistance is a great example of balancing automation and personalization. When organizations are transitioning into a broader client self-onboarding strategy, they still require visibility into the system to monitor client progress and help as needed. In short, clients onboard themselves, but support staff is available to help when problems occur. Win-win.

And of course, acknowledging the robotic elephant in the room, we need to contend with machine learning and AI. Just under seven in ten Americans say they are concerned about the increased use of artificial intelligence. It wouldn’t be a far leap to believe automation equals robots equals AI equals bad. With this fear comes a reluctance to share personal information, and with that less flexibility with personalization or even getting customers to use a program. Organizations that take these fears seriously and bolster security processes are considered reliable, trustworthy organizations.

There are plenty of opportunities for personalization in automating programs. To find the best way to personalize, we need to understand how users are interacting with the program. Why? It’s the only way to know if the program is doing its job to solve the customer’s problem. Getting this feedback during specific moments in the program’s usage helps uncover pain points and usability issues (as Zhuldyz Alimbek points out in an episode of Product Momentum.) And lucky for us, we can automate this feedback loop by requesting feedback at specific moments during program usage. Personalized automation for the win.

Discover the key to platform growth and user-friendly strategies.

Explore our case study showcasing 25 years of expertise in enhancing client self-onboarding.

Megan Lawson is a Marketing Content Specialist at ITX. She focuses on creating content that solves problems and engages audiences. Megan received her BA in Communication from the State University of New York at Geneseo.

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In this episode of Product Momentum, Scott joins Sean and Paul to dig into the importance of data quality in AI applications, understanding and managing bias in AI, and the essential role humans play in harnessing AI’s potential – and its risks.

“If you’re trying to use AI to make data-driven decisions, it becomes a garbage in, garbage out situation,” Scott offers. “It’s really that straightforward. A lot of organizations have let their data debt increase over the years. As AI ingests low-quality data, you’ll get a low-quality answer.” That’s when fractures appear in your hard-earned trust.

Scott also explores the issue of pervasive bias in AI systems and pinpoints its source, underscoring the need for us humans to develop ethical practices that ensure fairness and equity in AI-driven outcomes.

“There will always be bias in your data,” Scott adds. “Humans are biased; it is what it is. And your data will reflect that bias in your business processes. So when you train your AI on that, part of the training process has to be to detect whatever biases are there.”

The key, Scott says, is to understand how humans can effectively leverage AI technologies. While AI offers tremendous potential for augmenting human capabilities and streamlining processes, it is not a panacea.

“When you look at it at a high level, AI is magical. Some of these Gen AIs are just incredible,” Scott concludes. We want to think it’s magic. But it’s not magic. It’s just hard work.”

Scott cautions against blind reliance on AI-generated outputs and emphasizes human oversight and judgment in validating and contextualizing AI-driven insights. Before AI, there was a human in that “last mile” who could filter out the garbage from the good stuff. And the problem now that AI can’t do that.”

This human-centric approach may be the key to AI’s future. If we acknowledge the complementary relationship between AI and human intelligence, maybe we’ll also recognize – and trust – that AI technologies will enhance human endeavors rather than replace them.

Be sure to check out our conversation with Scott Ambler on the Product Momentum YouTube channel!

The post 128 / Trusting Data Quality: The Key to AI’s Future, with Scott Ambler appeared first on ITX Corp..

Aaron shares his personal journey where games provided a safe space for him to reinvent himself, shaping him into the leader he is today. And Ben reflects on how his experiences in game development nurtured his thinking and approach to holistic leadership; he emphasizes the challenges and responsibilities of leading a team of gamers tied to the experience only by their ongoing desire to participate.

“Here I was,” Ben says, “bringing together a group of people with disparate interests, and disparate skill levels…. I wasn’t paying them to be there. They were there by choice. I was leading them, and they were following me by choice. There’s all this stuff that you accept as a responsibility, … but you don’t view it as a burden because you’re happy to be there with that group of people.”

Aaron uses the analogy of a 3-deck ship to explain holistic leadership, with the top deck representing process, the next level is product, and the lowest level – below the water line – is culture: how people are actually behaving.

“As leaders, we have to care about culture first, that lowest level,” Aaron adds. “That’s what holistic leadership means: start at the most foundational level and work your way up. Don’t start with challenges at the most surface level and work your way down. By the time you think about what’s truly important, your ship will have sunk. Leaders need to internalize responsibility for that to be a holistic leader.”

Catch the entire conversation with Ben Carcich and Aaron Smith , and how they talk about the value product managers contribute to their enterprise tech roles – but also how that same value might be realized in the video games world where the term is rarely used. You can also watch our episode with Ben and Aaron on the Product Momentum YouTube channel!

The post 127 / How Holistic Leadership Builds Better Games – and Product Teams, with Ben Carcich and Aaron Smith appeared first on ITX Corp..

On the eve of its 20^th anniversary, Flickr’s approach as a community-centric product continues to propel the company forward. For Stephanie Cantor, Flickr’s Senior Director of Product, the Flickr community extends beyond its 112 million global users; it is integral to the product itself. From ideation to prototyping, Flickr involves its users in every step, sustaining a platform that fosters creativity, connection, and serendipity.

In this episode of Product Momentum, Paul and Stephanie reminisce about her “amazing journey” to Flickr and reflect on the impact she has made in just her first year on the job.

Leading a team of smart, talented people presents challenges at any organization, no matter its scale. But imagine joining a team where the average tenure of your new colleagues is 6-8 years. This was Stephanie’s challenge when she arrived a little over a year ago. Her approach was simple, straightforward, and powerful.

“Everyone knows that I don’t do anything in a vacuum,” she explains. “I’m open and transparent…and very much into collaboration. Back in the day it was just me, an engineer, and I would make really horrible wireframes. And now, I love collaborating with everyone and I think that that’s like the biggest part of my product management philosophy.”

Listen to this episode to hear more from Stephanie Cantor, including:

• The future of Flickr – remote work, a mobile platform, and sustainability
• How Agile is reshaping Flickr
• Inspiring old and new users
• The “creative past lives” of all PMs

• Her product management philosophy

The post 126 / Community First: Flickr’s Approach to Product Management, with Stephanie Cantor appeared first on ITX Corp..

Petra is a product coach, author of STRONG Product People and STRONG Product Communities, and co-organizer of the Product at Heart conference, in Hamburg, Germany.

The fact is, “we can’t innovate without involving,” Petra says, emphasizing the collaborative nature of successful innovation. It’s the sense of belonging, of being in the same game and facing similar struggles, that draws product managers to one another at community events, Petra adds.

“Before you decide to join a product community or even attend a meetup,” Petra advises, “make sure you know what you want to get out of it. Understand your personal and professional goals.”

Some product managers want to learn a new technical skill. Others are looking to benchmark their organization’s product management practice against others. And some just want to vent, Petra continues. Find the right fit, she jokes, “because there’s nothing more frustrating than getting a lot of helpful tips when the only thing that you wanted to do was release some steam.”

Petra tailors her coaching and guidance in ways that align as well with veteran product leaders as with freshly minted ones. The one constant is that no matter where you are in your career, great product people are always learning and collaborating with others.

Be sure to catch the entire episode with Petra Wille for take on upcoming trends in 2024, including:

• Profitability and the sustainability of ‘digital business models’
• Moral & ethical concerns around AI
• Regulatory compliance with ecological restrictions, especially in the EU
• First principles thinking, now from the perspective of a ‘global product community’

You can also watch our conversation with Petra Wille on the Product Momentum YouTube channel!

The post 125 / Product Management Communities of Practice, with Petra Wille appeared first on ITX Corp..

December 4, 2023 Rochester, NY. ITX is proud to announce the promotion of Brad Johnson to the newly established role of Director of Project Management Practice. This appointment of oversight to the company-wide practice of Project Management comes as the organization deepens its expertise in existing services and industries.

As the Director of Project Management Practice, Johnson is tasked with consolidating ITX’s best practices in the field and making sure ITX’s software product development teams remain both nimble and highly effective. He will support and mentor Project Managers and Scrum Masters across ITX, audit projects in pursuit of constant operational improvement, and drive project management innovation across the business.

“ITX takes pride in understanding the unique needs of each client, and creating tailored approaches that work for them; no two products are the same,” said Johnson. “Keeping projects running smoothly is important work, and I look forward to supporting ITX’s continued growth in this capacity.”

The creation of this position comes at a pivotal moment in ITX’s growth as the company seeks to leverage existing areas of excellence to further distance itself from competitors and meet the high delivery standards it sets for its clients. Great project management creates consistency between the software development teams at ITX and those of its client counterparts, providing seamless execution of joint software development. It also ensures every project is completed on time, on scope, and on budget.

“One goal at ITX is to continually elevate our level of play as the market for custom development evolves. The creation of this role sets us up for further evolution and growth,” said Fred Beer, ITX President. “Brad’s proven expertise in leading project teams as well as his deep knowledge of project management and Agile approaches make him eminently qualified to lead project management for our clients.”

Johnson joined ITX in 2020, most recently serving as a Program Manager. The company is currently adding to its global team of technology professionals and product specialists; remote-friendly opportunities can be found here: www.itx.com/careers.

About ITX Corp.

ITX helps mid- to large-sized companies tackle complex business challenges through custom software product development, delivering solutions that build trust, loyalty, and advocacy among clients and their users. Founded in 1997, the company was recently recognized as a Best Company to Work For in the State of New York. ITX has expanded beyond its roots in Rochester, NY into a team of nearly 300 talented product professionals and technologists throughout the Americas and beyond. Visit itx.com for more.

Media Inquiries: Kyle Psaty, Vice President of Marketing 585.899.4895 | Career Inquiries 585.899.4888

The post ITX Names Brad Johnson to New Director of Project Management Practice Role appeared first on ITX Corp..

In this episode of Product Momentum, Paul Gebel is joined by Shelly Kalish, a global product leader with over ten years of experience at companies like Meta/Facebook, American Express, and now SitterCity.

“Zooming out is centered on taking a step back from our product to be able to see a bigger picture,” Shelly adds. “It’s everything from learning about market trends, technology, competition, etc. And it requires us to understand the goals of the business from the perspective of sales, marketing, and finance.” Put another way, it requires communication, that critical skill underlying the “three-legged stool” of product management: impact, optics, and execution.

Shelly also discusses the importance of “zooming in” not only in operational terms of examining the day-to-day optics and communication strategies,but also how we can grow to be a general asset for the organizations and teams we serve as product leaders. This zoom-in, zoom-out approach can be useful both for product growth as well as our individual career growth, Shelly explains.

Be sure to catch the entire episode to hear Shelly’s thoughts about:

• How lateral growth can revitalize your career
• How to prioritize and manage your seemingly endless to-do list
• How inclusivity and creativity drive innovation

The post 124 / Mastering Product Management: ‘Zooming Out’ for Strategic Clarity, with Shelly Kalish appeared first on ITX Corp..

As we have grown, so too has the need to evolve our teams’ norms and practices. More people mean more experiences to learn from, which requires more time to share and discuss our work. This post zeroes in this one area that required improvement – our Design collaboration meetings.

Design meetings: Understanding the Problem

The Lead UX Designers on our team help to oversee design work for various projects. This group took the opportunity to treat this problem like we would for any one of our clients: Understand the problem, define the problem, experiment, measure, iterate.

Our team is diverse and distributed – literally – repping the U.S., South America, Europe, and the Pacific Rim. It’s a composition that presents some complex challenges, but also a wealth of cultures and lifestyles that offer diverse perspectives. Team members encompass a spectrum of UX experience, from early-career professionals to seasoned practitioners.

With UX Designers in different locations, we can’t be satisfied with a one-size-fits-all solution. If we don’t find common ground in how we should meet and how we want to meet, we’re unable to show up in our best form. Understanding the needs of our team was a crucial first step.

We sent out a survey asking a few questions about our current meetings and beyond: what’s working well? What isn’t? What do you need as a designer to do your best work?

The survey provided us with valuable insights. As different as the answers were, common themes surfaced across responses, including:

• Design critiques need to remain a core piece of our meetings.
• Individual growth and development is an important reason to meet.
• We must create an environment for growth and learning.

Defining the problem & HMW

After we workshopped the problem, we met with our Vice President of Interaction Design and Director of UX and discussed the needs and direction of the team. Together, we solidified our problem and How Might We (HMW) statement. (Here is a great article on HMW statements and how they can turn challenges into questions that can be solved and create opportunities for generative thinking.)

We landed on a HMW that not only gave us insight to the challenges we currently face – but also provided a clear starting point that we could look back to when measuring our progress.

The cool thing about this problem statement is that it came with its own built-in hypothesis: if we build these things into our design review meetings, we will move the needle in significant ways for team, our individual members, and the products we design/build. In the near term, we also learned that if the meeting structure and agenda didn’t point directly back to these success measures, we needed to rethink them.

For other teams interested in changing things up, this exercise is easily replicable. Perform activities to understand your problem (Surveys, workshops, etc.), generate your problem to a question that can be solved (HMWs) and customize the solution your needs. Different teams in different organizations face different problems and this isn’t a one-size-fits-all. However, we can’t deny the results that our experiment yielded.

Discovery – Exploring

Now that our problem was established, it was time to get to work. We brainstormed, workshopped, ideated new activities to experiment with. We looked at what others in the community were doing.

We had the freedom to make this meeting anything we wanted – as long as it tied back to our problem statement. Make no mistake; with this freedom comes a lot of responsibility. Our experience with Discovery techniques boosted our confidence in our ideas, knowing that we exhausted the most probable options.

Experiment

We discussed and proposed a workable experiment. Here’s where we landed:

• The UX team would into Subteams of 3-5 people.
• Subteams would consist of designers of varying degrees of experience, in terms of seniority and in product types/domains.
• Subteams would meet for 2 hours once a week.
• Every 3 months we rotate team members, so we regularly expose people to different perspectives, and we build team rapport along the way.

To ensure consistency across our Subteams, we set parameters on how these meetings would run, from agendas to tools utilized.

• Subteams would hop on a virtual call and use a Miro board for the shared working space.
• At the start or before the regular meetings, each designer selects which topic they wish to discuss from a list shared across the Subteams.
• Each topic would be accompanied with a “size” to manage time and prioritization. We settled on “Small, Medium or Large.”
• One person in each Subteam would act as facilitator for 2 consecutive weeks, and they are responsible for leading discussion and encouraging broad participation.
• If there is time at the end of a meeting, the facilitator looks through a backlog of interesting UX topics, articles, and learnings for additional conversation. Designers can add topics that excite them, or they want to learn more about.

As we created our new process, we understood that this might not be the “final” iteration of this meeting format. Any activities that were particularly special to us individually needed to be looked at through a critical lens. If we tried new activities and they don’t seem to stick, we needed to find new ways to work. That’s the beauty of experimenting – we don’t throw in the towel after one failed application. We look at what worked and find a different way to get those same results.

How our meeting experiment ties to the problem statement

If we take a closer look at a few factors of our experimental process, we notice how the they match the key themes of our problem statement.

Switching facilitators every 2 weeks

By switching facilitators, anyone can start and run the meeting. It is not dependent on any one person, and we create a more peer-to-peer dynamic. Everyone is on the same page and great for socializing.

Everyone will act as facilitator, which means everyone has a chance to develop new skills or hone existing skills. Newer designers can learn time management, prioritization and how to start conversations. They practice these soft skills in a safe environment and also learn from more experienced designers. Experienced designers have a chance to mentor by example.

We strive to create psychologically safe environments for our team members to practice new skills, including meeting facilitation and presenting to an audience. As team members practice new presentation techniques and adjust their performance based on team feedback from the Subteam, they can apply these new learnings in other settings, such as client meetings. We create a smooth journey for our clients, one of ITX’s UVPS, with clear and helpful presentations.

Structure and flexibility

In our initial survey to the team, we received feedback that sometimes meetings would churn or go off topic. We created the Discussion Guide to guide positive conversation and feedback through each topic.

Everyone, regardless of experience, will set the stage in roughly the same way. These also serve as a reminder for the Subteam members about the work they are about to review and prepare them to offer helpful feedback.

The questions in the Discussion Guide are essential for designing successful products, presenting, etc. They are things that often need to be ironed out before we can begin our work. Knowing that they will be asked, designers need to consider these questions earlier in their process and prepare to answer them quickly off the top of their head.

The purpose of our Design collaboration meetings is to receive feedback on our projects. We’re not looking for a blanket “this is good” or “this needs work” when discussing our product. The Discussion Guide provide structure to our meetings that will give clarity to the team moving forward.

Evaluate & Measure

We tried it and it got us closer to our objectives! The celebration doesn’t come from being “right” but rather stepping through a proper procedure to find a better way our team can work and grow together. Surveys sent after experimenting found that the new Subteam format was unanimously better. Designers relayed the improvements – 94% of the team noted that the quality of the feedback they received was better versus our feedback received in our previous meeting format. Everyone had had enough time to share (a critical aspect of the experiment) and open discussion added more value.

A perfect first go would be impressive, but we’re not in a perfect world. We found areas of improvement that are easily changeable, including cutting the meeting time down from 2 hours to 1 ½.

Continuing to evolve

This experimental activity is now a part of our standard process. After each rotation we survey the team to ask them what they imagine the next iteration could be.

We’re on version 4 or 5, and it’s continuing to evolve and change. Some favorite additions to these Subteam meetings include ice breaker activities to warm up the group and a facilitator playbook to help newer designers formally improve running meetings. Looking ahead, our next iteration includes incorporating a floating Lead UX Designer to present specialized topics and address subjects the design team is eager to explore.

As these meetings continue to evolve, we update to make progress with the end user in mind (in this scenario it happened to be our team.) How we approached this problem is exactly how we work to create impactful products for our clients’ end users.

Brian Loughner is a Lead UX Designer at ITX. He works to connect with clients, understand their problems and find solutions to meet their needs. Brian co-organizes meetings for Upstate UX Meetup, aimed to facilitate conversation on various UX topics for professionals and students.

The post Our Practiced Approach to Problem-Solving in UX Dynamics appeared first on ITX Corp..

Imagine hearing that from the estimated 2 billion individuals worldwide who identify as having a disability. Not to mention those have a disability but don’t identify as such.“ So that’s 2 billion minimally that we know of,” Dave adds.

The fact is, he continues, we’re all going to be disabled someday. “It’s just that some of us beat you to it. So when we design products for someone like me today, we’re also designing for everyone else in the future. So why not get ahead?”

In today’s conversation with Paul Gebel and co-host Emma Rizzo, a UX Writer and Content Strategist at ITX, Dave explains that we’ve all needed accessibility features – and will need them again in the future –  whether our disabilities are permanent, temporary, or situational.

Accessibility features allow those of us in the disabled community to do things they were never able to do before, Dave says. They can be innovative, and frankly, life changing. And for everyone else who is not yet disabled, these features open more options for use and often allow product people to discover the routes with the fewest pain points.

All this can be intimidating to consider. Dave Dame offers the following advice: “Don’t worry about saying the wrong thing; worry about saying nothing.” As product people, we are bound to make mistakes, that is when the learning occurs.

Interested in more on the subject of inclusive design and digital accessibility? Check out the following content from Product Momentum and ITX:

A 3-part blog series, authored by Susana Pallero, ITX Accessibility Consultant and a CPACC-certified Accessibility Solutions Specialist.

• Digital Accessibility: Making the Case to Protect a Human Right
• The Business Case for Accessible Design
• Accessible Design Inspires Innovation for All

Product Momentum’s conversation with Sheri Byrne-Haber.

• Digital Accessibility & Inclusive Design: Understanding the Why

Q&A with Antonella Iselli, a Senior UX Designer at ITX.

• Becoming a Certified Professional in Accessibility Core Competencies

The post 123 / Essential Lessons in Digital Accessibility and Inclusive Design, with Dave Dame appeared first on ITX Corp..

Only when working in concert do the interface, the platform, and the data support the product, Quincy says. In the same way it’s true for stools it’s true for software.

Quincy also talks about the nuanced distinction between being data-driven and data-informed. One constrains our curiosity, the other nurtures it. Being data driven, he adds, means that everything you do is tied to the data. Being data-informed, on the other hand, combines art with science to find the right solution.

As subtle as the difference seems on its face, it lies at the heart of what it means to be a product manager or leader – the ability to influence people, to lead through influence. “Half the time you don’t have the authority because you’re working across so many teams and departments to make your product successful,” he says.

It’s a reality that requires us to be curious about what can be, to be vulnerable in front of our colleagues, and to be comfortable asking questions when we don’t know.

On this last point, Quincy Olatunde leaves us with two all-time classic quotes:

• “Don’t let data be the limitation of your imagination.” In other words, if our approach to problem-solving is limited to being data-driven, there is only so much that we can grow.
• “Wake up stupid every day.” Borrowed from a colleague, Quincy reminds us to embrace each day “with the curiosity of a child.”

Tune in to catch the entire conversation with Quincy; see how the product truths that apply to his world of global media apply to us all.

Subscribe to Product Momentum now and be notified when the next episode drops!

The post Special Edition / Audience-first Innovation: How to Use Data to Create People-Centric Products, with Quincy Olatunde appeared first on ITX Corp..

User roles have become increasingly specialized in recent years, and so have user demands. At the same time, the pace of change is accelerating wildly. Taken together, these factors create a scenario that only adds to the importance and urgency of gathering feedback regularly – and from a variety of sources.

Zhuldyz, a UX researcher, highlights the power of spontaneous feedback, “which is received in the moment of frustration. That’s super important for us. It’s a different type of emotion,” she adds, “and it’s a different sense of responsibility you have as UX researchers or design team. It’s crucial to pay attention to this type of feedback, as it often reveals critical pain points and usability issues.”

Jay, Sr. VP of Digital Product Design, says it’s also important to find a balance between the spontaneous and interruptive feedback, as well as the negative and the positive.

“Finding that balance tends to even out those data doubters or those feedback doubters that we’re not actually getting a representative of engaged, kind of frustrated customers, not engaged customers. We need to go back and make sure we have a well-rounded set of feedback.”

Be sure to catch the entire episode with Jay Brewer & Zhuldyz Alimbek; they bring the UX perspective into the frame, doubling down on the power of collaboration within the product trio and the empathy required not just between builder and user – but among researchers, designers, and the product team as well.

It’s the ideal way to align user needs with product roadmaps to ensure that the right solutions are delivered.

Subscribe to Product Momentum now and be notified when the next episode drops!

The post Special Edition / Revolutionize Your Product Development Process with Customer Feedback, with Jay Brewer & Zhuldyz Alimbek appeared first on ITX Corp..

Yet despite the recent buzz, many remain confused about how AI truly works. There was a lot of effort to create AI by learning from how humans do things and somehow transferring those methods to a machine, Yochai explains.

“But AI is not about this. AI is not functioning as humans do…. Instead, it’s about ‘let’s make as few assumptions, and insert as least bias, as possible.” In other words, let’s provide the raw data and the objective function and use the best AI in the world to find the best way for AI to do it.

“The purpose of AI is to serve the application,” Yochai Konig says, “meaning you have to set a measurable objective for the use of AI in the product.” It’s a theme that echoes comments from Pendo’s Todd Olson and Trisha Price in our earlier Live from Pendomonium episode, Entering the Age of Intelligence.

Yochai describes the field of AI as emerging – or, more precisely, emergent. But in doing so, he applies a unique approach to the definition. “In its most simplistic form, emergent describes what happens as the model gets to a different scale; and suddenly, new capabilities emerge.”

And that’s where we are with AI, large language models, and the like. As a community, we are making progress to understand this, he adds. “But some of these emergent capabilities just happened, the model developed this concept and has outputted it. Now, we’re trying to reverse engineer and explain how it is doing all of this stuff.”

Subscribe to Product Momentum now and be notified when the next episode drops!

The post Special Edition / Taking an AI-first Approach to Product Development, with Yochai Konig appeared first on ITX Corp..

Todd Olson & Trisha Price joined co-hosts Sean Flaherty and Kyle Psaty to kick off a 4-epiosde series of conversations with keynotes and presenters recoded live from Pendomonium 2023: A Festival of Product.

So, if AI isn’t the panacea we’ve made it out to be, how are product leaders supposed to think about it in this “age of intelligence”?

“There’s two ways to think about AI,” responds Trisha. “One is, how do I use it in my day-to-day job to make myself smarter, more efficient, and achieve my goals? And the second, how do I embed it into my product to help my users and solve real pain?”

When we connect these two components, AI tools start to feed off one another to create their own momentum.

“The more I can use AI to make my team more efficient, the more we can spend time figuring out how best to use it,” Trisha adds.

What if AI eliminated all the busy work that fills our schedules, Todd asks. Or synthesizes thousands of data points and distills them into something more actionable?

“That’s going to save time so that product leaders can now do more of the right things – e.g., negotiating with engineering, reaching out to customers, being more business- an outcome-focused.”

With AI still in its infancy, considering its potential can be an interesting exercise – exciting for some, daunting for others. Fear not, Todd says.

“Look, there’s plenty for product managers to do. AI can’t set the strategy or vision for a business, so product still has a role. But maybe AI can make it easier to go through reams of data to help inform that strategy. That’s where I think it’s really, really powerful. So hopefully we’ll be setting better strategies that won’t replace what people are doing, rather just make them better at their function.”

Catch the entire conversation with Todd Olson & Trisha Price –

• Does AI actually deliberate over our prompts and questions?
• The “dark age of AI” at Pendo, and how a shift in mindset cleared the way
• TLMs, purpose-built for a specific function, and their applicability in the future of business
• Why it’s important to “protect your data”

Subscribe to Product Momentum to be notified when the next episode drops!

The post Special Edition / Entering the Age of Intelligence, with Todd Olson & Trisha Price appeared first on ITX Corp..

Key takeaways from our conversation with Christine Itwaru:

Product management starts with the human connection. “The human connection extends beyond the market you serve,” Christine says. “It’s internally at your company – the people who help you understand problems not just from a product perspective, but also that something they need you to solve so they can do their jobs well to help the business continue to grow.”

Product ops works to keep product teams healthy. The mission of a product ops team is to “help the product team in service of the health of the rest of the business,” Christine adds. “Product managers and product teams need to feel empowered to do their best work; product ops helps them achieve that.”

Strategy merges a macro understanding of the business with being in service to customers. Christine’s new-ish role as Pendo’s Principal Strategist allows her to remain close to the product team and Head of Product, which helps her understand their goals and how they align to product vision and company strategy. “My role combines business strategist and advisor to our customers and prospects – generally, to the entire product community.

The right way to approach AI is the same way we approach all things as product people. “Embrace AI in service of our customers,” Christine says, “and try to set ourselves up to do this thing really responsibly. We have so much to learn before we can make any definitive calls. And I love when companies are not pivoting 100%” because of some new thing that’s come up with AI.

Stay tuned for upcoming releases of Product Momentum episodes recorded live at Pendomonium 2023!

The post 122 / The Human Connection: The Tie that Binds Product Teams + Users, with Christine Itwaru appeared first on ITX Corp..

The prioritization of anything complex must be a collaborative process.

This article is a refreshed version of the original, which was published on Medium, Feb. 14, 2020.

According to Dictionary.com, the first two definitions of priority are listed as:

1. The state or quality of being earlier in time, occurrence, etc.
2. The right to precede others in order, rank, privilege, etc.; precedence.

We use the term a little differently in the software development industry.

In our world, prioritization is –

The art of combining everything we think we know about the past with the fixed resources we have right now to predict the order in which to do things to improve our collective future.

It is complicated, imperfect, and messy. The most powerful prioritization schemes are those which align our teams and empower them to make better decisions.

Many models exist intending to help us prioritize in a more objective and data-based way. These frameworks try to balance value, cost, and risk. In my experience, they rarely work because it is nearly impossible to capture, in any objective way, all of the possible factors that influence those things. When trying to use logic to objectively prioritize features in a software product, what tends to happen is the creation of politics, lobbying, and divisiveness between factions.

Seemingly by default, the most outspoken and/or highest-paid person in the room, the HiPPO, typically makes or powerfully influences the priorities. Before we came to this realization, this is how it had always been done and it was how our teams were practicing prioritization.

We also realized that our approach wasn’t working for our users. In our fast-paced environment, where the entire business landscape is changing around us in real-time, we needed a better way to prioritize and to empower our teams to drive what happens first, next, or not at all.

No matter the quantity and quality of the data we have, the best that we can ask of it is a prediction. There are unknown factors and unpredictable “black swans,” as we are seeing now, that impact our decisions around priority – often to our detriment, but not always. Sticking with the theme, black swans can be positive; we refer to them as blue birds, which symbolize joy, hope, and harmony.

Thus, we are always using a combination of data and intuition to navigate these decisions. From where I sit, it is better to have a group of motivated people, each of whom is committed to a shared set of goals, agree to a prioritization scheme together than to rely on the intuition of a single leader.

Alignment, confidence, and commitment result when a group is able to prioritize together.

Feature prioritization is hard work. Determining the minimum viable product (MVP) for your digital solution is near impossible to get right on the first try. For many, that can be a tough pill to swallow, because getting the MVP right has the potential to make or break your product. But remember this: whatever features you decide to include and whatever process you choose to prioritize them will most likely be wrong.

It’s not an ideal outcome, but it is not a fatal one either. The key is to understand that it is OK to make imperfect priority decisions for the sake of progress.

The term “MVP” is an industry buzzword thrown around with the broad assumption that its meaning is accepted by all. But I have learned that it has vastly different meanings to different people.

The concept of keeping your sprints and your requirements lean is what is important to a management team, so I’ll stay focused on how to create a feature prioritization scheme to keep your backlog relevant and robust for your product.

In our 25+ years of doing this work, we have found it is more important to agree on a scheme for prioritizing features than it is to gain perfect consensus on the actual feature prioritization.

Getting leadership to agree on your prioritization methodology is a signal that you have earned their trust, and that they have confidence in your ability to do the everyday, micro-prioritizations that are required for your product to find success in the wild.

Imagine emerging from a prioritization session knowing that everyone in the room agrees on how prioritization decisions are to be made. Imagine how empowering it will be for your team knowing that that same group accepts the fact that not all decisions will be perfect, and that we are all aligned and confident in our prioritization scheme. It truly is energizing!

Each product team is different and has to figure out the right tools to work with for their unique combination of skills, knowledge, and personalities. I am not suggesting your current prioritization scheme, which you might feel is objective, is not useful. I believe any thoughtful system is better than the ad-hoc, squeakiest wheel method. However, determining how to prioritize features is extremely difficult and it is imperative to learn how to do it better.

We have found the MoSCoW (Must Have, Should Have, Could Have, Won’t Have) method creates confusion for the team because of its complete subjectivity and lack of a unifying scheme for prioritization. There’s no shortage of solid arguments for why each feature should land in the “Must Have” column. But without criteria for evaluating them and a decisionmaking process for restricting where each feature goes, discussion quickly dissolves into a deadlock with political factions arguing for their own subjective interests.

Key takeaway: Using an “objective” prioritization scheme creates a distraction from what is important: The prioritization process.

My teams here at ITX have also tried using a number of algorithmic tools and methods in the past, such as:

• The Eisenhower Matrix (Impact vs. Effort)
• RICE (Reach, Impact, Confidence, Effort)
• ICE (Impact, Cost, Effort)
• WSJF (Weighted Shortest Job First)
• And many other decision matrix “algorithms”

In most situations I have encountered, no matter what “algorithm” we are using, we still have humans filling out the scoring and weighing the variables.

While Reach (in RICE) may be objective, Impact, Confidence, and Effort are not. There are many other factors involved in prioritizing product features, but almost all of them are difficult and cost-prohibitive to quantify. They are subjective and imperfect. Using an algorithmic method will get your team stuck in analysis paralysis.

You may generate some useful dialog, but very little will get done.

Every product serves myriad user personas, so it is challenging to articulate feature priority for any given user in a vacuum. You must prioritize the personas and balance your deliveries across personas. Assessing “impact” (the ‘I’ in RICE) within each persona is also completely subjective.

The following diagram expresses how these two dimensions are often represented.

User Value vs. Business Value: Two subjective scales

There is significant merit to considering product features that bring value to your users in the context of your product, even if they don’t add much value directly to the business. Including well-thought-out features allows you to be creative with ways to valorize or monetize the data you are able to collect. For items valuable to the business, but not to users, you might want to find ways to make it fun using engagement mechanics or gamification.

Some examples of other business factors that impact your feature decisions include:

• Short-term revenue opportunities
• Long-term profitability opportunities
• Support costs
• Team morale
• Brand and Firm reputation
• Competitive positioning
• Market opportunities
• Funding priorities

Final comment on this: the effort required is ALWAYS subjective. You never know how much time and money and other resources will be needed until the work is done, according to your definition of “done.”

This is why my teams and I use relative sizing. This diagram demonstrates the complexity of systematic prioritization when you factor in these three subjective scales.

Maximizing this equation also requires a distinct understanding of who does not fit this mold. Let’s call this our core advocacy position.

If we were to draw a simple graph that shows the number of persona sets (people) that we serve on the vertical axis and the problem sets that we solve on the horizontal, our core advocacy position would be found in the lower left-hand quadrant of the graph.

As I said before, this is a difficult task. It involves creating clarity around all of the relationships that the organization has to sustain, from employees and vendors to investors and customers. The key to understanding here is that there are a limited number of people whom you can turn into advocates for your organization. Without a clear understanding of who we are here to serve, confusion ensues.

OK, here’s how to graph the equation:

a. Place the subset of customers that you have the most success in creating a sustainable advocacy relationship with, in the number 1 spot toward the core. Place the second most important group of people that you can create sustainable advocacy relationships within the number 2 spot, and so on.

b. Do the same with the problems that you solve for those people with the most important problems on the x-axis in the number 1 spot, and so on. As the graph expands, it becomes easier to see what group of people most of your energy should be focused on.

Note, however, this won’t last forever.

User Value vs. Business Value vs. Effort: All Subjective

In short, software products have to live in a dynamic world where priorities need to change regularly in order to ensure their short-term health and long-term survival. There is no perfect prioritization system.

As researcher and author Robert Sapolsky tells us:

Evolution is not about getting more complicated. Evolution is about running faster and faster while staying in the same place to deal with whatever the current pressures are.

So where do we start?

Mariano Sigman and Dan Ariely have been conducting some research into how groups make good decisions and have found results that demand our attention.

Their research shows how predictably making better decisions requires better framing of the problem. It reminds me of the quote attributed to Einstein: “If I had an hour to solve a problem, I would spend 55 minutes defining the problem and 5 minutes solving it.” (Although it is a great quote, there is no evidence Einstein ever uttered those words.)

For software product teams, our job is to frame the problem for the group properly, then allow the group to engage in challenging dialogue together in a safe environment to jointly create a prioritization scheme.

Adequately framing this problem means we must start by understanding who we are serving and agreeing on the importance of the user in the whole equation. Instilling customer empathy into the team is a step that cannot be skipped.

Brian Clark wrote about a concept called the “Minimum Viable Audience,” which is a useful way to think about the problem. If we can hone in on the minimum viable audience with whom we can achieve success by turning them into advocates, our team will be able to better focus and optimize feature prioritization decisions with the information we have.

These are the predecessors to creating your prioritization scheme before any prioritization can be useful:

• Your team must have assembled and agreed upon a primary user persona.
• Your team must have agreed on strategic goals for the user.

Stated another way, we have to agree to the long-term goals, and they should be indices that represent the relationship you are building with the user. The best goals are those that demonstrate how you are maximizing the number of “advocates” produced by the system.

RPI: Relationship Performance Indices

Short-term goals (i.e., objectives and key results) are critical steps in the short-term process to achieve tactical success along the way. But first we need motivating, long-term goals so we know where we are aiming.

The team can now make these decisions together, but with these agreements, they will now do it with a “user-centric-mind.” It is not a perfect system (as I mention above, no system is), but it has proven to work extremely well.

Once we have these things, we follow this procedure:

1. Assemble the right team with the most diverse customer perspectives. A healthy team of leaders will represent the customer from as many angles as possible in the business. It will also sufficiently represent the business’s interests. Marketing, IT, Sales, Customer Service, Support, Call Center, etc. should all be included. Including a couple of customers who are already advocates of your business can be extremely powerful.

Key takeaway: make sure the team has the influence and power to make their decisions stick.

2. Use relative sizing. Using t-shirt sizes with relative points works well for this. At this stage, it is less important to be right about the size than it is to get them right in relation to each other. Working at the right level of granularity to make feature prioritization useful is a bit of an art. It is also super important to use relative sizes and not actual sizes to keep the environment feeling “safe” from over-commitment. It is easiest to use a scale based on 5’s to reduce the team’s cognitive load when they are shuffling the features. {5, 10, 25 & 50}
3. Coach the team through the creation of the primary persona’s top five concerns. Make sure they are clearly articulated and supported by the team. You cannot do this without (a) a healthy, agreed-upon persona, and (b) alignment with the team on the persona or persona set.
4. Coach the product leadership team through the use of the Hoshin Star methodology to prioritize these concerns. Everyone must agree. My colleagues and I have created a workbook to walk through how to do this. {Reach out to me if you want a copy of it}
5. Organize the prioritized user concerns into what we call a “Cascade of User Concerns.” Place these concerns front and center for the rest of the prioritization session.
6. Establish a number of columns on the board, using titles like First Priority, Second Priority, Third Priority, etc. We then divide the number of columns by the total number of points. Each column will be boxed in by this number of points. We have found a maximum of four columns works well.
7. Issue each team member an equal number of “points” to distribute. For large groups, create groups of 2 or 3 people who will prioritize together. It is important for each member, or sub-team, to get the same number of points, as each perspective is equal and important.
8. Have each member of the team (or sub-team) choose their features. Using their best judgment, members choose their top features. They should consider ALL of the factors the business cares about from the list above but should have the user front-and-center in their decisions. Proceed in reverse order of “authority.” In other words, leaders go last. Those who are newest to the organization or who have generated the least amount of political capital, get to express their opinions first. This helps us avoid the HiPPO problem discussed above and ensures the leadership has taken the entire group’s thoughts and arguments into consideration before inserting their opinion.
9. Each team member places their chosen features into the first available bucket. But here is the key: Before anyone can place their chosen features on the board, they have to first agree to the prioritization of ALL of the features placed in front of their chosen features.
   
   Facilitators have to make it clear to each member as they are placing their features, to specifically imply agreement with the feature prioritization as it is currently placed. If they do not, they have to negotiate with everyone who went before them to rearrange the features.
   
   

As each member completes their turn, they state out loud which features they chose and explain their rationale. If there is any debate about what should come first, the team must use the “Cascade of Concerns” to break ties and have dialogue that explains “why” each feature is important from the customer’s perspective. By the time you get to the most influential folks in the room, they will have to explain to their entire team why they are re-prioritizing the team’s decisions and use the “Cascade of Concerns” to support their arguments.

10. Get confirmation from everyone. To complete the exercise, re-read everything the team placed into column one; then re-read the “Cascade of Concerns.” Once complete, ask everyone in the room to confirm they have chosen the proper top priorities for the firm.

This process may look like prioritization by consensus, but it is not. It gives everyone a chance to express their concerns and perspectives in a systematic way. If you have set the exercise up properly, the folks with the most power go last and end up with the ultimate say.

Key takeaway. Prudent leaders will be careful not to change the decisions made by their entire team without a healthy dialogue.

Congratulations! You have just prioritized the next set of features for your product. More importantly, your team has accomplished these powerful things together:

1. They have mutually agreed upon the primary persona, and the core concerns they are solving for.
2. They have mutually agreed upon a starting point and initial priorities for your product.
3. They have mutually agreed to a scheme for future prioritization.
4. The team is aligned with both the initial priorities and the prioritization scheme.
5. The team will naturally have more confidence in how feature decisions are made.
6. The team will be aligned and confident because they put the plan together themselves –and have ownership over it. They will be committed to executing it as a result.
7. They will be energized by the work.

These things will enable the team to make sprint-by-sprint decisions more effectively. There is still a lot of work to be done to create a tenable roadmap, but your team will have confidence in the more detailed approach they created to micro-feature prioritization for your product. The health of a product is dependent upon the health of its backlog.

References

The term HiPPO first referenced here: https://www.amazon.com/Web-Analytics-Hour-Avinash-Kaushik/dp/0470130652/

Definition of Priority: https://www.dictionary.com/browse/priority

The Black Swan, by Nassim Taleb

Antifragile, by Nassim Taleb

Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers, by Robert Sapolsky

Behave, by Robert Sapolsky (Note: The actual quote above was taken from this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PV6XKnVWNsk

Minimum Valuable Audience attributed to Brian Clark https://copyblogger.com/unfair-business-advantage/ and later popularized by Seth Godin: https://seths.blog/2017/07/in-search-of-the-minimum-viable-audience/

The Loyalty Ladder, by Sean Flaherty

KPI’s That Inspire, by Sean Flaherty

Product Leadership and Sticky Notes, by Sean Flaherty

The Hoshin North Star Process, by Matthew Cross (From Edwards Demming’s work)

Sean Flaherty is Executive Vice President of Innovation at ITX, where he leads a passionate group of product specialists and technologists to solve client challenges. Developer of The Momentum Framework, Sean is also a prolific writer and award-winning speaker discussing the subjects of empathy, innovation, and leadership. 

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In this episode of Product Momentum, Michael Sacca & Chloe Oddleifson share their journey, from 6 years of working together at Dribbble to now building Gigantic from the ground up. Gigantic is a product- and marketing-focused training institute that aims to fill knowledge gaps through perpetual learning.

“Michael and I were coming from a place where we knew our jobs inside and out,” Chloe says. “We knew exactly how to be useful, exactly how to bring value. And then we started Gigantic and moved into a world where it’s just us. There are no processes, there are no rules, nothing is set in stone, and there are no clear answers. We just have to pick up and figure it out.”

“It doesn’t take long to see the power of a brand,” Michael adds. “I don’t think I ever respected it before as much as I do today. We can have a better product than the competition out there, but it’s so much harder to get people’s attention” when you’re just starting out. “We can build whatever we want,” he adds, but getting the attention and going to market are much different and much harder.

“If someone wants to be the CEO of the product internally…,if you really want your head of product to be the CEO of the product, then they really need to understand those other disciplines and they need to be able to do them,” Michael says.

In many ways, that mindset becomes easier to execute when the culture that nurtures it is founded in joy.

“As we started thinking about the type of company we wanted to build, the type of culture we wanted to infuse, and the type of experience we wanted for our customers, joy was the term that best described it,” Chloe explains. “We should be able to find joy at and in the work we do because life is just too short for it to be any other way.”

Catch the entire conversation with Michael Sacca & Chloe Oddleifson to learn even more about that journey and their plans to deepen Gigantic’s impact.

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October 18, 2023 Rochester, NY. ITX Corp. is proud to announce that Product Momentum, a podcast by ITX, won both a Gold and Silver in the 18^th annual w3 Awards. The Gold went to the podcast in the “General Series-Interview & Talk” category, and episode 100 earned Silver in the “Individual Episodes & Specials-Interview” category. 

In Product Momentum episode 100, Sean and Paul welcomed Jesse James Garrett, one of the most prominent voices in digital product design for more than 20 years and author of The Elements of User Experience. Garrett delivered the conference-opening keynote at ITX’s Product + Design Conference 2023.  

The w3 Awards honors creative excellence on the web and recognizes the people behind award-winning Websites, Online Marketing, Web Video, Mobile Sites and Apps, Social, Podcasts, and Emerging Tech. Winning entries are evaluated based on a standard of excellence as determined by the Academy of Interactive & Visual Arts (AIVA) and judged solely on the podcast link provided as additional supporting documents and/or explanation is not accepted.  

About ITX Corp.

ITX helps mid- to large-sized companies tackle complex business challenges through custom software development, delivering solutions that build trust, loyalty, and advocacy among clients and their users. Remote-first since 1997, the company is recognized as a Best Company to Work For in the State of New York. ITX has expanded beyond its roots in Rochester, NY into a team of nearly 300 talented product professionals and technologists throughout the Americas and beyond. Visit itx.com for more.

Media Inquiries: Kyle Psaty, Vice President of Marketing 585.899.4895 | Career Inquiries 585.899.4888

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As second-year sponsors we took all that we learned from last year’s event and traveled to Cleveland, Ohio, to prepare for yet another year of hearing from industry leaders and to hear absorbing insights.  We were inspired by the variety of speakers and subjects and came away with many new ideas.

A True Product Operating Model

It was hard to decide who was “the best speaker,” or which speaker gave “the most interesting keynote.” But it was unanimous within our group that  Marty Cagan, a partner at Silicon Valley Product Group and the special guest of INDUSTRY Global was the most impressive. Marty’s expertise ranges from building successful and customer-centric products to the crucial role empowered product teams play in driving innovation (which was a topic of discussion during our conversation with him on our podcast.) His upcoming book TRANSFORMED will share ways that organizations can move towards a Product Operating Model. His keynote gave us many insights into the new book.

Marty pushed the need for this model, one that differs from product-led strategies. Product Operating Models are customer-centric – the focus is on the needs, preferences, and satisfaction of the customers throughout the entire product development and operational process. By being customer-centric, we can effectively solve the right problems in ways that delight customers. We found ourselves nodding in complete agreement as he continued to make strong points in his argument.

In his keynote, Marty explained more about Product Operating Models, including improved team alignment . He reaffirmed that Product Managers not only need to drive value and viability for their products, but also maintain close relationships with our designers and tech lead peers. The knowledge and value that developers bring to the table goes beyond the ability to code,  – a sentiment that rang true with the collective audience. “Nothing is more important than empowered engineers.” Cheers to that.

Cognitive Bias Is Here to Stay

No matter how hard we try, we cannot escape our cognitive biases. It is a problem that plagues professionals in the product and UX design spaces, and it can severely impact our product management decision-making. And it usually creeps in without realization. Upon recognition of these thoughts, we cannot help but wonder  how often we let confirmation bias drive our roadmaps and strategies? How do we make sure we get outside of our bubbles when validating problems and solutions?

Enter Avantika Gomes, a Product Leader at Figma. She explained that it is possible to  combat our cognitive bias and prevent it from controlling our decisions. She shared decision-making frameworks that can mitigate biases during critical decision-making times, and techniques we can use to help identify when we fall victim to our biases. Her keynote emphasized that cognitive bias would remain, but we were left assured that there are ways to work around it and not let it impact our work.

Quick Takes

Other fascinating conversations were held during INDUSTRY. (We honestly wished we could talk longer with our peers.) We are unable to  give the play-by-play of every minute, but we can provide some quick takes of our favorite moments.

April Dunford delivered a standout keynote, highlighting her expertise in product positioning for technology companies. She emphasized the challenges of both selling and buying software, likening it to the unenjoyable process of buying insurance (which we all know is not fun.) Loading products with numerous features, while well-intentioned, can overwhelm potential customers and potentially turn them away. April advocated for a better way to sell that focuses on creating a seamless buyer experience. We should aim to act as a guide – provide insights, explain alternatives, and align our product with the customer’s needs. We do this by fully understanding our customers and tailoring conversations accordingly.

Product software conferences today would not be complete without conversations around Artificial Intelligence. Several of the speakers offered interesting insights  on this rapidly evolving technology. Search interest for the term “AI” increased by over 300% in the past year; there are millions of conversations happening around AI and different articles advising what we should and should not do with it. Christine Itwaru suggests we cut through the noise and understand how we can use AI as a tool. As product managers we can harness  AI and make dramatic changes to how we work. That begins with knowing how we can use it, rather than throwing it at our work and assuming it will do everything for us.

As many of the speakers discussed software and product strategy, Diana Tobey talked product and…play. As a Senior Design Director in the Play Lab at IDEO, Diana argued for play in the workspace. Play opens up new possibilities for product teams to explore, experiment, and innovate. When we embrace play, she explained, we approach challenges with a fresh perspective and find novel solutions to global issues.

Get Your Ticket for INDUSTRY 2024

We’re serious. INDUSTRY is advertised as “the premier conference for software product managers” but take it from us – you don’t have to be a product person to attend.

People who are passionate in any area of product development, research, or design will gain insights that they may not have had access to otherwise. It’s large enough to feel comfortable networking, and small enough where it doesn’t feel overwhelming. The speakers are world class and share insights that leave you feeling excited to get back to work.

Get more insights from our ITX team.

Sign up to receive our Continuous Inspiration newsletter.

We’d like to highlight the invaluable contributions from Paul Gebel, Director of Innovation, Anne Pressman, Innovation Lead, Daniel Sharp, Innovation Lead, and Roberta Oare, Engagement Lead, that enriched this recap blog.

The post Inside INDUSTRY Global Conference 2023: Lessons in Product Management and Beyond appeared first on ITX Corp..

Paul Gebel, Director of Innovation, will lead one of the breakout sessions at the event. ITX is proud to partner with TechRochester and celebrate the technology industry in Rochester, NY.

Learn more about AGILE Connect

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Learn more about Product Momentum

Learn more about Pendomonium 2023

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October 11, 2023 ROCHESTER, NY. ITX received the 2023 GREAT Award for Tech Service Provider Excellence at the GREAT Awards last night, hosted by TechRochester. The award celebrates the achievements of professional services firms that excel in providing exceptional professional services, creating cutting-edge solutions and products by leveraging technology. This is the third year in a row ITX has received recognition as a trusted technology partner in Rochester.

The Tech Service Provider Excellence Award recognizes ITX’s unwavering commitment to their clients. Award entrants were assessed on technological expertise, client impact, service quality, customer-centricity, sustainability, and scalability. Receiving this recognition highlights ITX’s continuous mastery of technical practice development and strong client relationships as technology partners rather than service providers.

ITX continues to experiment, learn, and grow, while eagerly sharing its knowledge along the way. The company is currently adding to its global team of technology professionals and product specialists; remote-friendly opportunities can be found here: www.itx.com/careers.

About ITX Corp.

ITX helps mid- to large-sized companies tackle complex business challenges through custom software development, delivering solutions that build trust, loyalty, and advocacy among clients and their users. Remote-first since 1997, the company is recognized as a Best Company to Work For in the State of New York. ITX has expanded beyond its roots in Rochester, NY into a team of nearly 300 talented product professionals and technologists throughout the Americas and beyond. Visit itx.com for more.

Media Inquiries: Kyle Psaty, Vice President of Marketing 585.899.4895 | Career Inquiries 585.899.4888

The post ITX Wins 2023 GREAT Award for Tech Service Provider Excellence appeared first on ITX Corp..

In this blog, ITX EVP of Innovation Sean Flaherty explores the power of Vision to help product teams realize their full capabilities.

This blog is a refreshed version of the original, which was first published February 15, 2022, on Medium.

Getting the Vision Right is Hard Work – But It’s Vital to Team Success

A great vision is one that unlocks human potential and creativity by painting a clear picture of what is possible. Stewarding, adapting, and continuously refining the product vision is the top priority of successful leaders because it is a key driver of the organization’s strategy.

Vision is really hard to get right, but there is a pattern that I have found in the work of great leaders that can be replicated (discussed below). It can help us craft and steward better, more motivating language for our visions.

When a vision is well articulated, understood by the team, and shared across stakeholders, it motivates people to apply creativity in their work – the kind of creativity that delivers value by driving toward the future described by the vision.

When we combine a clear vision and a motivated team to achieve it, we put in place a healthy, powerful strategy.

When a group of motivated people shares clarity and alignment on the strategic output they seek to achieve, they create a foundation from which to achieve great clarity around both the strategic inputs needed to accomplish the stated goals.

A clear vision also helps us attract the right people to join the cause – i.e., those who care about solving the same problems for the same people that you have defined in your vision. It becomes a lot easier to realize we have the wrong butts in seats throughout their organization.

When a vision is weakly constructed or poorly articulated, motivation languishes. The team will have a poor understanding of the capabilities required to achieve it, resulting in confusion, frustration, and waste.

A shared vision is a powerful part of any group’s culture. Similar to other components of an organization’s culture, the vision’s primary reason for being rests in the language used to express it. This fact makes it  critical for leadership teams to communicate the organization’s vision clearly and frequently.

Done poorly, teams experience one of two problems. They either lack clarity around whom they are serving, or they are solving the wrong problems.

Done well, clarity of purpose serves as the foundation for directional, strategic decisionmaking and as the primary guardrails keeping the organization on track toward a meaningful and motivating goal.

A Definition for Vision in Business

A distinct pattern of success exists in our space; it is demonstrated in the language used by the greatest leaders of our comparatively brief history and by their most ardent followers. They embrace an inherent understanding of who is being served and what problems are being solved. What’s more, they set the context for the work being done. In their most powerful forms, they share a crystal clear understanding of what success looks like. Taken together, these three components motivate the people doing the hard work that brings the vision to life.

In simple terms, a great vision paints a picture of how the world will look for the people we serve after we have solved problems for them, together.

Abraham Lincoln was known to be incredibly purposeful with the spoken word and worked hard to get them just right. We remember his speeches because of their clarity, brevity, elegance, and his almost lyric delivery. Lincoln’s Gettysburg address, for example, totaled only 272 words and required fewer than 2 minutes to deliver. Yet it remains among the most significant speeches in his or any presidency.

He chose words that connected with those he was leading, which aligned them around the future he sought to create. Winston Churchill did the same, through language, rallying his nation to beat back the Nazi assault through “the spirit of the British Nation… who have been bred to value freedom far above their lives.” Mother Teresa created an enormous shift in humanity by painting verbal pictures of a more humane and more empathetic world and showing us how it is possible to live into them.

Nelson Mandela ended apartheid in South Africa through his vision for an authentic democracy. This is the pattern that can be seen in the language of the greatest leaders of our collective history.

Not all of us are trying to change the world in the same way as Mother Teresa or Nelson Mandela, but each of us wants to believe that our work matters to the people we are serving. We want our efforts to have meaning and we can take a lesson from the playbooks of great leaders about how to create an environment that improves our chances of success.

The pattern modeled by these great leaders is not complicated. It lies in clarifying the language we use to foster our vision with our team.

Constructing a great vision, however, is hard work. The team must develop the ability to embrace it, steward it, deepen it, and pivot over time to maximize strategic success. This is particularly important when outside forces shock the environment. These are the three high-level components of a powerful vision that show up in the language of the great leaders of our collective history. They show up in all domains if you look closely enough: politics, human rights, and business. Let’s address these one at a time.

1. People. Only when people have extreme clarity about who they are serving can groups of people dig in to understand why they would care and how they will connect with the problems to be solved.

When groups have this clarity, they also know the priority order of whom they are serving (which includes an understanding of who they are not serving). This is not an easy task. Understanding the complex ecosystem of perspectives associated with any worthwhile vision is constantly shifting and brings layers of complexity. We will dive a little deeper into this later.

2. Problems. With clarity about who is to be served by our vision, the group can determine what problems can and should be solved for them. Ultimately, we want to know what problems this organization is poised to solve that will turn casual customers into passionate advocates.

In psychology, this is called needs satisfaction, and there is a tremendous body of work around this in the academic community. In the business lexicon, it is referred to as “understanding the problem space,” “clarifying the underlying concerns,” “communicating the jobs-to-be-done,” or “articulating the benefits” for your consumers vs. the features.

The key is in the articulation and prioritization of the problems being solved for the benefactors of the organization’s hard work. When it is done well, the group also knows which problems will not be solved. This too is a complex and multi-layered problem, which I dissect in another article. This combination of having clarity around who is being served and what problems are being solved that will turn these people into advocates allows us to communicate unique position in the market. The only thing missing is having clarity around our strategic success.

3. Metrics. Having a clear understanding of what success looks like can be incredibly motivating for people. Articulating a set of clear and objective outcome metrics that demonstrate strategic, as well as tactical, success over time is the final component of a great vision.

People And Problems

A powerful vision for your firm is one that clearly recognizes the need to create great experiences for your customers in the process of solving problems that they care about. When you solve problems by producing a great experience, you build great relationships, and that can be measured through trust, loyalty, and advocacy.

Now, let us take a graphical look at how we might structure our vision. We described earlier that the vision must include a crystal clear understanding of the people in your organizational ecosystem and the problems that you solve for them.

The graph below shows how creating and sustaining focus on your core group of users, through experience, is the key to a great vision. It gives us access to discussing how and when to pivot.

Obviously, your organization cannot solve all problems for all people. What positions your organization and creates the opportunity to generate a profit is your ability to understand, target, and service a group of people who you can turn into your advocates by solving a core set of problems that is valuable to them in the context that you are serving.

Maximizing this equation also requires a distinct understanding of who does not fit this mold. Let’s call this our core advocacy position.

If we were to draw a simple graph that shows the number of persona sets (people) that we serve on the vertical axis and the problem sets that we solve on the horizontal, our core advocacy position would be found in the lower left-hand quadrant of the graph.

As I said before, this is a difficult task. It involves creating clarity around all of the relationships that the organization has to sustain, from employees and vendors to investors and customers. The key to understanding here is that there are a limited number of people whom you can turn into advocates for your organization. Without a clear understanding of who we are here to serve, confusion ensues.

OK, here’s how to graph the equation:

a. Place the subset of customers that you have the most success in creating a sustainable advocacy relationship with, in the number 1 spot toward the core. Place the second most important group of people that you can create sustainable advocacy relationships within the number 2 spot, and so on.

b. Do the same with the problems that you solve for those people with the most important problems on the x-axis in the number 1 spot, and so on. As the graph expands, it becomes easier to see what group of people most of your energy should be focused on.

Note, however, this won’t last forever.

At some point, every organization is faced with great opportunities to expand the core advocacy position. These opportunities come in one of two categories.

The first is to grow the market base. A smart sales executive will inevitably build a relationship with someone who has a problem solved that lies within our domain of expertise, but is outside the current core advocacy position in the upper left-hand range of the chart, shown in purple.

In other words, they want to expand the core set of people that we solve problems for. This sounds exciting. We can take our expertise and expand into a new market segment; theoretically, it shouldn’t create much more work and we will be able to generate more revenue, which will lead to more profit. “An authentic win-win,” says the sales exec.

The second opportunity is to solve more problems. In this case, a smart salesperson will have a deep conversation with one of our best customers and uncover a fantastic market opportunity to solve an important (but very different) problem for our existing advocates that will deepen our relationship and, thus, deepen the level of advocacy that we can achieve with them.

On the graph, this will allow us to expand into the lower right-hand quadrant, shown in blue. This sounds awesome. We can learn a new skill, develop a new feature, or provide a new service that will generate more revenue opportunities that will ultimately lead to a more sustainable relationship and long-term profit.

Both are inevitable and necessary for every business, eventually. But these are the kinds of decisions that form the core of your visioning and the essence of your organizational strategy. Changes to how you define your core advocacy position are critical to establishing the right capabilities, the right roadmap, and finding the right people to put on your bus.

When you pivot your core advocacy position, the ripple effects throughout your business can be profound. There is no way you can take your fixed set of resources and expand your customer base or learn to solve more problems without causing diffusion of your ability to maintain your existing core advocacy position. Every attempt to expand will adversely impact your ability to service the core advocates.

When you point your core capability set at a shiny new target, you lose focus on the market you had. When you invest in learning how to solve new problems, your ability to solve the same problems of the past will inevitably falter.

Sometimes, there is a structural shift that disrupts your market and creates a shock to the system, requiring a pivot. A global pandemic, geopolitical upheaval, regulatory volatility, or another technological disruption, for example, may devastate your existing customer base. You would be forced to either change the way in which your organization solves problems or change course and target a different market.

Other times, a great opportunity might appear that justifies a pivot to maximize the generation of sustainable advocacy. That same structural upheaval might create a market for your products and services where one previously did not exist. It is the ability to see these structural shifts and to capitalize on them that enables great leadership to adjust their focus and create clarity in the face of chaos and uncertainty.

Focus vs. Diffusion

The pattern that shows up in successful organizations lies in the focus.

Great leadership teams make these shifts carefully and purposefully with their core advocacy base in mind. When they expand, they work to only expand with minimal impact on their historical core advocacy position while opening up opportunities for future advocates. They serve to expand the total number of advocates and the depth of advocacy that they are able to create through their expansion or through their shifts.

Another pattern that this shows represents a problem that all business leaders share. Pareto’s law applies to an organization’s customer base in that 20% of the customers you have often cause 80% of the headaches. The reason for this is that firms lack a concise understanding of the problems they solve in a way that matters to those they have turned into advocates. If they did, it would be obvious which customers should be avoided (or fired).

If the team can figure out how to avoid taking on more of the 20% whose problems we seem unable to solve, the organization can become much more efficient. There will always be some customers that none of us wants; they don’t value the same things we do, and despite every effort we can’t seem to make them happy. We sometimes chase these customers because their money is green, and we think we can capture a lot of revenue. However, if the organization cannot turn these customers into advocates, in time, our culture will be diluted and we will end up reducing our capacity to serve our core advocates and deliver on our vision.

The better we know the people we serve and the problems we solve, the more empowering our vision will be. When our vision is paired with a motivated team, aligned on the same human-oriented goals, we have a complete strategy to steward that will help us maximize the number of advocates that our organizations create, together.

References and Further Reading:

Business is High Art — A Birds Eye View of Culture

Greatest Leaders of Our History

The Nature of Competition

Competing Against Luck by Clayton Christiansen

Measuring Relationships, Organizational North Stars

Objective Prioritization is Impossible

Inspiring Indicators of Success

Ryan, R. M., Sheldon, K. M., Kasser, T., & Deci, E. L. (1996). All goals are not created equal: An organismic perspective on the nature of goals and their regulation. In P. M. Gollwitzer & J. A. Bargh (Eds.), The psychology of action: Linking cognition and motivation to behavior (pp. 7–26). New York: Guilford Press.

Pareto’s Law / Principle

The Handbook of Self Determination Theory (2004) by Ed Deci, Richard Ryan and Others

Sean Flaherty is Executive Vice President of Innovation at ITX, where he leads a passionate group of product specialists and technologists to solve client challenges. Developer of The Momentum Framework, Sean is also a prolific writer and award-winning speaker discussing the subjects of empathy, innovation, and leadership. 

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Before attending WordCamp Rochester, I wouldn’t have understood what this group was talking about. I also couldn’t imagine how something with such a large presence in many places around the world claims to be just a casual hangout. But after attending this year’s event, I can confidently say they nailed their promise.

It’s a promise perfected over the years, with the first WordCamp event taking place in San Francisco in 2006. Since then, they have expanded to 394 cities across 65 countries and organized over 1,100 WordCamps. It’s safe to say that they know what they’re doing.

ITX is dedicated to thriving together, within our team and our communities. From local conferences to small meetups, we understand the benefit that comes from collaboration. We delivered on this promise as proud sponsors of WordCamp Rochester 2023.

I’m always searching for similar opportunities to learn alongside my developer peers. Our team talks daily about the nuances of our jobs, but with our remote workforce it’s not as easy to meet up with my co-workers at a coffee shop to bounce ideas off each other in person. It was an easy decision to take the chance to talk to new individuals and share a lot about my job.

A Strong Community in Rochester

On September 30, I showed up at the Rochester School of the Arts, eager to see what would happen. The environment was distinct from our previous ITX Product + Design Conferences, which draw up to 300 guests, or the smaller Upstate Meetups that my colleagues on the Innovation and UX Design teams arrange. It turned out to be the best of both of those worlds.

The WordPress community is a lot more tightknit than I originally thought. People came from all over the country (and the world!) to attend the event here in Rochester. In addition to traveling to celebrate and learn about WordPress, I took note of the friendships fostered through this community – everyone seemed to know everyone else. A friendly and energetic atmosphere that contrasted the stuffy and boring conferences frequently portrayed in media.

I made great connections with other WordPress professionals. It didn’t matter that it was my first time meeting these people or my first time at a WordCamp. I bonded with others through our mutual appreciation of WordPress. These connections will be easy to cultivate as time goes on.

Deep Appreciation for WordPress

From healthcare institutions to publicly accessible personal blogs, many have discovered WordPress to be a useful platform for building their websites. Choosing topics to address and finding WordPress thought leaders to speak was likely a challenge for the conference organizers. But the variety of topics was fantastic. I learned how to harness the many tools open to WordPress users through the lens of professionals outside of ITX.

Speakers were actively conversing and participating in other talks besides their own. From Jonathan Desrosiers, I learned exactly how WordPress’s “pluggable” functions work in terms of hooks and filters for manipulating core functionality. After his session, I had the chance to speak with him about the work we’re doing at ITX with WordPress. He was so excited to hear about it, and it was easy to match his enthusiasm!

One of the speakers that stood out to me was Robbie Adair, a proficient WordPress specialist with over 25 years of experience creating media and web solutions for her clients. Her presentation, titled “Using AI To Speed Up Your WordPress Builds”, shared different ways developers can use Artificial Intelligence in WordPress. My approach to working with AI aligns with others in our industry, as I prefer to have a clear understanding of how a tool will enhance my work and support my objectives. I was curious how it can be used to spruce up builds for our clients.

Robbie totally delivered on her presentation! She provided various ways we can incorporate AI platforms into mockup work. When we present new features to clients in code demonstrations, we often show them the bare bones of the feature. This is not as detailed as the final product, and it’s difficult for our clients to visualize how they will use the feature we are providing.

By using AI, Robbie explained how we can provide mock images and content in our features that are tailored to our clients. This provides a much clearer look as to what their finished product will look like, adding to the excitement in a delivery update.

The Best Part of WordCamp Rochester

I was almost sad to see WordCamp Rochester end, but I was itching to get behind my keyboard and work through some of the new ideas shared. Having these opportunities to learn and expand my skills cannot be overstated. I can only wait for the next event that brings a similar level of collaboration and community that WordCamp Rochester delivered on.

And the end, if I had to choose one of the best things about WordCamp, it would easily be the people I met. It sounds corny, but it was refreshing to talk shop in person. It’s a different level of comradery from working with a remote team. Amongst the attendees and speakers at WordCamp, we share the same passion of using technology to make things better and learning how to leverage these tools to create a better, smarter tomorrow.

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Claire Beringer is a Frontend Developer for ITX. She uses her knowledge in various programming languages to make meaningful contributions to projects for our diverse clientele. Claire earned her Computer Science degree from Allegheny College located in Meadville, PA.

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In today’s episode of Product Momentum, Paul and Marsha go deep on the topic of communication and leadership, exploring the structure of our communication and the role it plays in effecting personal and organizational change. Marsha is a coach, author, speaker, facilitator, and podcaster whose work is focused on communication in leadership.

“Communication sits at the core of our ability to lead,” Marsha says. We don’t all see the world in the same way, leading to gaps in understanding, she adds.

“What I’m articulating here is how I believe change happens,” Marsha explains. “When we communicate with one another, the words that we say, it’s like putting a train on a track. [That communication] moves us forward, propels us back, or just kind of keeps us stuck in a place. So I think it’s about how we communicate with one another and having a language to make sense of it that makes the difference.”

Leadership range and communicative competence are cornerstone concepts that Marsha uses to analyze the way successful leadership is measured. There’s a very specific way she helps people self-assess not only their ability to bring a variety of different communications into a conversation, but also to examine the breadth of their leadership style.

Listen to hear more from Marsha Acker in today’s episode of Product Momentum.

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The International Association of Accessibility Professionals offers certifications to individuals who wish to grow their skills in diversity and inclusion. Earning certification demonstrates a candidate’s knowledge and comprehension in a practice that still experiences scrutiny. Senior UX Designer Antonella Iselli earned her certification in July 2023, and she shares why she sat for the exam and the impact it will have on her role.

Can you tell us a little about your background – how long have you been working in UX Design?

When I was a web designer, I attended various UX conferences and workshops to gain a fundamental understanding of user experience design. I enjoy helping users and finding creative solutions to tackle business challenges, so moving into the UX Design field was an easy choice.

How did you start learning about accessibility?

During the pandemic, I felt stuck in my career. I decided to work towards a Diploma in People-Centered Design (Diplomatura en diseño centrado en las personas), which I earned from Universidad Nacional de San Martín (UNSAM) in 2020.

My teacher was Susana Pallero, an accessibility solutions specialist. She is the co-founder of Dalat and is part of the group that is co-creating the next version of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 3.0). Susi emphasized the importance of putting people first in our designs, and that really resonated with me. I was inspired to continue my education in the subject and find ways to share my knowledge with my peers.

Why is accessibility important?

An estimated 1.3 billion people experience a significant disability. Imagine how many people are being excluded from using our products/services. With the internet serving as a necessity for everyday life, designing with accessibility means we’re including everyone in our products. Designing products and services with accessibility in mind makes daily tasks easier for everyone, and it’s good business practice.

Let’s talk about the IAAP – who are they?

The International Association of Accessibility Professionals is a global association of organizations and professionals that have joined together to define, promote, and improve the accessibility of services, products, and environments for people with disabilities. Earning certification from them is very valuable. We have a great team of professionals at ITX, and there is always room to suggest new ideas.

What prompted this push to get your certification?

While studying at UNSAM, Susi shared how a temporary disability changed her life and made us realize everyone can be temporarily disabled. This experience motivated me to be more mindful of the various types of disabilities and ensure that my services are accessible to everyone.

As I began working at ITX, internal conversations around diversity and inclusion were happening, and I knew that Susi could help us get started on the right foot. I connected Susi to our team, and her experience brought a vast amount of knowledge. We were able to create even more materials to help team members with internal training and share our experiences with our community.

Can you tell us about your certification and how it changes the way you approach design?

I opted for the CPACC (Certified Professional in Accessibility Core Competencies) as it’s the ideal starting point for mastering accessibility core competencies. This certification covers various domains, including the web and other digital technologies, architecture, the built environment, consumer and industrial design, and transportation systems. It emphasizes the significance of thoughtful design, policy, and management in enhancing disability access.

I am confident that this certification validates my expertise in accessibility and enhances my credibility in the field. Not only am I a source of information for clients and partners, but my peers can also reach out to me for guidance or assistance. I am eager to help anyone interested in learning more about accessibility.

How can someone get started with learning about accessibility?

A great place to start is the WCAG (Web Accessibility Guidelines) website. They provide more resources for learning about accessibility, as well as tips for getting started. Below are a few more sources of information.

• Easy Checks – A First Review of Web Accessibility
• Accessibility Checklist: UI Design is a template that our team created in Figma. We included more links to resources, recommended plugins, and tools to use while designing.
• Articles from Sheri Byrne-Haber, a disability advocate. She was a LinkedIn Top Voice for Social Impact in 2022 and the UX Collective Author of the Year in 2020. Sheri emphasizes the importance of including accessibility into product design early on.
• DEQUE University

If we don’t include accessibility on purpose, we unintentionally exclude people. Learning about accessibility is a continuous journey, not just a destination. It should be integrated throughout the entire process of discovery, design, and development. It’s perfectly fine to start with small steps as long as we encourage others and keep moving forward.

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Alla is a culture designer who has incorporated her design background with the principles of neuroscience, positive psychology, and relationship research. She is also an author; in her book, A Culture of Safety, she applies these principles to improve workplace culture. In our chat with Alla, she defines psychological safety through these lenses.

“To create psychological safety,” Alla continues, “we need to intentionally find time for conversations that are drastically, even radically different than what we are doing right now.”

Yes, we are at work to perform a job, to deliver a solution for our clients. But there are times, she says, when not talking about work creates deeper connections and, as a result, more resilient teams. Creating these connections is an opportunity to practice leadership, by introducing (if not modeling) candor and vulnerability.

“Leaders need to get vulnerable first,” she adds. “If you’re a leader and you’re seeing evidence that people don’t feel safe, you need to say that. Then ask your teams, ‘what am I doing to create that environment?’ And when they tell you, don’t be defensive or try to justify your behavior.

“Show yourself to be vulnerable and say, ‘Yes, I am doing that and I’m going to try to be better.’”

Keep in mind: psychological safety and resilience are not the same. It’s only when leaders create a psychologically safe environment for individuals that we can create resilient organizations.

Looking for more tips from Alla Weinberg to build resilience in your organization? Be sure to listen to the entire conversation.

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As Lead UX Designers, we’re tasked with overseeing a stream of product design work that is executed on by a pod of UX designers and UX content writers. We find ourselves in a lot of meetings, either as an attendee or facilitator. Our distributive workforce enables unrestricted collaboration, which means we need to carefully plan and organize meetings that help us achieve our goals.

This blog will provide you with tried-and-true techniques to build the foundation of your meeting and add value back to your team and organization. While they are particularly effective in today’s remote and distributed workforce, our strategies are applicable to in-person meetings as well.

What is the purpose of my meeting?

Set a goal for your meeting. Let the attendees know what the desired outcome of the meeting should be. By having a common goal to work toward conversations in a meeting are more focused on achieving the established outcome. Before you schedule your next meeting ask yourself “What do you need to accomplish?” Designers schedule meetings for lots of important reasons, including;

• I need design approval.
• I need to define a problem.
• I need team alignment.

Determining the goal of the meeting provides a solid reason that helps you answer the next few questions.

Why is it important to meet with my team?

Now that you’ve established the “what”, the next question that comes to mind is “why.” UX Designers are inquisitive people (it’s part of our job to use practices that unlock essential insights.) Your reasons for meeting can be:

• I need design approval…the project can’t move forward until we have team consensus.
• I need to define a problem…I can’t impact project and business outcomes without understanding what I’m solving for.
• I need team alignment…we need on what we’re creating, for who, by when, and to what end.

Taking time to understand why we need to meet provides further context for your attendees. For you, it may uncover additional questions that could alter the format of your meeting. If you’re seeking team alignment, a logical next question may be “which team members need to attend?” If you need design approval, it’ll be important to get the right stakeholders in the room.

How can I solve my problem efficiently?

The last thing we want is to join a meeting where there is no structure. Meetings without any structure or format typically become free-for-all conversations, with a slim to none chance of accomplishing your goal.

Not all meeting formats solve the same problem. From storyboarding to forced ranking, there are a variety of ways you can facilitate and work towards the desired outcome. And it’s okay to not know right away how to best to run the meeting. Leaning on team leads or managers is a great place to start.

As a facilitator, you are responsible for keeping the meeting on track and ensuring the established goal is met. Pro Tip: Next time you are running a meeting that has over 5 attendees make sure you have a copilot to assist you.  Here are some tips to try during your next meeting. 

• Schedule “Alone but together” time: While some people are comfortable speaking in front of the group, others could be more reserved. Create activities where everybody can contribute which can include, asking everyone to think of ideas separately before posting them on a Miro board or other collaborative software. To make decision, enable private voting to ensure everybody can have a say.
• Assign a co-pilot: For times when you experience unexpected technical difficulties, or the meeting group is quite large, a co-pilot can cover you while you recover and help facilitate conversations. Co-pilots are also helpful for ice breaker activities, checking on engagement from the group, or assisting with documentation so you as the meeting facilitator can focus on running the meeting.
• Be visual: Consider using visual examples to clearly emphasize the point you’re making. It does not need to be a perfect drawing, just something that appropriately expresses the idea to avoid misinterpretations.

Who should I plan on attending the meeting?

We have all felt the pain of a meeting that did not have the right stakeholders in it. When our team needs to determine who should be in attendance, we refer to a RACI Matrix. A RACI Matrix is a listing that defines all stakeholders on a project and their level involvement in each task, denoted with the letters R, A, C or I (Forbes, 2022.)

Project partners, and possible meeting attendees, are sorted into four different categories – by determining which person falls into which category, you will narrow down your options and get the people you need in the meeting.

• RESPONSIBLE
  • Is hands-on working on the project.
  • Working in the project, completing tasks to get the project over the finish line.

• ACCOUNTABLE
  • The ultimate decider.
  • They answer to others about the project, so their job is to make sure it is what’s expected.

• CONSULTED
  • Individuals who should be brought in and provide feedback or review.
  • Hold some level of expertise but is not involved in the project.

• INFORMED
  • They need to be up to date on the project, but it’s not necessary for them to attend.
  • Let them attend if they wish, but sending notes after the meeting is an option.

It’s important to know that these roles are not permanent. It’s dependent on what you need to accomplish in your meeting. For example, when you’re seeking design approval, a previous Informed team member may be on your invite list, but they weren’t part of the project process. It varies from team to team, organization to organization.

When does it work best for everyone to meet?

Now that we have our meeting attendees sorted, we start to do what some call the most difficult part of any meeting prep – finding a time that works for everyone. There are various tools, some included in different email applications, others available via downloaded, that help with the task.

COMBAT MEETING FATIGUE

Everyone understands how exhausting days of back-to-back meetings are. Polling suggests that 45% of employees feel overwhelmed by the number of meetings they attend. As a facilitator remember to keep a pulse check on your attendees. If you feel the focus on your meeting slipping, know that its ok to end the meeting early and schedule more time later. Your attendees will thank you.

We’re a remote-first organization with global team members around the world. Keeping calendars up to date and ensuring availability sharing is key to scheduling meetings easily. Our teams also schedule asynchronous meetings, which are helpful for scenarios of working over a period of time, rather than in a single, real-time session.

Am I missing anything for my meeting?

Now that your meeting is scheduled, there are two necessary inclusions that go forgotten. The meeting agenda is a key component that sets up your meeting attendees for success. Sharing the meeting agenda provides context for your attendees – the important “what” and “why” discuss earlier. It also serves as the vehicle to communicate additional information or context to provide your attendees with the information they need to participate.

Even more forgotten are the actionable next steps. This might be the last thing on your mind, or possibly forgotten after a killer meeting, but make sure attendees know what should be expected after your session concludes. Assign follow-up tasks to participants as needed, send meeting notes or a quick recap to the group post-meeting, or even send out the meeting recording if needed. Our work doesn’t end after a meeting, we must keep the momentum going after time is up.

Putting it together

Now it’s your turn. It takes time and practice to develop the right skills to be a fantastic facilitator. The next time you need to schedule a meeting consider using these questions as a framework to help guide you.

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Elisa Goyeneche is a Lead UX Designer at ITX. She is passionate about creating solutions through design and cultivating the centered human design vision in her community. Elisa received her Audiovisual Communicator and Professor on Audiovisual Art degrees from Universidad Nacional de La Plata in Argentina.

Shannon Baird is a Lead UX Designer at ITX. She thrives on solving challenging problems with a user-centered design process, taking problems through research, ideation, prototyping, and testing design phases. Shannon earned her BFA in New Media Design from Rochester Institute of Technology.

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That means making sure users are getting what they need out of the product such that, in a perfect world, what they need is something that drives product market fit.

“It can’t be something they need that doesn’t create a sustainable business,” Devan says. “It can’t be something they need that is ancillary to the business’ reason for existing.”

How do we get there? Devan Goldstein believes we solve this challenge by adopting a service orientation, aiming above all to help users, the business, and the team.

“Having this sense of omni-directional caring and empathy – not just for users, which is the one we talk about the most, but for your partners, for the teams that work with your partners, and for your stakeholders – helps us understand how all those overlapping needs intersect as inputs to the strategic and prioritization decisions we have to make,” he adds.

Tune in to hear Devan’s comments on the critical traits that all product managers should possess in this episode of Product Momentum:

• Empathy for both your users and co-workers.
• Intentionality in your day-to-day interactions; nothing happens by accident.
• Integrity and humility, even when they might compete.

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September 1, 2023 Rochester, NY. ITX Corp., an award-winning custom software development firm, is excited to announce the acquisition of SUMO Heavy, a Philadelphia-based provider of customized eCommerce solutions serving global clients of all sizes, from startups to Fortune 1000 organizations. The addition of SUMO Heavy deepens ITX’s existing eCommerce knowledge and complements their other specializations in healthcare and financial services.

Founded in 2010 by Bart Mroz and Robert Brodie, SUMO Heavy emphasizes a process-focused approach to successfully deliver scalable enterprise and eCommerce solutions. These include custom software products and integrations that drive growth and increase profitability.

“ITX is proud to add SUMO Heavy’s eCommerce expertise to our existing capabilities in transaction- and data-centric industries like financial services and healthcare,” said ITX CEO Ralph Dandrea. “We are also extremely excited to welcome another highly skilled team of problem solvers and an impressive roster of clients to ITX.”

“The special sauce at SUMO Heavy continues to be our focus on creating business outcomes for the customer through process and predictability. ITX operates with the exact same mindset. This is a great fit,” said Mroz, SUMO Heavy’s co-founder and CEO. “ITX is in growth mode, and we’re excited to be a part of that.”

The addition of SUMO Heavy points to ITX’s ongoing commitment to growth both organically and through acquisition. Demand for ITX’s full-service offerings in custom software development continues to accelerate. By deepening their expertise in eCommerce and digital transactions, ITX reinforces its position as a leader in the space, enhancing the business value they deliver to an expanding list of clients.

Mroz and Brodie join ITX as Engagement Lead and Delivery Director, respectively. The whole SUMO Heavy team continues to work on eCommerce- and enterprise work under the ITX banner.

About ITX Corp.

ITX helps mid- to large-sized companies tackle complex business challenges through custom software development, delivering solutions that build trust, loyalty, and advocacy among clients and their users. Remote-first since 1997, the company was recently named a Best Company to Work For in the State of New York. ITX has expanded beyond its roots in Rochester, NY into a team of nearly 300 talented product professionals and technologists throughout the Americas and beyond. Visit itx.com for more.

Media Inquiries: Kyle Psaty, Vice President of Marketing 585.899.4895 | Career Inquiries 585.899.4888

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In this blog, ITX EVP of Innovation Sean Flaherty explores where innovation comes from, discusses obstacles that stand in its way, and offers a simple technique you can share with your teams for capturing ideas that lead to more innovations.

This blog is a refreshed version of the original, which was first published February 15, 2022, on Medium.

Innovations Come Only From People

Innovation doesn’t have to be disruptive to be impactful. Some, as Dr. Timothy Clark shared, “ are light bulb moments of lone genius.” But most of the time, he adds, “it’s a collaborative enterprise where we are all working together.” In other words, even small innovations can add up over time and lead to a sustainable and hard-to-copy competitive advantage.

But let’s back up for a moment and talk about how leadership and creativity intersect. I believe leadership is a function that initiates an environment where creativity thrives for the people being led. It’s an art that leadership fosters an environment where meaningful innovations occur with regularity.

The Function of Leadership Inspires Creativity

If the environment is perfectly predictable and you need to continue to do the same things in the same way, managing your team for efficiency is all that is required. The environment does not require leadership if you know exactly what is expected.

However, if the environment is volatile, uncertain, complex, or ambiguous (VUCA), creativity is required, and hence, you need leadership to ensure the environment is optimized to find your way through the fog.

Leadership is the function that continuously looks at the environment to optimize for the creativity of the people in the system. It can be broken down into four primary jobs, as explained by The Momentum Framework: Vision, Motivation, Capabilities, and Execution. The result, when firing on all four cylinders, is improved creativity in the pursuit of a worthwhile set of business goals.

To be clear, when I use the distinction of “innovation,” I mean:

An idea, tactic, or process improvement that enhances relationships with the people in your ecosystem.

In the traditional sense, it may mean that you have implemented a change that makes the whole ecosystem more efficient and more profitable, thereby improving your relationships with shareholders. Or, it may make your product or service much more attractive to your chosen market of customers, improving your ability to retain them and convert them into advocates.

In a less traditional sense, innovation may be an improvement in your team’s ways of working. When a team can reduce the friction within it, the experience each member has with your organization improves, which positively impacts retention and your ability to earn advocacy from your team.

Either way, every micro-innovation matters. They accumulate over time. And it is these ongoing improvements that ensure an organization remains adaptable and resilient to changes in the environment.

Innovations Come Only From Ideas

If you lead an organization long enough, you learn that most of the ideas you hear from the people around you are mediocre, at best. Most ideas are well-intentioned, but when you experiment with them in the wild, they bear little fruit.

After having worked in the software development industry for three decades, I can affirm this to be the case. Many features end up buried inside complicated menus and are rarely put to use. In my experience, this phenomenon approximately follows Pareto’s principle that 20% of software features get 80% of the usage. In fact, according to The Standish Group, many get no usage at all.

So where do ideas come from?

I assert that ideas come only from thoughts. At least for now, only people have thoughts with the potential to be innovations. It thus follows that only people who care about your future to some degree will share those thoughts and ideas with you, giving you the opportunity to consider, refine, and experiment with them.

People > Advocates > Thoughts > Ideas > Innovations

Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, in studying human evaluation of moments in their research on decision making and memory, determined that the “experiencing self” has a complete thought about once every three seconds.

Here is a mathematical thought experiment to consider. My teams run workshops with client executive leaders to help them to create more customer empathy and create the space for innovations to occur. In those workshops, we typically have between six and sixteen leaders. But to keep the math simple, let’s assume we have 10 leaders in attendance for a particular workshop.

A handful of additional assumptions for our exercise:

>> If there are 10 leaders in the room, and

>> If we spend about 7 hours in the Workshop, and

>> If there are 3,600 seconds in an hour (there are), and

>> If we have a thought every 3 seconds (per Kahneman’s research)…

We generate 84,000 potential thoughts in a typical Workshop. (10 x 7 x 3,600) / 3 = 84,000

Now, we have to get creative and take some liberties to complete the thought experiment, so let’s make a couple of very conservative assumptions:

>> If we assume 84,000 ideas generated during a Workshop (see above), and

>> If we assume that 1 in 500 thoughts might be an idea,

That leaves us with 168 ideas to experiment with. In a day that has been reserved for the specific purpose of generating ideas, this seems reasonable (and probably a bit conservative).

>> If we further assume that 10% of our ideas might actually deliver incremental value to our ecosystem, we should emerge from the Workshop with at least 16.8 reasonable innovations.

That sounds amazing, right? You’d think, given those numbers, that we should be doing these workshops on a regular basis.

But experience tells us that it doesn’t work that way. Innovations are much more fleeting and far more rare in real life. Why?

I have a few theories; here are two of them:

1. Psychological safety in these sessions is almost always lower than we think it is. Participants are sometimes afraid to make themselves vulnerable in front of their peers. Or maybe ideas they come up with have already been tried. Whatever the reason, they don’t feel comfortable sharing their ideas. And that’s a huge obstacle for innovation. This must be addressed to maximize innovation, but that is not the point of this article.
2. Since we are recycling our thoughts about every three seconds, we have no shortage of ideas. But we lose them to our own rapid-fire neurology. This problem can be addressed with a simple habit change in the people you lead.

I assert that we can improve our odds of capturing more, great ideas from the people we are leading if we were to leverage something like Mel Robbin’s Five-Second Rule. Her claim is that if we don’t tie an idea to a specific action within 5 seconds, it will never happen. Her work deals with changing your automatic behaviors and the habits in your life that are not giving you the results that you desire. This is a similar argument.

If you can lead your team to create a habit of idea capture and sharing simply by writing down their ideas whenever and wherever they have them, you stand to capture more great ideas. This simple technique will invariably lead to more innovations.

One of the keys to this is to create an environment of “open awareness” around what is important. You can do this by setting meaningful goals.

Also, recognize that when people are fully aligned, confident, and committed to a shared goal, creativity can strike at any point and on any day. It is not restricted to the Workshop day.

Teach your team members to do this too. Make it a shared practice and habit.

Leadership By Setting the Example

In summary, lead your teams by setting the example. Model the behaviors you want to see from them.

Keep a notepad by your side and create a habit of capturing your ideas when they happen. Encourage your teams to do the same, review all ideas periodically, and celebrate the practice.

The next time you lead a Workshop, share the math with them and get them to imagine how it might feel if they came out of the session with even eight new micro-innovations – only half of what we calculated above.

Then, after the Workshop, count up the ideas that the team shared and you will be surprised at the change.

References

The Momentum Framework, by Sean Flaherty (2021)

An Advocacy Strategy, by Sean Flaherty (2021)

The Pareto Principle, by Vilfredo Pareto (1896)

The Standish Group Benchmark Reports (2020 Chaos Study)

Psychological Safety Inspires Innovation, Product Momentum podcast (Feb 2022)

Thinking Fast and Slow, by Daniel Kahneman, PhD (2011)

The 5 Second Rule, by Mel Robbins (2017)

Is Too Much Psychological Safety Bad for Business, by Sean Flaherty (2020)

Unleashing Creativity and Innovation, by Sean Flaherty (2018)

Sean Flaherty is Executive Vice President of Innovation at ITX, where he leads a passionate group of product specialists and technologists to solve client challenges. Developer of The Momentum Framework, Sean is also a prolific writer and award-winning speaker discussing the subjects of empathy, innovation, and leadership. 

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My new favorite article is The Hard Thing About Software Development, from Jesse Watson, a software development manager at Amazon. I discovered it through James Coplien, an Agile influencer, who has labeled the article as ‘profound.’

The article itself isn’t new – it was written in 2017 – but its message is as relevant as ever.

In the article, Jesse is responding to an independent remote developer – a freelancer, gig worker – who is lamenting the fact that gigs don’t pay well.

On the surface, this seems contradictory. After all, developers are in high demand and are paid well. Right? What’s going on here?

The Value of Engineering: Experts Weigh In

In his article, Watson offers the following to help us understand this seeming contradiction:

Pretty powerful stuff. But let’s not take just Jesse’s word for it. Let’s have a look at what other respected folks have to say.

From David Farley, in his book Modern Software Engineering:

And from Marty Cagan, with excellent related articles here and here, as well as his podcast episode with our Product Momentum team and recently published book Empowered:

A Word of Caution to Developers

The message to developers is this: If you fail to see beyond technical skill as what makes developers and teams valuable, you’ve got it wrong.

Developer and organizational attitudes, structures, and operational models continue to (mistakenly) reinforce the idea that developers are mere “order takers,” fungible assets to be moved around from domain to domain where the work is.

Another misguided notion is that teams are “feature factories” to be run like a cost center, where value judgment of individuals and teams revolves primarily around technical knowledge and skill.

Here are some signs that you’ve got things wrong –

• Developers believe “you give me the spec, and I will code it.”
• Development teams are treated like feature teams – not like truly empowered product teams.
• Software development is project-oriented, not product-oriented.
• Development resources/teams are not kept in the same domain for long periods of time.
• Attempts to keep a “skills inventory” for development staff focus only on technical items.
• Finding the “right” candidates for hire is an exercise in looking primarily for technical matches.

Additional insights from Jesse Watson:

Mercenaries and Missionaries

At this point let me be clear about what I am not saying: I am not saying that programming skill is not hugely important. It is. But it’s not valuable in the absence of other things. That’s the point.

Marty Cagan likes to make a distinction between “Teams of mercenaries” and “Teams of missionaries”, which makes a lot of sense to me:

How Developers Can Maximize Their Value

As a developer, in spite of your desires or beliefs, your value is not defined by your ability to be handed a list of requirements and go off on your own and write some code.

As Watson notes, “There are an ever decreasing number of software problems that are so cut and dried that they can be tossed over a wall and implemented in isolation of business expertise. This is why the price for remote programming keeps dropping to zero.”

That may also explain why our gig worker’s lamentation about pay is less contradictory than we first thought.

As you consider the value you offer, think about your work experience (as well as your experience at work), and ask yourself the following:

• Do you actively participate in requirements specification? Or are you instead a passive bystander, with no sense of responsibility for getting the requirements right?
• Do you take the time to understand the product and the problems it’s solving for users? Or are you instead mostly interested in being told what to build?
• Do you (or others) believe your need to ask clarifying questions during development is a failure of someone else to give you all the information you need? Or do you see information gathering as part of your role on the team?

The following behaviors demonstrate that you, as a developer, understand the importance of “internalization and synthesis of the business’s problem domain”:

• You ask clarifying questions about requirements and suggest product improvements.
• You point out potential impacts/risks of implementation choices.
• You ask questions about users and consider the product’s future (i.e., things that users are likely to want, or design choices).
• You actively participate in discussions about product features or product roadmap.
• You write requirements.
• You push for improvements to software design (e.g., decoupling).
• You push for organizational change (think Conway’s Law)

If you’re doing these things, well done. These are the behaviors that produce better solutions to customer problems.

Advice for Career-Minded Developers

There is an aspect of integrity at play here. Software development is (or should be) a problem solving profession. Problem solvers don’t orient around “tell me how you’d like your problem solved and I’ll implement it.” We participate in finding the right solution.

Additionally, my experience tells me that a developer’s career rarely advances on programming ability and technical knowledge alone. Those things matter, of course, but not in the absence of problem domain knowledge. Not in the absence of expertise in engineering practices. And not in the absence of a demonstrated ability and interest in problem solving, learning, and collaboration.

So, if you are a developer:

• View yourself as much more than a programmer.
• Orient yourself around the user and their problems.
• Become an expert in the product domain.
• Learn and master engineering best practices.
• Become a professional software engineer and a problem solver.

That’s what users deserve from you.

John Roets is Principal Software Engineer at ITX Corp. He and the teams he works with follow Agile development practices. John has an MS degree in Software Development and Management from Rochester Institute of Technology and a BS degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Clarkson University. His passion is to develop the right software the right way.

The post Maximizing Developer Value: The Intersection of Tech and Business Domains appeared first on ITX Corp..

Erica Orange is the Executive Vice President & Chief Operating Officer of The Future Hunters, one of the world’s leading futurist consulting firms. Erica uses futures thinking to help us understand the pace of change and evaluate trends in a rapidly changing world. By slowing things down, the future’s unknowns feel less ominous, more approachable. We get better at becoming comfortable with the ambiguity we confront every day.  

Erica explains how successful companies adapt their vision-driven strategies in real-time to fit uncertain, rapidly evolving markets.

“As we go into the future, successful companies need to begin with a blank slate for each strategy and reimagine what is appropriate and effective for each,” she says. “It goes back to the things that are all tried and true. Companies that do their future and their vision and their strategies in terms of the correct mental math will be the ones that get it right.”

Hold your vision near, Erica adds, and keep multiple strategies close by. This can make it easier to abandon the ones that aren’t working.

Be sure to catch the entire episode with Erica for a fresh take on the future! 

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August 16, 2023 Rochester, NY. ITX Corp., an award-winning custom software development firm, announced today it has achieved Systems and Organizations Controls 2 (SOC 2) Type 1 compliance after passing an independent audit conducted by MHM Professional Corporation. SOC 2 compliance for service organizations is attained only through a rigorous and thorough review of processes and controls.

“By passing this formal audit, ITX has demonstrated that the controls we have in place for security and confidentiality are ideal for the services we provide to our clients,” said Jonathan Coupal, VP of Security and Infrastructure at ITX. “Passing the SOC 2 Type 1 examination re-affirms the trust our clients place in ITX to protect their sensitive information and brand reputation.”

SOC 2 Type 1 compliance is the next significant milestone in ITX’s ongoing commitment to strengthen their information security processes and establish reliable controls. Pursuit of SOC 2 Type 2 examination, which addresses the effectiveness of those controls over time, is already underway.

About ITX Corp.

ITX helps mid- to large-sized companies solve complex business challenges through product development, delivering software that builds trust, loyalty, and advocacy among clients and users. Remote-first since inception over 25 years ago, the company was recently named a Best Company to Work for in the State of New York. ITX has expanded beyond its roots in Rochester, NY into a team of hundreds of talented product professionals and technologists throughout the Americas and beyond. Visit itx.com for more.

Media Inquiries: Kyle Psaty, Vice President of Marketing | 585.899.4895 Career inquiries: 585.899.4888

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Awareness should be your first step in working toward being trauma-informed and trauma-responsive, Matt offers. The simple act of listening to this episode puts you squarely on the right path.

Matt Bernius explains that experimentation that brings about even incremental changes can make a difference and be truly innovative. When we improve products for users who have experienced trauma, he says, we make them better for everyone using or building the product, regardless of their life experiences.

Through trauma-informed individuals we can build more resilient organizations. “It’s a responsibility of the organization to create an environment that doesn’t require extreme resilience,” Matt adds, “not the fault of an individual for not being resilient.” Matt points out.

We can all work toward developing resilience in ourselves and each other and, in the process, can create psychologically safe organizations where innovation thrives best.

Catch the whole episode to hear more of Matt’s practical tips and impactful insights:

• About half of adults in the U.S. have experienced trauma of some form or another.
• Trauma “lives in the body.”
• Re-traumatization – when your body re-lives a traumatic experience – has long-term adverse impacts.
• Listen to your innermost feelings, even in situations where you’re trained to be objective.

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In this episode of Product Momentum, Kate emphasizes the need to develop aptitude around empathy, conflict resolution, resilience, and maintaining a positive attitude. Her first book, Hiring Product Managers: Using Product EQ to go beyond culture and skills, discusses how the human approach to product leadership often makes the difference in individual, team, and product success.

Sharpening our product technique and functional skills remains vital, she explains. “But we need to reframe the narrative and realize that things like emotional intelligence are important skills sets as well.”

All these soft skills come together to form Product EQ, really bringing emotional intelligence front and center into the product community, Kate adds.

Catch the entire episode with Kate Leto, and be sure to listen for her insights on hiring and team building that go beyond the functional proficiency, especially:

• The Role Canvas. A collaborative approach to creating a meaningful role.
• The Product EQ Wheel. A self-reflection exercise designed to help you understand and assess your product EQ.
• Sphere of Influence. Understanding that our ability to truly control behaviors and outcomes is limited.

The post 115 / How Emotional Intelligence Drives Product Success, with Kate Leto appeared first on ITX Corp..

In this episode of Product Momentum, Alex joins co-hosts Paul Gebel and Mimi Ace, a Sr. UX Designer at ITX, to explore how Gen Z is embracing new communities that support creative inspiration while rejecting the inauthenticity of the social media platforms they grew up with.

“We don’t need to get into all the statistics of how negatively social media has impacted and has spiked anxieties with younger generations,” Alex says. “But I think many are realizing – having grown up in this toxic culture – that the so-called ‘authenticity’ that people are playing at and presenting on social media is not what they want.”

Today’s mainstream platforms goad their users into to being confrontational and adversarial. “It’s staged. It’s bought. It’s rented,” he explains. “And it’s not true to who anyone actually is.”

Today’s users totally recognize when people aren’t being their most authentic selves. And they’re turning away, demanding to go back to a time when they can simply, safely, be themselves.

Tune in to learn more about the many communities that are sprouting up. Like the one Alex Crandall is helping to build and like so many of the insights he shares here, they’re uplifting and hopeful, offering a new direction and a sense of renewal.

Imagine that.

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Register for the webinar

Learn about INDUSTRY Global

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They may have entered the conference as product managers, designers, engineers, QA specialists, and content strategists. But they exited as members of a product team, collectively responsible for solving one shared problem: how do we improve the lives of our users?

“Turn Toward Each Other.” – Jesse James Garrett, Design Leadership Coach

In preparation for his keynote, Jesse James Garrett asked his 8,000 LinkedIn product manager and designer followers to share their biggest complaint regarding the other.

He transformed their feedback into his first new talk in 5 years, a frank, honest, inspiring presentation that shined a light on product team dysfunction and offered advice for bridging the gap between them.

Product teams spend too much time and energy working on the wrong things, Jesse said. We lose sight of the who, what, and why we’re solving for and instead direct our attention to winning the decision-making power over research, requirements, resources, and roadmaps.

He urged product leaders and designers alike to “turn to the center, toward one another. Product + Design are both stronger when you work together.”

“Making Futures Work” – Phil Balagtas, Futures Design Expert

Phil Balagtas draws on 20 years of experience designing digital products, the last 10 thinking about the future. Not about predicting it, but about creating scenarios that help us prepare for life’s “inevitable surprises.”

Ours is a VUCA world, he continued, filled with volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity. Phil introduced the Futures Wheel as a tool – a map of implications, he said – to help us identify the potential consequences of trends and events and understand how today’s decisions bring direct and indirect consequences / opportunities for the future.

Phil uses design programs to help us envision future opportunities and challenges and ask ourselves, is this the kind of world we want? and with the future always upon us, how do we want to prepare for it?

“Radical Product Thinking” – Radhika Dutt, Entrepreneur, Product leader, Author

One of the key threads woven through the 2-day conference was the notion that problems need to be understood before they can be solved.

Radhika Dutt, author of Radical Product Thinking: The New Mindset for Innovating Smarter, has observed and studied the many problems that many product teams face. During her presentation, she shared not only her diagnoses, but their remedies as well.

As organizations have transformed from sales led to engineering led to product led and beyond, they experienced obsessive sales disorder, narcissus complex, pivotitis, and locked-in syndrome – each, Radhika says, is the result of product iterations that lack clear vision and strategy and is often fatal to innovation.

Radhika described Radical Product Theory (RPT) as a methodology for building world-changing products and gave attendees a step-by-step approach for engineering transformation within their organizations.

RPT comes in five key components, she explained. And when big-picture vision joins strategy, tactical prioritization, and roadmap execution (+ metrics), organizations can apply all of these ideas to enhance their culture.

“Ways to Measure Design” – Krissi Xenakis, Product Design Leader

Actually, the complete title of Krissi’s keynote presentation includes the parenthetical “(without selling your creative soul).”

Product design leader, advisor to startups, and an educator at the School of Visual Art’s Products of Design MFA program in Manhattan, Krissi Xenakis is a lover of design. She’s also a lover of the people whose lives are improved by design. It’s why she finds it so difficult to separate her design craft from her design hobby.

It’s also why she struggles with what she described as “sad soul scenarios” – comments that diminish the contributions designers make every day, like:

• “We already know the pain points; we don’t need to do research.”
• “It’s okay if it doesn’t look good; we just need some wireframes.”
• “What’s the ROI of Design? Can’t Engineering do their work without design?”

Using delightful illustrations and examples, Krissi responded to each with an assortment of “creative soul” remedies:

• Put distance between yourself and the work using hypothesis tests and project constraints.
• Always align design work to company goals, and use design principles to measure what matters.
• Show cost savings through risk mitigation and design program optimization activities.

“How Design Can Lead the Conversation” – Jocelyne Dittmer, Design Leader

Jocelyne Dittmer is a design leader with over 14 years of product, industry, and consulting experience.

“Designers contribute great insights into user needs, the problem that needs to be solved, and how to get to a solid outcome,” Jocelyne said.

Design is about solving user problems. But too often design seems to be included as an afterthought – too late in the conversation to steer the strategy and direction of a project.

Who among us hasn’t had that brief land on our desk with the technology in place or the solution already identified. Right?

Using a model centered on effective communication, Jocelyne revealed the many pitfalls and lessons learned from leading over 50 client engagements. She also suggested new tools and techniques we can all use to get design leading the conversation.  

When design leaders find the empowerment and support they’re after, good product outcomes will follow, she concluded. But even more than that, their newfound influence will accelerate the structural outcomes that encourage organizations to think differently about the value UX designers bring.

“Product Waste, Discovery, and Stakeholder Input” – Rich Mironov, Product Management Coach

Rich Mironov has been doing product for 40 years, and he continues to learn and write and blog and mentor new product managers. He authored The Art of Product Management in 2002, which many rely on as the “how to guide” for product management.

“There’s nothing more wasteful than brilliantly designing and engineering a product that drives business results or boost customer joy,” Rich declared.

The job of product is to extract more value from the development/design effort by giving them the guidance and space to do their best work and deliver the outcomes the product vision calls for. And it helps if product managers are multi-lingual, Rich joked, as they need to understand their many audiences (stakeholders).

“If you’re in the product chair,” he concluded, “you need to communicate a lot of stuff to people who don’t speak your language.”

Key takeaways:

• Product and design deliver more value when they lean on honest discovery, a shared focus, and making the difficult choices, Rich explained.
• This is not about velocity. Product waste happens early in the process, with strategic failure.
• Stakeholders care less about process than they do about outcomes.

“The $1 Million Notebook” – Mike Belsito, Co-Founder of Product Collective

For the second consecutive Product + Design event, Mike Belsito seamlessly guided attendees throughout keynote day. By introducing each speaker’s keynote and facilitating attendee interaction in between, he served to connect the learning with its application.

Mike also urged attendees to use the notebook ITX provide to all attendees, describing it as a simple but powerful notetaking tool to (maybe) capture the next “$1 million idea”!

Mike is not only a good friend of ITX, he’s also the co-founder of Product Collective and co-organizer of INDUSTRY: The Product Conference.

Keep in touch with our Product + Design Community!

Product MeetUp

UX Design MeetUp

Peter Sullivan is Producer of ITX’s Product Momentum podcast and a student of Product and Design processes that work. As ITX”s Marketing Content Lead, he spearheads our efforts to deliver thought leadership that helps Product makers and UX designers understand and shape the future. 

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June 28th, 2023 Rochester, NY – ITX won a top spot at the 2023 Pinnacle Awards from the American Marketing Association of Rochester in the Special Events category. The company received recognition for their work in producing the first-annual 2022 Product + Design Conference; the 2nd annual event took place from June 22-23 in downtown Rochester, NY. Results are based on a panel of judges that evaluate real results measured against objectives per award category and for both profit and non-profit businesses.

The ITX Product + Design Conference is an annual event held in Rochester, NY that comprises two days of learning and networking among 250+ product and design practitioners. Thought leaders from around the world share their insights and experience through hands-on workshops and keynotes.

The Pinnacle Awards Ceremony is an annual celebration of marketing excellence. For almost a decade, local marketers are recognized by the American Marketing Association of Rochester for their program strategy, tactics, creative, and most importantly results.

About ITX Corp.

ITX helps mid- to large-sized companies solve complex business challenges through user experience and product development, delivering software solutions that build trust, loyalty, and advocacy. Founded 25 years ago and headquartered in Rochester, NY, ITX now celebrates 250+ product professionals and technologists across the U.S, throughout the Americas, and around the world.

Career inquiries: 585.899.4888

Media Inquiries: Kyle Psaty, Vice President of Marketing | 585.899.4895

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“There are a lot of people who really want to cling to this notion that there’s a single right way to do product management,” Matt continues, “and that once all the messy human complexity disappears you’ll be guaranteed success.”

Matt LeMay recalls his early days as a product manager, initially believing that some secret knowledge would magically transform his complex role into a series of straightforward tasks. Over time, he realized that success requires product managers to be constantly listening, learning, and adapting their practices.

“When I see product managers failing, it’s not because they lack some specific competency, but rather because they’ve become entrenched,” Matt adds. “They are defending some particular position rather than opening themselves up to changing their own position.”

Humility, he adds, emerges as a crucial trait for all product leaders. “It’s the only way I feel confident doing my work because I know there’re a lot of folks who know things that I don’t know, have learned things I haven’t.” Coupled with a healthy dose of intuition, we can protect ourselves from an over-reliance on select pieces of quantitative data.

Good product management is hard work that embraces human complexity. It doesn’t try to reduce it into tiny little data points armed with magical powers.

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In a pre-pandemic workplace, core product development functions were typically co-located in the same office space, Gavin explains. So collaborating with designers, engineers, and the rest of the business was pretty straightforward.

“When you’re actually working with human beings in the flesh, understanding why you’re solving particular problems becomes quite natural,” he adds.

But the Covid-driven disruption not only created a physical disconnect between product managers and their teams; it also forced us to create new, specialist-type roles and applications to do smaller parts of the job relative to collaboration. Over time, we figured out how to untangle that web.

We got really good at having conversations; we established ways of working that actually accelerate decisionmaking; and, maybe because some of those decisions went sideways, we learned to iterate more quickly.

Over the past 3 years, we’ve formalized processes that have driven much of the pre-pandemic inefficiencies from our work. Now, we find ourselves with a new code to crack:

• How do we move from the sterile efficiency of the handoff culture to build back some of the “healthy friction” occurring organically as product teams return with new energy to their workspaces?
• Have the skill sets we expect from product managers, designers, and engineers changed? If so, how do we reassess them?
• In this dynamic new workplace, where does the role of “servant leader” fit into the product manager job description?

Catch the entire Product Momentum conversation with Gavin Deadman to hear his insights.

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It was two days packed with workshops and keynotes led by some of the best minds in the product and design industries.

Visit the Conference Page to Learn More

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Learn more about ROC On Tech

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In this episode of Product Momentum, Krissi Xenakis & Jocelyne Dittmer join co-hosts Paul Gebel and Freddy Romano, a UX Design Lead at ITX, using their journey to share how maintaining a community of collaboration helps overcome both distance and professional disciplines.

“The design practice continues to evolve,” Jocelyne says. “As it does, similar advances in data science have created an intersection point, making it crucial for these two disciplines to work together so that we can create meaningful experiences for users and drive better outcomes.”

Data is a really big word, adds Krissi. “People assume that if I’m talking about ‘data,’ I must be referring to quantitative metrics or user insights. And I touch on the aspects of qualitative and quantitative in my talk, but it’s less about qualitative vs. quantitative; it’s more about choosing the right research program based on what you need to learn.”

Designers, she continues, sometimes fall into the same trap as other makers when it comes to building a solution before they’ve defined the problem. “It’s wrong to jump in and say, ‘okay, today we’re going to do user testing’ before making sure that user testing will give us the answers we need. There are so many different ways to learn, just like there are so many different ways to design.”

The connection between design and data will become even more important over time, especially with the emergence of AI and other advanced technologies, these experts agree. Designers need to be able to react to that, but also have the foresight to think about what comes next.

“Designers want to be part of the conversation, and if we’re not, we need to inject ourselves into it,” Jocelyne says, “to make sure we’re thinking about desired outcomes and not just about, ‘here’s the data we have today.’”

Want to hear more from Krissi Xenakis and Jocelyne Dittmer? Grab your tickets now for ITX’s 2nd annual Product + Design Conference, June 22-23 in Rochester, NY. Learn more.

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Keys to Stewarding the Client Investment & Maximizing ROI

Getting to the heart of a client’s concern is the crucial first step to delivering an effective software solution. But deciphering complex requirements and balancing competencies between a client and a technology partner can be a daunting task. This is where discovery comes into play.

In our series’ first post, Discovery: Understanding the Problem Space, we learned that discovery begins before kickoff with a client-focused “needs analysis session.”

In this blog, we’ll explore how discovery activities help teams gain powerful insights, establish trust, and deliver impactful solutions as they work to steward the client investment.

Matching Project Scope with Domain & Technical Competence

Finding the right fit can be elusive, but it’s often the difference between projects that spark long-lasting relationships and the ones that stumble to the finish line.

Smaller projects may require only a single resource – maybe a project manager or tech lead – to churn through a backlog of software enhancements that engineers then code and deploy. Larger ones call for UX, Dev, and QA resources to build a pre-assigned roadmap of features on a regular cadence.

True product teams, as Marty Cagan explained, face a more complex task. They’re not handed a task list and a timeline for completion, he says. Their job is to identify a problem (and its source) and then go out and find an efficient solution for it.

Clients want their technology partner as invested in delivering a successful outcome as they are – that they’re sharing the risk burden with them, like we have ‘skin in the game’ too. It means we’re personally committed to the project’s success and share accountability for its results.

Discovery’s Role in Finding the Right Fit

At the start of each project, ITX innovation leads ask client stakeholders a lot of questions to get a sense of the size and scope of problem. And, because the product team is often a joint team with the client, it’s also important to understand the roles and responsibilities each team member will play.

We use the Pre-kickoff image below to represent the client’s and ITX’s domains of responsibility, starting with a couple key assumptions: business-specific expertise lands in the Client domain. Product development expertise rests with ITX.

Once the project kicks off and the two domains interact, collaboration begins and the product team finds the right blend and balance of each other’s strengths. And the line bends and bows as responsibilities are assigned (Graphic 2). Team member interaction flexes throughout the project as progress is made and resource availability changes.

Using Discovery to Find the Right Fit – 4 Examples

Anyone who’s done software product development knows that no two projects are alike. Much as we try to streamline the process, there’s no ‘one size fits all’ solution. All sorts of issues bubble up and need to be addressed.

That’s why shifting discovery activities earlier in the project is crucial to its success. It’s also why innovation leads continue with discovery throughout.

In an earlier post in this series, How To Convert Client Needs To Establish Clear Product Vision, we described risk as “the unavoidable reality of software product development.”

Done well, innovation leads help their teams avoid or mitigate that risk. Done poorly, we’ve learned the hard way, and projects can go sideways in a hurry. Here’s a few real-life examples –

1. Unallocated Resource. Occurs when a need goes unfilled, creating a resource gap.
   Example: Client A assigns a deep bench of backend developers to the project, but no one with frontend dev or UI experience.
   Adverse Impact. Lack of adequate coverage.
   Remedy. Early-stage conversations with client-side stakeholders help innovation leads understand the expertise and availability of their team members.
2. Skill Set Overlap. Occurs when both ITX and the client allocate a team member to perform the same role.
   Example: Eager to please the client, ITX deploys a highly skilled innovation lead to the team. At the same time, Client B allocates a similarly talented product manager.
   Adverse Impact. Overlap of highly talented team members, which can lead to:
   • Confusion. Client B’s PM and ITX’s innovation lead both trying to perform the PM role, leaving team members uncertain as to the team’s leadership.
   • Conflict. Client B’s PM and ITX’s innovation lead may differ on strategy and roadmap, creating tension on the team.
   • Cost. Both the client and ITX face increased opportunity cost; each should consider redeploying their team member, deferring to the client’s preference.
   Remedy. Discovery can help to define clear roles and responsibilities within team leadership and technical roles – e.g., architecture, design, engineering, QA, etc.
3. Insufficient Allocation: Occurs when the project scope expands beyond the original estimate, and there’s more work than the product team can manage.
   Example: Client C expands the project’s scope to account for a shift in the market environment. The client soon discovers the initial assignment is insufficient.
   Adverse Impact. Situations like this one are often unavoidable, but here’s an example of why iterative discovery is so valuable.
   Remedy. When teams foster and sustain open lines of communication, options arise to address unpredictable events. In this case, the client’s options include: reducing project scope to its pre-kickoff level; providing training to deepen the team’s skill set; deploying additional internal resources; or requesting support from ITX.
4. Resource Mismatch. Occurs when a product team overstates a team member’s technical competence.
   Example: Client D doesn’t completely understand the project’s complexity scope and assigns a team member it believes can succeed in the role – but soon realizes they’re in over the head as the project falls behind schedule.
   Adverse Impact. Skill set misaligned to project scope.
   Remedy. Discovery helps product teams establish constructive “ways of working” and frameworks for decision-making (like RACI). It also creates opportunities for innovation leads to guide and support their team members.

Collaborative Excellence: 5 Steps to Eliminate Risk and Deliver Project Success

Building software is a team sport. Stewarding the client investment occurs naturally when innovation leads position their teams to succeed.

Early-stage (and iterative) discovery arms product teams with crucial information about client needs, matching team member deployments to align with those needs.

Here’s 5 key tactics used by ITX innovation leads to identify risks before they adversely impact your project’s success:

1. Understand the expertise and availability of all team members.
2. Define clear roles and responsibilities within technical disciplines – e.g., architecture, design, engineering, QA, etc.
3. Foster and sustain open communication among all product team members.
4. Establish a “ways of working” framework for decision making, e.g., the RACI matrix.
5. Be present, eager to guide and support your team members.

Need help with your next software project? ITX can help. Let’s talk.

Peter Sullivan is Producer of ITX’s Product Momentum Podcast and a student of Product and Design processes that work. As ITX’s Marketing Content Lead, he spearheads our efforts to deliver thought leadership that helps product makers and UX designers understand and shape the future. 

The post Harness the Power of Discovery: Matching Team Skills to Client Needs appeared first on ITX Corp..

In this episode of Product Momentum, Phil describes his work to build and support a community of futures thinkers, insisting that the community formed through a series of ‘right time, right place’ events. Using terms like speculative design, strategic foresight, and traditional design strategy, he talks about how the power of community has been crucial to creating the momentum that drives innovation.

The futures design vocabulary avoids words like predict or forecast, instead preferring foresight and possibility to answer “what if?” types of scenarios, Phil explains. But the cool part is that this practice is not dissimilar from current business strategy approaches.

“We did similar things before, looking at alternate possibilities of the future,” he adds. “But now we have very rich visions and scenarios, and we use them to explore how we want to operate in that world, how we create innovations and pioneer new markets.

“We’re a future-minded species. Naturally, we’re always thinking of the future. ‘What if this happens? What do I do then?’ What I’m working on is a new set of tools that help us do what we’ve always done, now aiming them at business and product strategy applications.”

Listen to the entire pod – or check out the ITX Product + Design Conference – where you can learn more from Phil Balagtas about the fresh perspective futures thinking and speculative design bring to the conversation – issues that don’t always come to mind in traditional business methods, but are gaining importance every day.

The post 110 / Futures Thinking and UX Design, with Phil Balagtas appeared first on ITX Corp..

It’s true what they say: “Good things come to those who wait.”

I’m beyond excited to introduce Krissi Xenakis, Jocelyne Dittmer, and Phil Balagtas to the speaker roster for ITX’s Product + Design Conference 2023, June 22-23 in Rochester, NY.

Krissi Xenakis & Jocelyne Dittmer – Data-driven design

Krissi and Jocelyne will join forces to deliver a day 1 workshop and a day 2 keynote.

The workshop, entitled Accelerating impact: How to align design, data, and business through insights and experiments, gets right at the heart of the UX designer’s mission: solving user problems. It’s a pretty weighty topic, but one they will combine with fun, hands-on activities designed to help fellow UXers to navigate real-world scenarios leveraging data.

Their keynote, How effective communication gets design leading the conversation, will remind us of the  tremendous insights UX designers bring in terms of understanding user needs, solving for the right problem, and getting to a solid outcome.

The challenge, they say, is that UXers aren’t always involved early enough in the conversation to guide a project’s vision, strategy, and direction. Using a model centered on effective communication, Krissi and Jocelyne will help their UX colleagues shift their influence to the left by offering new tools and techniques that better position UX to lead the conversation. 

Data-driven design and collaboration are themes that harken back to their shared days at IBM, where Krissi and Jocelyne first met and built up their own practices. But it was by building and sustaining a broad community of collaborators – across technical disciplines – that they were able to draw support even as careers pulled its members in different directions.

From Krissi and Jocelyne, conference attendees will leave with an even deeper understanding of the power of data, a toolkit of activities to build alignment around a common goal, and a solid plan for designing experiences with your product teams.

Phil Balagtas – Futures Design

Phil Balagtas is the founder of a global community dedicated to the education and advancement of Futures Thinking. During his workshop and keynote, he will present examples of futuring across the centuries and share stories about practitioners who have made futures work across design and product teams.

Futures Thinking is an emerging field that incorporates principles and methodologies taken from Strategic Foresight, Speculative Design and Design Thinking. It offers a rich set of tools that designers and product leaders can use to determine what forces are driving the world and how we might want to operate in future environments.

The software products we build are not usually one-off designs; they’re living, breathing problem-solving assets. Phil’s day 2 keynote, entitled Activating Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Strategy through Futures Design & Thinking, will help us understand how to understand oncoming trends and adapt to them with a more structured approach so that we can help our customers nurture their software assets and be more innovative – and more prepared.

Those attending his workshop, How to think about the future with Strategic Foresight and Speculative Design, will get an up-close look into the forces of change that are constantly pulling and pushing on society.

In both cases, attendees will benefit from Phil’s expertise, which lies in applying futures as a practical and accessible design and strategy tool, with the goal of giving individuals and businesses the tools to develop informed strategies and design solutions that drive innovation.

See all six of our speakers in action at the ITX Product + Design Conference. For one day only, hear keynotes from some of the best in product and UX design.

Get your tickets now.

Peter Sullivan is Producer of ITX’s Product Momentum podcast and a student of Product and Design processes that work. As ITX’s Marketing Content Lead, he spearheads our efforts to deliver thought leadership that helps Product makers and UX designers understand and shape the future. 

The post ITX Completes Product + Design Conference Speaker Lineup appeared first on ITX Corp..

In this episode of Product Momentum, Paul chats with Yuting Chu, a veteran product manager and consultant. Though his background rests in quantitative methods, Yuting also brings a human-centered, empathetic perspective to problem-solving.

Product managers are naturally collaborative, he says. As the pandemic has accelerated the growth of digital products, the importance of co-creation is greater than ever before.

“Co-creation means surfacing the various perceptions, hypotheses, and experiences that all stakeholders have,” he adds. “By linking them together, we demonstrate that they’re just different parts of the same puzzle.”

One thing we’re able to recognize through co-creation, Yuting continues, “is that just because I disagree with you doesn’t mean you’re wrong. And just because everyone agrees with me doesn’t mean I’m right. The world’s far too complex for that.”

Catch the entire conversation with Yuting, and learn about The Partner Happiness Framework – a powerful quantitative tool to help product managers surface stakeholders’ pain points and develop an action-oriented mindset for converting problems into solutions in the most targeted and helpful way.

The speaker line-up for ITX’s Product + Design Conference 2023 is set! June 22-23 in Rochester, NY. Learn more!

The post 109 / Co-creation in the Age of Digital Transformation, with Yuting Chu appeared first on ITX Corp..

Aaron guides host Paul Gebel and guest co-host Brian Loughner, a Lead UX Designer at ITX, through his multi-level response.

“There are so many ways that AI and ML have already streamlined our process as designers and UXers,” Aaron says, “that we shouldn’t step away from it. We really should embrace it even more than we do today.”

At the same time, he concedes, “AI is based only on the things that people have done on a website or a mobile app. Plus, it’s really hard to understand how one person or a group of people are going to use your system, regardless of how much research or AI you do.

“If you really want to understand people, you have to be among them. You have to be learning with them, interacting with them, communicating with them, interviewing them. And when you’re interviewing them, it’s not writing down their answers. It’s looking into their eyes, understanding the facial recognition of what they’re doing.”

There’s no AI that’s going to be able to tell you if someone’s paying attention, he adds. “I don’t think it’s ever going to take away the humanistic factor of design out of it.”

We’re looking to a future that combines the power of AI with the fundamentals of human-centered design. Thank goodness; that sounds like a winning combination.

Be sure to catch the entire conversation with Aaron Usiskin: learn how to apply AI/ML to streamline the design process – but only after you have the fundamentals of user experience in place.

Join Jesse James Garrett, Rich Mironov, and Radhika Dutt at ITX’s Product + Design Conference, June 22-23 in Rochester, NY. Final 3 speakers to be announced soon. Learn more.

The post 108 / The Human Reality of User Experience, with Aaron Usiskin appeared first on ITX Corp..

Gathering research and information to make calculated decisions on products and designs is a regular practice for designers. Various methods for getting this information exist, but one valuable method stands out from the rest.

Co-design is a research methodology that brings together end users and domain experts early in the design process (Sanders, E.B.-N., Braun, E. and Singh, S. 2018.). It’s unique in that aspect because we invite the people who will be using the products we’re designing and ask them to collaborate alongside us.

Co-design aims to bring the end users into every stage in the design process. Our end users will play an important role in moving the design from the exploration phase all the way to the prototyping and testing phase. Gathering their valuable opinions at every point in the design journey is an incredible experience, and it’s an opportunity that should be embraced by the UX design team.

Like any brainstorming workshop, a series of operational tasks that need to be completed before facilitating. However, before you gather your supplies or check calendars for open dates, we also need to look inward to mentally prepare for a co-design session. Reaffirm for yourself and the team that co-design is the right method to solve the problem at hand.

Do we need co-design?

While gathering information in real time from end users in the room seems like the ideal solution, certain scenarios exist that may suggest a different research methodology. Consider running a co-design session if:

• Information about the challenge and the end user perspective is limited.
• The project timeline allows for this kind of research.
• The path forward is unclear.

There are times where a co-design session is neither necessary nor feasible – especially if our team is further along in the process and just need to carve out some time to generate ideas, mockups, or a tangible design to present to stakeholders. Design sprints are perfect for those situations and are structured to get us from point A to point B fast.

Take the time to understand if a co-design session is even possible, well before we ask for participants or begin planning the day of logistics.

Find the right participants

Outside of the recruited participants, make sure the team included in the study come from a variety of disciplines. From UX designers to key product stakeholders, it is important to include the product delivery team in the study. More importantly, we need to get the end users into our sessions.

The distinct characteristic of co-design sessions includes bringing the end users and stakeholders early into the definition and vision stage. Here, we get the opportunity to learn about their experiences and ideas, which inform what features should make it into the final product. It saves time and resources to incorporate schematics that will be invaluable to the end user at the start, rather than realize it’s a necessity during a later iteration.

The value of bringing in these end users cannot be overstated. The interactions during these sessions lead to a broader understanding of the challenges, needs, and desires of our end users. We plan activities to gather targeted insights from our participants that we can take direct action on during the development and creation stages. These sessions tap directly into our end users’ expertise. Access to this information help shape and create a product that that will provide real benefit to them – and drive adoption post-launch.

Create the safe space

Asking for participants to share not only what they expect from a product, but also their deep and personal experiences, is a tall order. And we need to create the space for them to communicate in the way that is most comfortable for them. Depending on the project, or the group of people we’re creating for, those people may not wish to divulge personal information about themselves.

A safe space isn’t just about ensuring their physical wellbeing – creating a safe space allows for everyone to open and share deep insights into their experiences and needs. It goes beyond surface level reasoning and provides the facilitators the opportunity to completely understand why they would get value from the product we’re creating. Try some of these facilitating tips from Adam F.C. Fletcher, writer, speaker, and consultant focused on human engagement and meeting facilitation.

1. Acknowledge that everyone brings preconceived ideas about others – or prejudices – that can damage others and ourselves.
2. Focus and limit our conversations until trust within the group increases.
3. Seek true dialogue and ask relevant questions.
4. Encourage participants to examine their personal assumptions by checking in with others rather than hiding or defending them.
5. Speak from personal experience by using “I” statements and avoid making generalizations about others.

Space to explore and broaden your horizons
The Product + Design Conference 2023 brings UX Designers into one room to learn together.
Get your tickets today.

Leave bias at the door

As experienced and accomplished designers, we create a wide variety of products. When we need to create a product but have little information on the challenges, needs, and desires of the end user, we’re designing based only on what we think is correct. Any research we gather in the process ranges from competitive research or examining data. But if there is minimal interaction with end users, we’re left to make assumptions on what we think users need to solve the problem we are designing for. In doing so, we fail to consider the user. As a result, we unwittingly bake our own bias into the solution.

Co-design mitigates this problem. We’re gathering input from end users, enough so that we can make informed decisions for our designs and products down the road. By generously listening and taking this time to understand their challenges, needs, and desires, we shift the focus from us to them, precisely where it should be.

Regardless of how strongly we believe in them, it’s essential that we set aside our own solutions during co-design. We don’t enter these sessions with the answers to their problems, even if we think we have them.

Final check-in

If you now feel more prepared to launch into your co-design session, that’s great! If you have more questions, that’s a natural reaction. Good co-design is challenging work, but there are plenty of resources out there to support you as you get your feet wet.

Your first step is to understand what you want to learn from your participants and to begin planning the activities to get those answers.

Design is a team sport. Turn to other designers and researchers in the community – learn together and prepare well to get the answers you need. Here are some of our favorite resources to get started on your co-design journey:

1. Articles and videos from Liz Sanders, the founder of MakeTools and a longtime practitioner of co-design.
2. Additional resources for creating a safe space from Amplifier.
3. An analysis on the importance of user research in design from Arin Bhowmick, Chief Design Officer at SAP.

Learn Together at the Product + Design Conference 2023
Renowned Designer Jesse James Garrett is coming to Rochester to share his knowledge.
Learn More.

Shannon Baird is a Lead UX Designer at ITX. She thrives on solving challenging problems with a user-centered design process, taking problems through research, ideation, prototyping, and testing design phases. Shannon earned her BFA in New Media Design from Rochester Institute of Technology.

The post Understanding Co-Design to Unlock Essential Insights appeared first on ITX Corp..

Learn more about The NY Product Conference

Learn more about Product Collective

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In this episode of Product Momentum, Kax guides us along her journey and offers a primer on what it means to be a successful product manager in the 21^st century.

“When users look at the products we build,” she says, “they don’t care whether it was built using Kanban or Scrum or Waterfall. Our users see only the product and feel the experience we’ve delivered for them. The process that we use to get there is not relevant.”

There’s a lot of focus in the product space on ‘getting these things right versus actually getting things done.’ The outputs over the outcomes, Kax adds.

“Things to do. Rules to follow as product managers. When really, that’s just a very small part of how to build products. I feel that we’re favoring more these tools and these frameworks, rather than learning how to work with people in order to build good products.

“Our contribution [as PMs] to product building is very intangible. Our role is to bring people together, to rise through the uncertainty and make sense of things, so that other people can actually understand what’s going on and bring trust inside the room. That’s a skill that you cannot learn from school, or any camp probably…it’s a skill that you learn by practice and by getting feedback and failing in some cases.

Be sure to catch the entire pod conversation with Kax Uson; so many more nuggets to share.

Is this a reunion of Product Momentum alumni? Not quite. It’s ITX’s Product + Design Conference 2023. June 22-23 in Rochester, NY. Featuring Radhika Dutt, Jesse James Garrett, Rich Mironov – additional speakers coming soon! Learn more.

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Shortly before publishing our June 2020 podcast episode with Radhika Dutt, she posted an article entitled, What’s sucking momentum from your product development journey – and what you can do about it. As soon as I read that piece, I knew we needed to invite Radhika to guest on our Product Momentum pod. The fit was just too good.

Here we are, 3 years on, and the fit is just as strong.

We’re excited to welcome Radhika to conduct a workshop and deliver a keynote address during our 2-day Product + Design Conference, here in Rochester, NY on June 22-23!

Radhika – an entrepreneur, product leader, and author of Radical Product Thinking: A New Mindset for Innovating Smarter, joins UX and product management legends Jesse James Garrett and Rich Mironov on an increasingly impressive speaker line-up.

She launched the notion of Radical Product Thinking as a framework to help us product people progress beyond lean agility and speed, and as a movement for leaders creating vision-driven change.

“We innovate faster because we’re lean and agile,” she said in an interview with Productized, “but the problem is they don’t tell us where we need to go. They’re good for execution, but not for defining the direction.

That’s where Radical Product Thinking comes in, she added, helping product people define the change we’re trying to the world – at least our little corner of it.

Product vision and strategy, prioritized roadmaps, and collaborative peers in product + design remain vitally important to building products that address user pain points. But when we can align our team and organization around those ingredients for success, we build a solid base for making the difficult decisions as product + design leaders.

Join Radhika Dutt, Jesse James Garrett, and Rich Mironov (more speakers coming soon!) at the ITX Product + Design Conference 2023. June 22-23, in Rochester, NY. Early-bird tickets are available until April 21. Learn more!

Peter Sullivan is Producer of ITX’s Product Momentum podcast and a student of Product and Design processes that work. As ITX’s Marketing Content Lead, he spearheads our efforts to deliver thought leadership that helps Product makers and UX designers understand and shape the future. 

The post Radhika Dutt Joins Product + Design Conference 2023 Speaker List appeared first on ITX Corp..

Building software isn’t about the features you add – the bells and whistles. It’s about helping your end users be more successful. Any notion that a product with more features is by definition better than a product with fewer features is a misguided one.

Innovation leads help their clients and teams discover the difference between adding features for features’ sake and adding features that solve problems for users and create business value for clients.

Our journey starts with Vision, which directs everyone’s effort and investment toward making users more successful. In addition to vision statement – a declaration of objective – innovation leads help teams strategically derive two additional artifacts: the product strategy and the product roadmap.

Product Strategy

Product strategy wears many hats. It represents the team’s approach to achieving your objective. It serves as a vehicle that communicates that approach to your team, your client, and your own internal management. And it’s a guide for transforming vision into reality.

In his post, My Product Strategy Model, product management expert and friend of ITX Roman Pichler writes that coming up with product strategy requires us to make 4 important choices (paraphrased here):

1. Selecting the precise user/client needs the product should address. We learned in blog one of this series that much of this knowledge is gained through Discovery activities in the Foundation stage (and later applied in discerning our product vision).
2. Determining the market or market segment. This represents the scope of individuals we believe will benefit most from using the product. Product Momentum podcast guest Neha Bansal recommends starting with an atomic network.
3. Choosing standout features that set the product apart from competitors’ offerings. More on this, below.
4. Setting realistic performance and business goals. Innovation leads help their teams establish product (pKPIs)and business (bKPIs) key performance indicatorsto evaluate the engagement’s overall success.

Making these choices is no small task. Saying “yes” to some and “no” to most is hard work and requires discipline – along with a healthy dose of diplomacy – especially when choosing between options that add value and stakeholders that have influence.

All the more reason to secure alignment and commitment early on.

Product Roadmap

Not long ago, travelers used to unfold poster-sized maps across the car’s dashboard to envision the route to their destination. These days, GPS plays that role. But then as now, we were able to visualize the exact route we wanted to take.

Coupled with “turn-by-turn” instructions, the product roadmap helps us capture the activities to be completed, in the precise order and within a given timeline, to achieve our goal.

Now, anyone who’s heard “re-calculating” from their car’s GPS knows that there’s more than one path to every destination. Unlike vision, a roadmap is not static. Adjustments can be made; pivots executed; resources increased or reduced based on market conditions and user needs.

Innovation leads use the roadmap as “a plan to diverge from,” constantly monitoring progress against goals to frame conversations, prioritize decisions, allocate resources, and evaluate dependencies.

The Key to Effective Roadmaps: Outcomes > Outputs

In his blog, A Guide to Roadmaps and Release Plans for Software Product Teams, ITX product strategist Zack Kane shared the following:

“The product roadmap is intended to be dynamic and flexible. It’s designed to flex and adapt to changing circumstances. So it should change and evolve, and you should be revisiting it regularly and refining it as needed.”

Roadmap checkpoints, he adds, should be framed through the outcome-based lens of “what problems are we solving?” instead of the outputs-based perspective that leans toward “what features can we build?”

Roadmaps & Release Plans

For the same reason we should not confuse vision and strategy, we need to remember that your roadmap is not – and shall never be – your release plan.

Your roadmap answers the why? and the what?.  Why have we chosen to solve those specific problems? What problems are we solving for our customers?

Your release plan is not – and shall never be – your roadmap. The product’s release plan is derived from your roadmap; it answers the when? and the how?. When can we forecast the solution to be delivered? How are we going to deliver?”

The release plan supports your roadmap as a tactical artifact, Zack continues, that forecasts when specific milestones will be met and, in most cases, when new features or feature-updates will be delivered to end users. It also contains more granular details about what you’re delivering, including schedule dependencies, budget information, dates, and release versions.

As the team rolls into the Development Stage, they are supported by the creation and maintenance of requirements documentation to guide their progress, including:

• Theme/Epic/User Story Mapping + Scope Refinement 
• Feature and Roadmap Prioritization + Release Planning 
• Dependency Mapping & Risk Analysis 
• Establishing + Maintaining a Healthy Backlog 

The transformation of product vision to product strategy and product roadmaps requires a mix of strategic thinking, market research, technical savvy, and communication skills. The innovation lead brings this unique blend of skills to the process.

In our next post, we’ll look at how the innovation lead works with the client team to find just the right balance and blend of collaboration to optimally steward the client’s investment.

Jesse James Garrett, Rich Mironov, and Radhika Dutt are set to headline ITX’s Product + Design Conference 2023.
June 22-23, in Rochester, NY. Early-bird tickets available until April 21. Learn More.

Peter Sullivan is Producer of ITX’s Product Momentum podcast and a student of Product and Design processes that work. As ITX’s Marketing Content Lead, he spearheads our efforts to deliver thought leadership that helps Product makers and UX designers understand and shape the future. 

The post From Product Strategy to Roadmaps and Release Plans appeared first on ITX Corp..

April 10, 2023 Rochester, NY – ITX is proud to announce that Collene M. Burns and Christina Halladay have been selected as finalists for Technology Woman of the Year by TechRochester.

Technology Woman of the Year recognizes, celebrates, and brings visibility to the achievements of women in high technology fields. Selection criteria included a review of individual contributions to the technology profession and community activities supported by the finalists.

As leaders at ITX, Burns and Halladay support and mentor team members throughout the organization. Their contributions – which include leading the Global Talent division and optimizing the company’s UX Design practice, respectively – advance the company’s business goals and provide valuable support to all ITX team members.

TechRochester will name the Technology Woman of the Year recipient at the awards ceremony on April 26. Dr. DeAnna R. Burt-Nanna, Ph. D. will keynote the event, taking place at Monroe Golf Club in Pittsford, NY.

A local non-profit organization, TechRochester focuses on bringing technology professionals together within the community. By supporting professional growth on an individual level, the organization works to encourage the expansion of technology within the Rochester region.

ITX continues to experiment, learn, and grow, while eagerly sharing its knowledge along the way. The company is currently adding to its global team of technology professionals and product specialists; remote-friendly opportunities can be found here: www.itx.com/careers.

About ITX Corp.

ITX helps mid- to large-sized companies solve complex business challenges through user experience and product development, delivering software solutions that build trust, loyalty, and advocacy. Founded 25 years ago and headquartered in Rochester, NY, ITX now celebrates 250+ product professionals and technologists across the U.S, throughout the Americas, and around the world.

Career inquiries: 585.899.4888

Media Inquiries: Kyle Psaty, Vice President of Marketing | 585.899.4895

The post Burns and Halladay Selected as Finalists for Technology Woman of the Year appeared first on ITX Corp..

As producer of ITX’s Product Momentum Podcast, I was only too excited to learn that past guests Jesse James Garrett and Rich Mironov had accepted our invitation to speak at the 2^nd annual Product + Design Conference 2023, on June 22-23, 2023.

Rich Mironov – Product Track

By the time the conference opens, it will have been almost exactly 3 years since Rich and I met (virtually) when he guested on the pod. He won’t recall the interaction as I still do; “absolutely spinning gold” was how co-host Paul Gebel described it, peppering the conversation with a self-deprecating wit and a careers-worth of hard-earned wisdom.

Rich portrayed the product manager role “as the one who nobody works for, but who seems to work for everyone else.”

He followed that by drawing an analogy between forest-fire-fighting ‘smoke jumpers’ and his role as temporary CPO or head of product, stepping in to ‘put out fires’ until company leaders can make the right hire to carry them forward.

So there’s plenty for everyone regardless of whether you’re a seasoned veteran or a freshly minted PM looking for guidance.

The world of Product + Design has evolved exponentially since those early days, Rich says, citing the sheer volume of information currently available to product leaders as one of the most significant changes.

“Now, we can actually find out what users are using, which features are catching on, and where folks are getting in trouble in their clickstreams,” he says. “So instead of going on gut instinct, product managers now can unpack the data and really look at what it’s telling us. That’s a huge change.”

The other, he adds, is the tremendous social network that’s developed. There were product managers back in the 80s and 90s, he says. He was one.

“Most of us didn’t know what we were doing,” Rich says. “But one thing we learned – quickly – was that everybody’s battling the same issue as you. That’s why today, it’s a lot less lonely to be a product manager.”

Jesse James Garrett – UX + Product In Collaboration

When he joined the Product Momentum Podcast team to help us celebrate our 100^th episode, Jesse echoed Rich’s sentiments as to the evolution of product management and UX as refined disciplines in the software development space.

The field as a whole, especially for product managers and designers, has professionalized so much over the last 20 years, he offered.

UX Design was still in its infancy when Jesse authored the first edition of Elements and created the scaled model of his 5 elements: Strategy, Scope, Structure, Skeleton, and Surface.

Though Jesse won’t be conducting a Day 1 workshop at the conference, he will be on site throughout the event, kicking off the Day 2 keynotes with a talk directed at both product + design leaders.

Look for Jesse to help us imagine a world in which Product + Design come together to identify best practices for working collaboratively, and to describe the transformative outcomes we can realize when they do.

“There are whole careers in this space that didn’t exist before,” Jesse said. “We’re a much more professional bunch than we used to be, never mind the notion that it could be as formalized and standardized to the extent that it is today.”

But even as they have matured as a profession, UX leaders want to do even more, he adds. He hears regularly about their desire to contribute even greater value to their users, but also about the organizational and cultural obstacles that frustrate their desire.

“This is where the real potential exists for cultural change of a type that we haven’t seen before,” Jesse explained.

The collaboration of Product + UX, “brings a level of institutional knowledge that hasn’t been possible before,” he added. “Which means you now have an organization that operates culturally in different ways; product and design are making different decisions because they have fresh, new awareness of different factors in their decisions.”

Foundational Works from Product + UX Veterans

Rich (The Art of Product Management, 2008)and Jesse (The Elements of User Experience, 2002; 2^nd ed., 2011) each authored seminal works in their respective fields just as product management and UX design were finding their footing as formal disciplines in the software space.

Join keynote speakers Jesse James Garrett and Rich Mironov (more speakers coming soon!) at ITX Product + Design Conference 2023. June 22-23, in Rochester, NY. Early-bird tickets available until April 21. Learn more!

Peter Sullivan is Producer of ITX’s Product Momentum podcast and a student of Product and Design processes that work. As ITX’s Marketing Content Lead, he spearheads our efforts to deliver thought leadership that helps Product makers and UX designers understand and shape the future. 

The post ITX Announces First 2 Speakers For Product + Design Conference 2023 appeared first on ITX Corp..

“The broader your market, the harder it is to find product-market fit,” Neha says. “Starting small allows you to analyze the root cause when something isn’t working; when you have a small base of users – an atomic network – you can pick up the phone and ask about what you can do better.”

Neha Bansal is a product leader, angel investor, and mentor to dozens of startups. She currently heads Merchant Growth and Monetization for Google’s B2B commerce business. In this episode, Neha and Paul discuss Chen’s The Cold Start Problem and how product leaders can apply the atomic network mindset to find product-market fit.

Atomic networks help you gain traction and work through problems, Neha explains. When you know your audience intimately, it is easier to connect with them and work through the barriers and frustrations they are experiencing. Neha describes this as turning ‘zero’ moments into ‘magic’ moments.

Catch the entire episode to hear Neha describe how Facebook, Uber, and Bank of America identified and expanded their atomic networks first to find product-market fit on their way to becoming household names. Neha also shares key metrics that will let you know when you’ve discovered your own.

Jesse James Garrett and Rich Mironov to keynote at ITX Product + Design Conference 2023. June 22-23, in Rochester, NY. Early-bird tickets available until April 21. Learn more!

The post 106 / Using Atomic Networks to Find Product-Market Fit, with Neha Bansal appeared first on ITX Corp..

Believe it or not, there’s a real person behind popular and not so popular designs. While each of these experiences had time, money, and brainpower behind them, the level of thought that was given to the end user experiences varied.

In an age of growing technology and artificial intelligence, it is important to distinguish the human impact on user experience. Studies show that focusing on the customer experience is key to influencing their brand loyalties – a sentiment 73% of consumers would agree with. A full 65% go on to say that a positive experience with a brand gives more confidence in their purchase decision making versus brand advertising (PwC 2018.)

Ensuring that products nail the client experience takes an entire team, but there’s one professional in that group who holds a particularly relevant role. UX designers, and the many professionals that work in the user experience field, are solving problems for the end user. Inherently, we believe that whatever we are producing will solve a complex and challenging problem. It reflects a level of empathy that is spurred by a human-centric mindset.

There are various ways to work with a human-centric mindset. Let’s step through a few core practices that will assist UX designers in crafting solutions to solve real problems.

Complete, thorough Discovery

Reaching out to end users to better understand the problems we’re solving for is part of Discovery. This is the phase where designers seek as much information as possible. Whether it be from conducting stakeholder interviews, or gleaning data and insights to benchmark against, this step is critical in fully understanding the problem we’re solving for.

It’s worth mentioning that when working with clients, they are entrusting us to solve their problems. It doesn’t necessarily mean that we are tasked to create next best innovation, but it would be a disservice to our clients and to the humans we’re designing for if we didn’t do our due diligence. It will aid in our problem solving and will “wow” our client when we present how deep the Discovery dive took us – and how dedicated we are to fixing their problem.

Be the voice of all users

The UX Designer devotes their attention to the end user. Contrast that to the role of the product manager, whose primary responsibility is to serve as the voice and advocate of the customer.

As designers, we are their advocates. We are their voice in the discussions and brainstorming sessions, ensuring that their voice is heard. From the findings in the Discovery phase, we know what is best for them and are prepared to fight for them.

Projects might have identified specific users with detailed personas; however, top tier designers are thinking about all users. We ensure that while there exists a specific end user for the product we’re designing, our choices cater to everyone. It is morally correct to design with inclusivity in mind, and we gain from considering all users in our choices.

Shifting from “one user” to “all users” doesn’t necessarily mean that the product vision is altered, rather the way we design encompasses all users. Using helpful checklists or referencing guides is a move that ensures that your designs will not exclude anyone.

Get everyone to ask the right people the right real questions

When jumping into a project, designers have just one goal – what is the problem we’re solving for, and for whom are we solving it?” And to determine this, we ask ourselves many questions, and many questions directed toward others.

It’s important to sit down with your team, whether it be product managers, engineers, or fellow designers, and find common ground. Not doing so will result in a misaligned team, as podcast guest Kim Goodwin argued in a previous episode, and could reap serious problems down the line. Once everyone understands what the problem is, who we are solving it for, and how to solve it, we’re ready to move into the Problem and Solution spaces.

Not only will we garner valuable information that will assist with decisions down the line, but we’re taking time to connect with your end users. It sends the message that we’re listening, and we’re going to do everything in our power to solve their problem. It’s an entirely new level of dedication.

Establish internal partnerships

It is rare to come across a project that solely requires UX designers. The projects that include designers and product managers are increasing, and that means that forging strong partnerships with our fellow team members is more important than ever.

Looking at the technical standpoint, it makes sense to entrust the aspects of a project to the designated professional. Each person that is involved is working at what they are best at, and it frees up the designers to think of the end user, to be their advocate. Because at the end of the day, there is no product without the end user.

Product + Design Professionals, Learning Together
Register for the 2023 Product + Design Conference, happening this June 22-23.
Learn More.

Beyond the logical explanation, tangible benefits occur when designers and product managers collaborate. As each role seeks more responsibilities and definitions of their career paths, working in tandem will actualize these desires and create a strong, cohesive product for the end user.

Use real-time collaborative software

Before thinking of solving the problem, it’s important to look at the tools to use. Are we using the right technology to work at maximum efficiency? Can our fellow designers see what the plans are? Is collaboration possible?

As pioneers of remote work, ITX designers strive to find the technology that empowers our team members around the globe to work together. Utilizing real time collaborative software is a simple and innovative solution. Creating a project on various platforms, such as Figma or Miro, allows for team members to collaborate and work on these projects together. 

Even for smaller teams, this technology is a game changer. No longer does the software live on a single computer, inaccessible. A team member can start the project in Rochester, NY while another team member can finish it in Buenos Aires, Argentina. This is how we function as a global, remote-first organization. Collaboration isn’t restricted to one device, and creativity is free to come from everywhere.

Pointing north

The simple act of “solving the problem for the end user” isn’t a clear instruction. It’s helpful advice that will put designers on the right path when they are in the weeds of a project. However, it’s easy to drift away from the core goal of each UX designer. The practices are my suggestions; they represent ways that the ITX Design team works with clients and their customers from a human-centric mindset. Take these with you and solve problems for your end users.

Get your tickets for the 2023 Product + Design Conference
Join us for 2 days filled with interactive workshops, inspiring keynotes, and more.
Learn More.

Brian Loughner is a Lead UX Designer at ITX. He works to connect with clients, understand their problems and find solutions to meet their needs. Brian co-organizes meetings for Upstate UX Meetup, aimed to facilitate conversation on various UX topics for professionals and students.

The post Embracing a Human-Centric Mindset to Create Innovative Designs appeared first on ITX Corp..

March 28, 2023 Rochester, NY – ITX celebrates the fourth-consecutive year of being named a Top Workplaces in Rochester, NY. The company commemorated the achievement at the Rochester Top Workplaces award ceremony on Wednesday, March 22.

Recently listed as a Best Company to Work for in New York, ITX ranked 29 in the small-sized category, which highlighted 54 Rochester-area organizations.

Companies rank on the Top Workplaces list based on internal team member surveys conducted by a third-party service called Energage. The survey includes questions about topics like culture, growth, and leadership. Businesses receive their position based on the results of the survey, comparing answers from each organization to others of similar size in the Rochester area.

ITX continues to experiment, learn, and grow, while eagerly sharing its knowledge along the way. The company is currently adding to its global team of technology professionals and product specialists; remote-friendly opportunities can be found here: www.itx.com/careers.

About ITX Corp.

ITX helps mid- to large-sized companies solve complex business challenges through user experience and product development, delivering software solutions that build trust, loyalty, and advocacy. Founded 25 years ago and headquartered in Rochester, NY, ITX now celebrates 250+ product professionals and technologists across the U.S, throughout the Americas, and around the world.

Career inquiries: 585.899.4888

Media Inquiries: Kyle Psaty, Vice President of Marketing | 585.899.4895

The post ITX Named a Rochester Top Workplace for 2023 appeared first on ITX Corp..

In this second post in our series, Leading Product Innovation, we look at how ITX innovation leads help clients establish a clear Vision for their software product. In the series’ opening blog, we talked about how Discovery activities guide the product team to answer Why? What? For whom? Here, we explore their role in building stakeholder alignment around the product Vision and articulating that Vision in a way that rallies the team to confidently commit to its fulfillment.

Managing risk. It’s the unavoidable reality of software product leadership. Sometimes that risk comes from not knowing what to do first, or next. Other times it’s the risk of not staying current with technology. Ultimately, product leaders face the risk that any one of these will damage their company’s brand or bottom line.

ITX innovation leads help clients manage that risk – first by guiding the product team through Foundation Stage discovery activities, later transitioning into the Planning Stage of the product development process with a clear product vision.

Exploring Product Vision

In his blog, 8 Tips for Creating a Compelling Vision, product management coach Roman Pichler described the challenge in this way:

In our experience, as teams explore the right vision for their product, ITX innovation leads ask them to consider these questions:

• What excites you about this product?
• Why do you care about it?
• What positive change should the product bring about?
• How will it shape your organization’s future?

Their innovation lead guides conversation to land on breakthrough outcomes, including –

1. Establish and document “ways of working” for your team(s) – e.g., guidelines for personal interaction, productivity, and decision-making. Share it across your organization. As circumstances change and knowledge grows, be prepared to update the document regularly with new ideas.
2. Connect regularly with your teams. Assume that anxiety levels are high. A listening ear and soothing tone will help calm many concerns.
3. Now more than ever, clarity around vision, expectations, and goals is vital to team success.
4. Where in-person contact is dissuaded, videoconferencing is the next best option. Remember, distributed work teams don’t enjoy the benefit of water cooler conversations. So if it feels like you’re over-communicating, it’s probably just right!
5. Make sure all your team members know how to use the communication and productivity tools you provide – especially newer members. It’s not too late to re-share user instructions. Your teams will welcome the refre

Distinguishing Product, Vision, Strategy

Over 2+ decades of experience building custom software, we’ve seen clients and teams use the terms product, vision, and strategy synonymously. It’s a popular trap that innovation leads will help teams avoid.

For example, teams sometimes pivot to what they think is a new strategy – which in many cases is fine, even wise. New learning, technological developments, competitor activities, and shifting market dynamics often create a landscape that requires a change in tack.

But other times, what they believe to be only a change in strategy turns out to be a whole new product vision. A significant shift in product vision – or abandoning it entirely – can signal to the team, key internal stakeholders, and investors that your initial assumptions were wrong and, perhaps, that your business model itself is flawed. It should change very rarely.

In these situations, innovation leads step in to exercise their right (and responsibility) by saying “no.” In his podcast episode with the Product Momentum team, Dan Olsen, author of The Lean Product Playbook, said that focusing on your product vision and the strategy for getting there actually means “saying ‘no’ to a thousand other good ideas.”

Product vision, Roman says, reflects your organization’s motivation for building a product – the big picture outcomes they desire. Product strategy is the plan for achieving that vision, he adds. And product, Roman defines in terms of the output by which you achieve the overarching goal.

“An effective product vision,” Roman concludes, “goes beyond the product and captures the change the product should instigate.”

Product Vision Looks Outward

The ultimate outcome sought by product leaders is driven by the change we want to bring to the world, says Radhika Dutt in Product Success Starts with a Clear Vision, episode 27 of the Product Momentum Podcast.

“That’s why a good vision statement doesn’t look inward,” she adds. “It’s not about our own goals and aspirations. It’s centered on the problem you want to solve in the world.”

Think of product vision as your “true north,” and understand that many paths can lead to your final destination. But the best plan – i.e., the best product strategy – must be adaptable in the face of market realities.

By keeping a close eye on the market environment and customer needs, innovation leads help provide an adequate buffer between and vision and strategy. This enables you to tweak your strategy – to pivot – while remaining fixed on your vision. Pivoting is a tactic familiar to innovation leads often in response to new discovery or a change in the business environment.

Balancing Vision with Business Reality of Business Objectives

In his blog The Four Big Risks, product management expert Marty Cagan cited an important update he made in the 2^nd edition of his book, Inspired.

Initially, Marty wrote that a successful product requires three things: it must be valuable, usable, and feasible. To complete the list, he later added viability.

“It’s not enough to create a product your customers love,” he wrote. “The product must also work for your business.”

Among the innovation lead’s many strategic responsibilities in the Planning Stage is coordinating the needs of external users and the needs of the business. Many clients ask, “As much as I want to change people’s worlds, I still have numbers I need to hit this quarter. How do I balance my product vision with the reality of my business objectives?”

The answer, Radhika says, is simple – but not easy.

“Your vision can continue to live on based on the changes you’re inspired to bring, but how you prioritize product features offers the counterbalance between inspiration and market reality.”

Every time the innovation lead evaluates the next feature in the roadmap, they ask themselves (and the team): “Is this feature helping us make progress toward our vision?” If it is, great. Even better if it’s helping reduce my organization’s business viability risk. In the series’ next post, we’ll explore the innovation lead’s responsibilities throughout the Planning Stage – product strategy, feature prioritization, and roadmaps / release plans – as we continue our journey along the product development process.

Want to join our ITX Product + Design community?

Subscribe now to the ITX Continuous Inspiration newsletter; when you do, you’ll find out first when the next blog drops and receive regular updates about the 2023 Product + Design Conference, scheduled June 22-23, in Rochester, NY.

Learn more.

Peter Sullivan is Producer of ITX’s Product Momentum Podcast and a student of Product and Design processes that work. As ITX”s Marketing Content Lead, he spearheads our efforts to deliver thought leadership that helps product makers and UX designers understand and shape the future. 

The post How To Convert Client Needs To Establish Clear Product Vision appeared first on ITX Corp..

In this episode of Product Momentum, Sean is joined by guest host Nathan Shapiro, Head of Platform Strategy and User Experience at Paychex. Together, they draw out Marshall’s expert insights on the correlation between a firm’s open APIs and the progressive growth of its financial performance over time. Marshall is a Professor of Information Economics at Boston University and co-author of the international bestseller, Platform Revolution.

Firms that open their architecture and APIs expand their ecosystem and ignite an interoperability within it, thereby creating a network effect – a phenomenon by which the value a user derives from a good or service depends on the number of users of compatible products.

The key, Marshall adds, is to position your firm to “command the center” of your ecosystem.

“Individuals tend to gain influence or power in proportion to the degree of centrality within their network,” he says. “We found exactly the same thing for firms. The more focal you are, the more central you are in your ecosystem, the greater your increase in market capitalization.”

But, he cautions, opening your data is not without risk. Bad actors exist everywhere. So your firm needs to open for a reason, all the while weighing the pros and cons of sharing your data externally. One of those reasons, Marshall adds, is to “invert the firm,” a mindset that leverages APIS and enables you to share the production of value beyond your own employees.

Marshall van Alstyne is one of the world’s foremost experts on network business models. Be sure to catch the entire podcast to capture all his insights.

The post 105 / Innovation Through Open APIs: Shifting the Locus of Value Creation, with Marshall Van Alstyne appeared first on ITX Corp..

Watch Sean’s Masterclass Replay

Learn more about ProductCamp Europe

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ICYMI, we announced the dates for our 2023 Product + Design Conference!

If you went to our 2022 Product + Design Conference, you might be just as excited as we are (which includes clearing your schedules for June 22 and 23.) If you weren’t able to make it, or you have no idea what we’re talking about, let me explain.

What is the Product + Design Conference?

The Product + Design Conference, hosted by ITX, is an in-person gathering of product and design professionals from across the country and around the globe. We meet in Rochester, NY for two full days of workshops, keynotes, and conversation with industry thought leaders, and more importantly, connecting and learning with each other.

Our conference team selects thought leaders whose philosophies align with our conference goals: training our team members, deepening relationships with clients, and elevating our visibility in the Rochester community.

Day 1 includes small group, intimate workshops. Attendees choose either a product track or design track; either way, they work closely with other professionals from their field. On the second day, we gather to hear inspiring keynotes from our speakers.

While the workshops are specialty-focused, all attendees can learn from professionals in both the product and design fields. It’s a “best of both worlds” opportunity!

With plenty of breaks built in to the agenda, there’s lots of time to meet new people, catch up with peers or contacts in your networks, and learn from others in your industry. And there’s free food.

How did the P + D Conference come to be?

ITX is a global team dedicated to continuous innovation. We have our pick of professional development courses and conferences that our team members can attend, but at ITX we believe in the power that comes from learning and growing together. Not only with our co-workers, but also with client teammates and new-found friends.

What better way to share our knowledge and celebrate the atmosphere of collective learning than by inviting clients and contacts outside of ITX to join us?

Not only do they get to enjoy teachings from some of the best and brightest in the industry, but they get a first-hand look as to how we learn and grow.

Product and Design together? Aren’t they two different practice areas?

Sure, we could put on two separate conferences and let our team members attend the conference that better suits their roles. We’ve done so in the past.

But no more, and for a few good reasons.

Our product teams and design teams work in tandem, each bringing their shared and unique perspectives to their work. Bountiful outcomes occur from the partnerships, for our clients and for our team members. When it came time to plan this event, grouping product and design together not only made logical sense but also broadened the horizons of our product managers and UX designers as they learned even more about how the other worked.

When does the conference happen?

We typically aim for a conference date of mid- to late-June. It’s the ideal time of year to bring our teams together as we welcome the warm summer weather to Western New York. (And remain well outside any late winter weather that surges toward Rochester.)

This year, our Product + Design Conference will be happening on Thursday, June 22 and Friday, June 23. It also happens to be the first weekend of the critically acclaimed Rochester International Jazz Festival, in case you need another great reason to attend our conference.

Wow, this sounds cool. Can I come?

Of course! We offer two ticket options. Choose between –

• The 2-day workshop and keynote ticket, or

• The one-day keynote-only ticket.

Early bird pricing is now available! Get your ticket now, and lock in a lower individual or team rate!

I still have questions; where can I find more information?

Check out last year’s event page and find an overview of what happened. We’ve included the agendas from both conference days, photos from our larger-than-life keynotes, and testimonials from previous attendees. While the 2023 conference topics will stray from last year’s, you can bet that they’ll be just as informative and inspirational.

I must register for this conference now! Where do I go to save my spot?

We like your enthusiasm! And lucky for you, our ticket sales for the event are now live!

As we confirm more details about the conference – including who our speakers will be, the agendas for the workshops and keynotes, and more – we’ll be sure to share. To stay up to date, check out the 2023 conference page. This is the best place to find it all, and you have the choice to sign up for email alerts when we have exciting conference information to share.

We’ll see you there.

Stephanie Caito is a Marketing Project Manager at ITX. Working alongside the conference production team, she plans, manages, and directs the logistics of ITX conferences, bringing value to some of the largest professional gatherings happening in the region.

The post What is the Product + Design Conference? appeared first on ITX Corp..

Leading Product Innovation, the ITX Way is a new blog series offering an inside look at how Product + Design come together to deliver innovative product solutions. In this first post, we explore the role of product managers during an engagement’s early days, with specific focus on the Discovery activities that get us closer to solving the right problem for the right audience.

The product manager role at ITX has evolved throughout our 25-year history. Here, product managers are called innovation leads – more than nuance, the title emphasizes our belief that our clients manage the products we help them build; we are partners in that development.

To best understand the innovation lead’s impact, it’s helpful to drill into their involvement during key stages of the process – Foundation, Planning, Development, and Deployment. In this article, we’ll look at how innovation lead guides discovery activities to help their product team understand the problem space.

Dan Olsen, author of The Lean Product Playbook and guest on the ITX Product Momentum Podcast, offered this insight in describing the problem space:

The Foundation Stage is where this discovery work begins. But it doesn’t end here; at ITX, discovery occurs throughout the engagement as an iterative loop designed to reaffirm product vision or pivot as needs and circumstances change.

Too often, over-eager clients and product teams want to jump into hands-on-keyboard development work before first answering why, what, and for whom. When this occurs, the innovation lead will step in to make sure the team is solving the right problem for the right audience. Good thing.

“Research brings opportunities to discover all the things that you can actually stumble on and explore and understand,” said UX Design Manager Jon Daiello in a recent Product Momentum Podcast episode. “It’s really easy to lose that because you’ve already come to the table with what you think you know and what you think you want. That approach robs you of the chance to deeply hone in on what a problem is, and how do we craft something that fits well with that problem, so that we can bring your value proposition to the end user in a way that’s valuable.”

Slow Down To Go Fast

In Overcoming Barriers to Successful Product Discovery, designer Mike Thone and ITX Director of Innovation Paul Gebel write, “A healthy discovery process allows us to understand product-market fit and identify key user needs. Without first understanding key user needs and assessing product-market fit, a team could easily spend a lot of money building the wrong things and solving problems their users do not have.”

In other words, sometimes you need to slow down to go fast.

Discovery activities include –

• Relationship building with key stakeholders
• Conducting interviews with users and client-side SMEs
• Performing competitive and comparative research, and
• Analyzing the client’s business environment

Discovery is very much a team sport. The innovation lead may orchestrate the process, they lean considerably on their teammates to effectively deliver their shared responsibilities, for example, to –

• Cultivate alignment, confidence, commitment around a product vision.
• Foster collaboration among the product trio (Product, User Experience, Engineering).
• Establish and nurture working relationships with client SMEs, stakeholders, and teams.
• Emerge from Foundation stage with a clear product vision, and vision statement, to rally the team around.

Articulating a precise vision is harder than it looks. Some clients come to the engagement with a sound product vision that addresses those earlier questions about why, what, and for whom. At the same time, it’s not uncommon for clients to enter an engagement struggling for clarity around their vision. For those who do, the ITX innovation lead may offer to facilitate a 1-day workshop to help clients gain alignment around their vision, commitment to shared objectives, and confidence in the team’s ability to achieve it.

In our next post, we’ll discuss the power behind the product vision, exploring as product management coach Roman Pichler suggests, the product vision’s ability to communicate the change we want to bring to the world.

Want to join our ITX Product + Design community? Subscribe now to the ITX Continuous Inspiration newsletter; when you do, you’ll find out first when the next blog drops and receive regular updates about the 2023 Product + Design Conference, scheduled June 22-23, in Rochester, NY. Learn more.

Peter Sullivan is Producer of ITX’s Product Momentum Podcast and a student of Product and Design processes that work. As ITX’s Marketing Content Lead, he spearheads our efforts to deliver thought leadership that helps product makers and UX designers understand and shape the future. 

The post Discovery: Understanding the Problem Space appeared first on ITX Corp..

In this episode of the Product Momentum Podcast, Sean and Paul chat with Jon Daiello. Jon is a UX Design Manager at Paychex, where he encourages his designers to “have your head in the clouds and your feet in the mud.”

Think of design as “a long-term investment,” he says, like retirement planning. “You don’t start a job and have your retirement built on day one. Design is like that; you’re looking into the future and asking, ‘What is my goal? Where do I want to go? What do I want this thing to be in the end?’ Design can really help you kind of tease out what that future could look like.”

Over time, within the team’s Agile process, you’re choosing the most important pieces to deliver, Jon adds. So the business case is understanding that Agile practices are not in competition with design; but that they’re inside the process and baked in in a way that works with design.

Catch the entire conversation to hear Jon’s practical tips for answering the ultimate question: what are we actually solving for?

• Get as many people involved as possible; workshops help.
• Be creative with time you have available – even just an hour here or there can be productive.
• Creativity blocked? Change your workspace. Try a different design medium.
• Simple design tools like paper & pencil help express design ideas quickly and cheaply.

Early bird pricing is now available as the ITX Product + Design Conference returns. Save the date: June 22-23 in Rochester, NY. Learn more.

The post 104 / Building the Business Case for UX Design, with Jon Daiello appeared first on ITX Corp..

March 3, 2023 Rochester, NY – ITX is selected as a Best Company to Work for in New York by the New York State Council of the Society of Human Resource Management, Best Companies Group, and Rochester Business Journal. This is the first time that the 25-year-old organization is recognized at the state level.

Best Companies to Work for in New York identifies, recognizes, and honors the best places of employment in New York. An evaluation of their workplace policies, practices, and demographics, determined ITX’s placement on the list, as well as the results of an employee survey to measure the employee experience. Both measurements decide where the organization ranks in comparison to other New York companies; the final ranking will be announced at the April 19 awards ceremony in Albany, NY.

Update April 19, 2023: ITX was honored to attend the awards ceremony in which we were named 13th on the list of best companies.

ITX has repeatedly ranked on the Rochester Top Workplaces List. ITX is also a two-time winner of Rochester’s Tech Company of the Year and is an honoree of a Rochester-area business that exemplifies high standards of ethical behavior.

ITX continues to experiment, learn, and grow, while eagerly sharing its knowledge along the way. The company is currently adding to its global team of technology professionals and product specialists; remote-friendly opportunities can be found here: www.itx.com/careers.

About ITX Corp.

ITX helps mid- to large-sized companies solve complex business challenges through user experience and product development, delivering software solutions that build trust, loyalty, and advocacy. Founded 25 years ago and headquartered in Rochester, NY, ITX now celebrates 250+ product professionals and technologists across the U.S, throughout the Americas, and around the world.

Career inquiries: 585.899.4888

Media Inquiries: Kyle Psaty, Vice President of Marketing | 585.899.4895

The post ITX Named a 2023 Best Company to Work for in New York appeared first on ITX Corp..

Nesrine explains how a growth mindset encourages learning – and the confidence that comes with it – that allows us to break out of our comfort zones to grow as individuals and product leaders.

The key to success, Nesrine adds, is never forgetting what the problem is. “Fall in love more with the problem than the solution,” she says. One way to achieve this mindset is to have a very clear product discovery roadmap that is distinct from your execution roadmap.

The discovery roadmap outlines a list of problems – not solutions. It leans on her experience as a researcher, generating incredible value validation that includes lots of time engaging with users to understand their challenges and pain points. And it’s work that brings together the product trio: product manager, UX researcher, and engineering to deliver products that improve users’ lives.

Be sure to listen to the entire pod; capture in minutes some of the vital nuggets Nesrine Changuel has picked up as her career continues to unfold, including:

• Failing fast during product discovery: taking educated risks, validating them through regular, rapid feedback.
• The power of iteration: the ability to stop, inspect, and adjust.
• Avoiding the Scrum Fall Trap.
• Using data to distinguish between what users say they want and what users actually do.

Product Collective’s Mike Belsito returns to emcee the 2023 ITX Product + Design Conference. Save the date: June 22-23, 2023 in Rochester, NY. Learn more.

The post 103 / A Product Manager’s Journey through Discovery, with Nesrine Changuel appeared first on ITX Corp..

Not long ago, Jesse James Garrett shared his concern over persistent conversations around “the differences between design and product and the antagonisms they sometimes provoke.”

In this post, we –

1. Explore the product and design roles, pointing out the differences and embracing the similarities;
2. Identify 5 best practices to exploit the tension and avoid the antagonism;
3. Realize the transformative outcomes that can result when UX + Product join forces.

Product + Design: 2 Different Roles, 1 Shared Objective

One of the biggest challenges in creating an effective working relationship between designers and product managers is reaching agreement on roles and responsibilities. Historically, the tasks each perform are sufficiently different. So it’s no surprise that product and design roles have been more clearly defined. But as these roles have evolved, their responsibilities offer complex shades of gray – which is where opportunities to collaborate thrive.

Throughout its 25-year history, ITX has partnered with thousands of clients, always seeking the optimal balance and blend of our shared capabilities. In our experience, we see product managers working with clients to realize a vision for the product. Some clients come with their vision already well articulated; others seek help from product strategists to sharpen their focus and gain alignment, commitment, and confidence around their product vision.

Because of the breadth of their perspective, product managers wrestle with tradeoffs that UX designers may not. They see the world through a maze of conflicting lenses – e.g., weighing client expectations against available budget; balancing deadlines and deliverables with scarce resources; and supporting end user workflows while avoiding feature bloat…what Jared Spool refers to as experience rot.

UX design is about solving real problems for real humans. Rich in empathy, designers research, discover, and reflect the concerns, needs, and voice of their end users. From their findings they socialize data and inform decisions for the functional expression of the product vision.

Like their PM counterparts, UX designers have their own dilemmas to navigate. They control for bias and manage assumptions by instilling an evidence-based approach and UX mindset across the entire team. The integration of continuous discovery throughout the development process is a big part of that mindset. Pausing to check back with users or pivoting based on fresh insight combats the risk of tunnel vision that can result from a strict roadmap-release plan focus. Reconciling the needs of users in the wake of stakeholder and schedule demands remains the role of UX design.

5 Tips For Product + Design To Work Collaboratively

Instead of wrangling over blurred territorial lines, we believe the best approach is to discuss openly how best to share these responsibilities. None of this happens automatically. It takes aligning the teams in ways tailored to everyone’s needs and strengths.

1. Establish a psychologically safe environment. Trust lies at the foundation of all successful relationships. But trust evaporates in environments where acts of vulnerability – i.e., asking questions, giving feedback, pointing out a mistake – are punished. “Psychological safety,” says Dr. Timothy Clark, “is the great enabler of creativity.”
2. Exploit the tension. Bringing product and design (and let’s not forget engineering) onto the same team may feel awkward at first. But if you think that’s awkward, imagine Design going off and unilaterally creating functionality that wasn’t asked for. Or Product hastily delivering an incomplete feature set. Tension is a constraint that drives creativity.
3. Share your journey. Abandon the notion that you have all the answers. One of the best ways to build trust is to allow yourself to be vulnerable. Share your work, describe your challenges, and ask for feedback. Initiate a channel to create a free flow of information.
4. Eliminate role limitations. Product success is more about what gets done than who does it. Establish a framework that identifies tasks to be completed, assigns responsible parties to execute them, and sets a feedback mechanism for reporting and collaboration.
5. Include your engineers. Product development is a team sport. Marty Cagan describes empowered teams as having a product manager, designer, and engineer. “Engineers,” he says, “are working with enabling technology every day. They see what’s possible. But executives, customers, and other stakeholders can imagine only what they can imagine.”

Bringing product, design, and engineering together may put them at odds. But their shared responsibility for product success quickly becomes a forcing function for collaboration, leading to discovery of the optimal solution.

When Product + Design Converge: Transformative Outcomes and Outputs

It’s often said that the product manager carries much of the responsibility for a product’s success, but little of the authority to bring it about.

Product management coach Rich Mironov goes a bit further: “While everyone else has carved out their own place in the organization, the product manager is the person nobody works for. And who, it often seems, works for everybody else.”

As product managers seek to clarify their role, designers want to expand theirs. Jesse James Garrett hears regularly about their desire to do more, to contribute greater value. Standing in the way, he says, is a lack of organizational support and empowerment.

How does the collaboration of product and design advance their respective missions? We believe in the following ways, whether the result of the convergence or the inspiration for it:

1. Continued maturation of Product. If product management is to continue its evolution toward strategic leadership, aspiring product leaders will enjoy greater exposure to the user perspective, and will be better positioned to incorporate it into their decisionmaking.
2. More expansive role for Design. When design leaders find the empowerment and support they’re after, good product outcomes will follow. But even more than that, their newfound influence will accelerate the structural outcomes that encourage organizations to think differently about the value UX designers bring.
3. Cultural transformation within organizations. When Product and Design converge, we see the very real potential for human-centered design to drive human-centered decision-making, which eventually brings about human-centered culture within organizations.

“You now have a level of institutional knowledge that hasn’t been possible before,” Jesse concludes. “Which means you now have an organization that operates culturally in different ways; product and design are making different decisions because they have fresh, new awareness of different factors in their decisions.”

Save the Date! ITX’s Product + Design Conference is back! June 22-23 in Rochester, NY. Learn more.

Christina Halladay is a Director of UX Design at ITX. She brings a background in Psychology and a passion for ‘people’ problems, working with distributed cross-functional teams to build impactful, human-centered digital products.

Zake Kane is a Product Strategist at ITX. His commitment to creating digital experiences that solve real-world problems for real people starts with generating alignment, confidence, and commitment around a shared product vision.

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In this episode, Bernadette joins Sean and Paul and shares her best practices for bringing an inclusive mindset to your organization, many of which are captured in her best-seller, Inclusive 360: Proven Solutions for an Equitable Organization. She “keeps it real” in this discussion and is not afraid to admit that she’s still learning, too.

“We’re all on our own learning journey, whatever it happens to be or look like,” she says. “And when leaders model that, and share a sense of their own vulnerability, it gives other folks permission to do the same.”

Bernadette presents the A-R-C Method, a framework for getting to connection before content – a mantra that drives better conversations among teams. With practice, this simple method can help you create a more inclusive environment where there is genuine learning among individuals from diverse backgrounds.

• Ask. Be curious. Learn more about another person’s perspective. Allow yourself to be vulnerable.
• Respect. Be present and attentive. Listen…actively. Trust will follow.
• Connect. We’re all on our own learning journey.

Using the A-R-C method is one way to foster the inclusion that drives innovation.

Catch the whole pod with Bernadette Smith, and bring a true DEI mindset to your organization.

Save the date! The ITX Product + Design Conference is back. June 22-23, Rochester, NY. Learn more.

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See you again in the New Year!

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Candu provides no-code web tools for SaaS apps; at its core, no-code is like products for product people. It helps non-tech-savvy product managers bring even greater impact to their teams – a sort of counter-punch to the vexing “all the responsibility, none of the authority” PM mantra.

“So often we think of building software a little bit like a sacred cow, something only a handful can do along a very prescriptive process.” Jonathan says. “Maybe it’s time to allow non-technical people – like product managers, growth teams, maybe even customer teams – to actually build some of these interfaces themselves.”

No-code, low-code tools help transform passive, receive-only PMs just waiting for requirements to fall from on high into more engaged product builders. We’re better positioned to shift the development effort upstream and figure out where that cut-off is – when the “bad” version of our software is still good enough to ship.

Be sure to catch the whole conversation with Jonathan Anderson; and don’t forget about our 100^th Podcast Episode Book Giveaway. Enter for your chance to win!

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As Jesse explains in this – the 100^th episode of the Product Momentum Podcast – “The exciting thing is that many product leaders are finding the way to gain the empowerment and the support and the leverage to drive not just good product outcomes, but organizational outcomes that fundamentally shift the way these organizations approach and think about what they do.”

Product leaders are forever balancing the technical realities of what it takes to deliver a good product with the market realities of the business model, the competitive landscape, and customer realities, he continues. “And what I’m seeing are product leaders turning to design as a way to deepen their expertise … around that customer piece of the equation,” Jesse adds. “The designers who are elevating into those more senior leadership roles are the ones who are able to frame design in terms of its ability to deliver value around user insight more than around delivery.”

Sean and Paul chat with Jesse not to wax nostalgic about the early days of UX, but instead to discuss the growing influence that human-centered design is having on human-centered decision-making, which eventually brings about a human-centered culture within organizations.

Listen in to hear more tips from Jesse James Garrett about strategic leadership and the role of design in delivering value in this 100^th episode of Product Momentum.

You can also watch our conversation with Jesse James Garrett on the Product Momentum YouTube channel!

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ITX was a proud sponsor for this event, and team members from across the company – and around the globe – participated. With 24 hours of interesting panels and world-renown experts sharing their experiences, our team was eager to participate and absorb and learn all that we could.

So, what did we learn at WordPress Accessibility Day?

“Accessibility is not about tech – it’s about people.”

Nicolas Steenhout, keynote speaker, offered this declaration during the event’s first session. Not to dimmish the impact that technology has on creating an accessible space, but to remind us – designers, developers, users – that we shouldn’t be using the technology to create even more confusion for users.

It’s a similar sentiment shared by recent Product Momentum Podcast guest Sheri Byrne-Haber, and both of these accessibility champions possess the tenure to speak with authority on the subject. Steenhout is a pioneer in web accessibility, having worked in this community since the mid-90s. While today he serves as a consultant for private and non-profit organizations, he still remembers the “aha” moments early in his career that encouraged him to pay close attention to accessibility going forward.

In his professional work, Steenhout encounters clients and customers who, despite their interest in improving their product’s accessibility, remain resistant to change. He hears a common question – “how many disabled people are there?” He explains that the clients who ask this aren’t really asking for a number, they’re gauging whether accessibility is a worthwhile investment or not.

To that, Steenhout counters with questions of his own, for example: “What is the oldest browser you support? What is the percentage of visits you get from that browser?” These data-driven queries set up the fact that the small percentage of users who utilize an older browser is dwarfed in comparison to the number of users with disabilities in the world.

We love creative explanations and responses, and this is a particularly powerful reply to clients who are looking at every factor of accessibility but excluding the people they should be serving.

“Would you build your office space without a doorknob?”

A silly question, for sure. But one that brings perspective to a conversation with clients. Because of course they wouldn’t – how would anyone get into the building? It was the question raised in “Selling Accessibility to Skeptical Clients.” The panel, featuring Colleen Gratzer, Chris Hinds, and Rob Howard, explored how they are navigating the conversation around implementing accessibility with particularly difficult clients.

As Steenhout mentioned in his keynote, clients and prospects can be wary when adopting accessibility. Some may be unaware of the rich benefits; others may be hesitant due to the corresponding price tag. Still others daunted by the idea of starting from scratch.

Consultants face an uphill battle when convincing wary clients to design with accessibility. If they don’t have the reasons to prove why digital accessibility is important, or if they are dealing with particularly stubborn clients, the panelists agreed that you can’t force the issue.

Usually, a question about doorknobs is the enlightening query that convinces anyone who’s listening why accessibility should be a vital component of a website or product. If that doesn’t work, they advise establishing clear guidelines as to why they are making the design choices, and work to the best of their ability.

“People are not aware of the experience of using the web with a screen reader.”

This was the opening remark from Lazar Bulatovic. “Since I started being part of the accessibility community, I was shocked on one side and amazed on the other.” In the “Boost up conversions with accessible eCommerce” panel, Lazar joined Anne-Mieke Bovelett and Piccia Neri to demonstrate to the audience the experience of using the internet with a screen reader.

An obvious obstacle appeared instantly. As Lazar navigated to a website and turned on his screen reader, we were all stunned when the voice reader began reciting the descriptive text without pause. An onslaught of information with no rhyme or reason.

The culprit was a slider on the homepage with an automatic transition feature. As soon as the screen reader finished with the descriptive text on one slide, it was time to recite the text on the next. It was chaotic and distracting, to say the least.

An error on the company’s side, one that should hopefully be remedied soon. (Note: At the time of writing this blog, the slider was still on the webpage.)

ITX attendees were particularly interested when we noticed this eCommerce-centric panel on the WordPress Accessibility Day schedule. We have experience working on eCommerce projects, and we wanted to better understand the common challenges through the lens of the visually impaired user. We didn’t expect to witness such an egregious error right out the gate, but it was a powerful demonstration of the challenges that users who rely on screen readers face daily.

“Alt-text isn’t just for visually impaired users.”

Why should we use alt-text?

Alt-text is a tool to aid users who are unable to see or understand an image on a webpage. While it was developed to provide information that a screen reader can recite for users, there are other benefits to this tool, according to Meg Miller. They shared this line of thinking in their panel, “The Alt Scene: When and How to Write Alternative Text.”

• Search Engine Optimization: Search engine crawlers scour pages to properly rank them in search engines. The more information on a page related to what a user is searching for, the better that page will rank. An image that has related and descriptive alt-text will bolster your page’s ranking.
• Slow loading pages: If a page crashes before all elements are fully loaded, images are left behind with a blank shape left in its place. In these situations, alt-text loads instead, so all users can understand what the image was meant to be, instead of wondering what it could be.

Meg provided examples of what bad, good, and great alt-text looks like, as well as advice on when to use it and what to write. Their presentation empowered our team as we create more content that will be designed to serve all users.

“Perfect is the enemy of good.”

Listening to the various subject-matter experts share their knowledge and experiences on WordPress Accessibility Day filled our team with new information and fervent inspiration. We joined the various panels to deepen our knowledge in our roles and help us grow as we provide value-creating service. Our expectations were exceeded.

If you came away from WordPress Accessibility Day feeling overwhelmed by the volume and complexity of the information shared, you’re in good company. But fear not.

And keep in mind a piece of advice from Anne-Mieke Bovelett: “Perfect is the enemy of good.” Attempting to tackle all aspects of accessibility at once is daunting. Identify each need one at a time, and work with a team to address those needs one at a time. Research various guides, resources, and tools that will enable you to get started with creating accessible products and experiences.

Getting involved in different communities and attending events like WordPress Accessibility Day is a valuable way to connect with other passionate learners who seek to create rich experiences for all.

Need Help?

We would be more than happy to get you started on a path to accessible design. ITX offers a variety of services including website audits, and 1:1 consultation. Get started today.

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More blind spot than flaw, the fragility of AI is nuance that algorithms cannot now account for. Ironically, even paradoxically, AI requires interaction with humans to reveal its true power. Thought of in this way, AI quickly becomes more approachable. It’s really thinking about the people who build the tool, those who interpret its suggestions and predictions, and all the lives impacted by the outcomes down the road. Dipanwita shares some examples relating to human health.

Dipanwita continues: “So it goes right back to us in how we’re collecting and organizing the data, how we’re designing the products, how we are applying this AI, and then what we are doing with its suggestions that will determine the end outcome.”

Anything we have not factored in, she explains, we have to account for somewhere else. If you don’t, you invite uncertainty as to whether the AI-driven product feature will perform as it needs to.

“AI is neither the silver bullet nor is it a demon,” Dipanwita concludes. “It is, at the end of the day, a tool, like anything else in software, to help us do our jobs better.”

Catch the entire podcast with Dipanwita Das as she joins ITX co-hosts Paul Gebel and Roberta Oare to discuss –

• The role of bias in data collection and interpretation, and gaps it creates
• The impact of nuance on user experience design
• Criteria for finding the right balance of AI + Human Interaction
• Sorcero’s “human in the loop” approach – a built-in touchpoint where an expert is able to give active feedback.

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November 10, 2022 Rochester, NY – ITX won Tech Company of the Year honors at TechRochester’s GREAT Awards last night. The award, presented by the local non-profit trade organization for the technology industry, “recognizes excellence in achieving an engaged and productive workforce and for a company focused on the development or manufacturing of technology within the Greater Rochester Area.” Previously known as the “Best Tech Workplace Award,” this was the second consecutive year ITX was named as the top technology employer in Rochester.

The distinction carries special meaning this year, as ITX celebrates its 25th birthday. Learn more about ITX’s path to 25 years.

ITX continues to experiment, learn, and grow, while eagerly sharing its knowledge along the way. The company is currently adding to its global team of technology professionals and product specialists; remote-friendly opportunities can be found here: www.itx.com/careers.

About ITX Corp.

ITX helps mid- to large-sized companies solve complex business challenges through user experience and product development, delivering software solutions that build trust, loyalty, and advocacy. Founded 25 years ago and headquartered in Rochester, NY, ITX now celebrates 250+ product professionals and technologists across the U.S, throughout the Americas, and around the world.

Career inquiries: 585.899.4888

Media Inquiries: Kyle Psaty, Vice President of Marketing | 585.899.4895

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Experience is what creates sustainable competitive advantage. This is the nature of competition.

I was recently given some amazing feedback on a talk that I gave to a group of CEOs in Oklahoma. I took too long and added too many details to my opening story before I explained the context and reason for the story. The CEO who provided the feedback was lost and found himself wondering where I was going. He found himself wandering off. I sometimes get lost in the story when I am speaking and often lose track of my audience. It is not good.

That feedback caused me to seriously revamp the opening of my speech, starting with some direct context early on in the speech. The last couple of talks I gave since the revamp were markedly better and gained more powerful, early engagement from the CEO groups. I was able to turn that feedback into gold immediately. In my early business career, that would not have been the case for me. This is the result of learning how to celebrate feedback when I get it. (p.s. I sent the CEO a small gift to thank him in this case.)

For the last several decades, I have been leading teams that build enterprise software applications. I have watched hundreds of teams build products, some of which succeeded and some of which failed. One of the distinguishing features of successful teams is how they handle constructive feedback from their customers, stakeholders, and users. Successful teams thoroughly and passionately embrace feedback. They dig into it, dive into root cause discussions, and determine how they will learn from it. The very best teams celebrate it when they get really meaty, detailed feedback. I’ve observed a very different pattern amongst unsuccessful teams.

What typically happens when teams receive constructive feedback about their work?

What I have observed is that the team’s behavior follows very closely the Elizabeth Kubler-Ross grief cycle. Teams faced with negative feedback go through each stage of the cycle, in turn. My conjecture is that this occurs for a few obvious reasons. Teams of people spend eight hours or more a day working on their products and services. One-third of their day, most days of their working lives. I equate it to calling their baby “ugly.” It is a perfectly natural response to having your work criticized. Here are the stages, as I have observed them:

1.Denial: They are somewhat shocked and in a state of denial. “How could that have happened?” is commonly heard.

2. Anger: They get angry, sometimes at the customer, sometimes at themselves, but they usually express some sense of frustration and anger.

3. Bargaining: They try to negotiate and downplay the impact of the problem. “It’s not that big of a deal,” “The customer is overreacting,” or “We can deal with this later.”

4.Sadness: They recognize the error and think through the root causes. They enter a state of remorse and sadness for the errors and omissions that led to the problem.

5.Acceptance: They realize they have to address the problem in some way.

Most of the teams I have observed clean up the mess that was made, eventually. However, instead of keying in on the learning, celebrating it, building the learnings into their systems, and sharing the learnings with other teams, they tend to carefully sweep these incidents under the rug. On underperforming teams, you will see this pattern where the teams do not want to talk about their flaws, errors, and mistakes out loud. The problems get quietly resolved and teams promptly move on to the next challenge of the day and forget about looking for the learnings. Maybe it happens because they are worried about embarrassment, perception, or worse, a black mark on their performance review. This is a huge, missed opportunity.

The key here is that learning really doesn’t start until after they start to look for the root causes, after the acceptance phase of the Elizabeth Kubler-Ross cycle.

As a result of this phenomenon, the amount of business value via both hard labor expenses and missed opportunity costs can be profound. There is no productive business value created in the time spent below the line. It is all waste, represented by the red hashed area of the graph. No business value is created until something is learned and it creates sustainable value if that learning is integrated into the business’s systems, processes, and products.

When leaders set the example of celebrating constructive feedback and the learning that results, teams learn to buck this trend. It can be as simple as teaching your teams to identify the emotions associated with having their work criticized so that they can identify the cycle in action, earlier. When they can see it, they can change their behavior and move through the cycles faster, getting to the learning and integration of the learning into systems and processes faster.

Constructive feedback is an expected behavior when you have authentic advocates. Advocates are the people who are invested in your long-term success. They demonstrate that they care about your future when they invest the time from their busy days to tell you how badly you screwed up and they offer up ideas about how to fix it. These behaviors deserve to be celebrated when you see them. Thriving teams recognize this and capitalize on it in profound ways. Often, they will engage the customer in the resolution process and in fixing the systems that led to the problem. When teams have incorporated systems for productively handling constructive feedback and are operating really well, they celebrate the learnings and the requisite innovations that result from their customers, completing the cycle.

Not all feedback is useful. Some feedback, particularly the kind that comes from people who do not care about your collective future, might be cataloged under “complaints.” You know what this feedback looks like because it doesn’t typically carry any thoughtful or helpful information that can help you improve. Often, when you get complaints from people who are not advocates, they often don’t give that feedback to you. They give it to everyone or anyone else who will listen or worse, they may post it in a public forum. You should listen to this feedback as well, but give more weight to the feedback that you get from the customers who demonstrate that they care about your success and demonstrate positive intent to improve, together.

Knowing how to tell the difference between complaints and authentically delivered constructive feedback is a powerful muscle that needs to be developed if you want to develop a culture that innovates. When your teams break this cycle and the learning accelerates, your organization will realize the business value of the feedback much more quickly as demonstrated in the green hashed area in the graph below.

Notice there is still a red area, as I do not think it is reasonable to expect that we can eliminate this cycle. It is a normal part of human processing, and we will be better off if we embrace and acknowledge that it is going to happen. The goal here is to improve our conversations about feedback and to reduce the amount of time and energy expended beneath the line.

Here is a list of things you can experiment with as a leader to foster faster integration of learning from constructive feedback:

• Model the behavior. If you are not modeling these behaviors yourself, they will not stick. Celebrate when you get constructive feedback and identify the cycle within yourself. Do it out loud with your team.
• Teach your teams this cycle. Once they have awareness of the cycle, it is impossible to ignore and you may find that they want to celebrate it when they see it and even create some humor around it.
• Create the space in your ceremonies for constructive feedback review, celebration, learning, and integration. Purposefully integrate feedback processing into your meetings, especially recurring meetings.
• Formally measure the receipt of constructive feedback as a positive force in your organization.

• Celebrate the learnings broadly by finding ways to tell stories about the learnings and resulting innovations.
• Include your advocate customers in the process wherever possible. It reinforces the relationship and strengthens the bond.

If you liked this, clap, share widely, and let me know how it works for you. I promise to honor your feedback.

References:

On Grief and Grieving, by Elizabeth Kubler Ross.

An Advocacy Strategy is Nutrition for Your Culture, by Sean Flaherty.

Bragging Rights, How to Pull Customers Over the Advocacy Threshold, by Sean Flaherty.

The Effective Executive, by Peter Drucker.

Sean Flaherty is Executive Vice President of Innovation at ITX, where he leads a passionate group of product specialists and technologists to solve client challenges. Developer of The Momentum Framework, Sean is also a prolific writer and award-winning speaker discussing the subjects of empathy, innovation, and leadership. 

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In this episode of Product Momentum, Sheri joins Paul Gebel and guest co-host Collene Burns, ITX’s VP of Global Talent. She explains what happens when the why of product design comes before the what. You’re free to escape a rigid checklist mentality and naturally consider how your product will be experienced in the world. When you hire the best and brightest – regardless of ability – accessible design outcomes follow because the teams are diverse. You start to see it in the DNA of the products they develop.

In our conversation, Sheri also discusses the implications that new technologies have on accessibility. “Technology is moving faster than our ethical use can keep up,” she says. She adds that we can close the gap by building teams who think about all the humans who use their products, and designing experiences that actually solve the problem the product is trying to solve.

Sheri Byrne-Haber is a prominent global thought leader in the fields of engineering, accessibility, and inclusion.  A senior accessibility architect at VMware, she was recently named a LinkedIn Top Voice for Social Impact 2022.

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Set objective, behavior-based, metrics for both individual and team competence to keep everyone growing.

One day, I had a good friend call my cell and say, “I need a team that can pick up the pieces from another vendor. I need help getting these small features out the door in three months or I’m going to lose my job. Can you help me?” For context, the teams I work with have been building software products for two and a half decades and this has happened on more than a few occasions. This time, my team had worked on this technology platform before, and, represented confidently that they would be able to knock the project “out of the park.” Everyone on my team expressed confidence that this was a no-brainer. You might guess where this is going next.

We did not deliver. Not even close. I will spare you the details of my friend’s professional fate, but it was not a good result. The problem, as I see it, wasn’t malicious intent. No one on my team was lying about their perception of their skills. We asked good questions. We even probed deeply into the causes of the prior vendor’s failure. We thought we had done a thorough assessment of the current state of the system. The team authentically believed that it would be easy. The raw subjectivity that comes along with this territory makes it difficult to lead well. Additionally, the business of building software products is a competitive, high-pressure environment and the incentives are often organized to inadvertently pit vendors against clients.

We would have been able to successfully build the features and save this friend’s tail if we had been more objective about our assessment of our skills. We would have had a much better chance of filling the competence gaps.

On teams where skills are objectively measured, confidence soars, and teams thrive.

When team skills are objectively assessed, they naturally have more confidence in each other and in the team as a unit. I served on an aircraft carrier during the first Persian Gulf conflict, worked on F-14 Tomcats, and got a close look at how skills are assessed in this high-stakes environment. Three decades ago, when I served, this was something that the Navy did really well. There were rigid and obsessively objective standards for knowledge and skills. You had to pass tests and demonstrate your competence, have it checked and double-checked, multiple times in order to move up in rank. There were many sets of eyes on your demonstrated level of competence. It was an expensive process to manage, but given the life-or-death consequences of the work, it was necessary and it worked well. An aircraft carrier is one of the most complex feats of human engineering ever accomplished. The amount of human coordination is astounding.

In the modern VUCA (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, & Ambiguity) business world, many of the skills our teams need to innovate are hard to come by or don’t exist yet. Objectively determining competence under ever-changing circumstances is very hard to do. In many cases, by the time you work up a way to test people effectively, you have to change the test. In addition, it is often the people skills that are more valuable than the hard skills. These skills are often context-dependent and can be really hard to measure with a standardized testing instrument. However, all skills can be observed and demonstrated in the wild.

It is imperative for teams to know where they are, objectively, in order to predict success with any degree of accuracy. Unfortunately, we have blind spots. We often tell ourselves stories and create a sense of false confidence that leads to uncomfortable situations. Let’s explore where these come from.

Blind Spots And Fallacies

One way to think about our perceived competence is to plot on a graph what we believe others know vs. what we believe we know. In 1955, two psychologists, Joseph Luft and Harrington Ingram described this phenomenon as the “Johari Window”. The model helps people better understand their relationship with what they know and what they don’t know. The model can also be extended in the context of competence for a team, an organization, or a group of people. Near the origin are the things that we believe to have a solid, measurable understanding of. These are the things that are well-known by both our team and others outside of our group. This is the arena in which we compete and is represented by the green area in the graph below. These are our known, knowns.

We also have areas we don’t know: our blind spots. Think of our blind spots as those things we believe others know that we do not. We might know they are out there, but we have not yet mastered the things in this domain. This is represented by the purple area in the diagram above. In the bottom-right portion of the chart are the things we think we know, that others do not. This region is labeled as the façade because we too often overestimate the knowledge and skills of our teams and what we think we know. Our egos sometimes work hard to defend this region. It is safer to assume that others possess the knowledge in question so that we keep an open mind and a growth mindset.

The next two regions that are important to understand in this chart are the known unknown region, beneath the green dashed line, and the near-infinite unknown unknowns region. Thinking in this way keeps us focused on building and planning for adaptability so that we don’t get pigeonholed by an unpredictable event in our unknown future. Authentic and meaningful competence — i.e., building our stock of known knowns — is how we achieve adaptability and agility as an organization. Based on what we and others know, we can attain the confidence to experiment with other pathways to success. On complex problems, the pathways have to be invented. Teams stay motivated by keeping their eye on the mission without getting paralyzed by the complexities lying in the way. It takes meaningful competence to turn our chaos into more predictable progress.

Meaningful Competence

Creating an adaptable organization relies on building tiers of competence in your team. The more complicated the work you do, the more important it is to work on improving the competence of the people working on it. The ability to build systems that build competence in people will be a competitive advantage for your organization. When your team members are learning new skills and they attribute that to their work, they enjoy their work more and spend more time in “flow.” This will have real economic value in the short term, measured by the quality of the work that gets done improves and in your team retention metrics. In the long term, it will ensure that your organization remains adaptable. In most domains, a group of people building competence is exponentially more valuable for the ecosystem than any single person achieving that competence. Some exceptions to this might be domains that value individual contributions over the needs of the organization, like purely artistic endeavors or pure research and development organizations.

People who grow, learn, and contribute to a meaningful goal are more intrinsically motivated and thus, more creative. The role of competence in any human ecosystem is crucial to understanding and evolving. In the handbook of Self Determination Theory, Edward Deci and Richard Ryan describe competence as the difference between “I think” and “I know.” When you have meaningful competence, you can apply it to accomplish a shared goal from the perspective of others. It is only when others, either colleagues or some objective third party whose concerns you are meeting, agree that we have accomplished something, can we objectively claim some level of competence. If you accomplish something, but it doesn’t add value to the ecosystem, it is not meaningful to the ecosystem. Likewise, if no one else agrees that you are capable, it is not yet reliable and therefore, not yet meaningful competence.

Conscious Competence

Another of my favorite age-old frameworks for understanding how mastery works is Martin Broadwell’s framework for learning. He claims that we start as novices — assuming we see knowledge we want to acquire. We consciously learn as we practice. Over time, we build habits and patterns into our way of working or being until we master that knowledge — an “unconscious competence” occurs for us. We move clockwise around the diagram, beginning in the lower left quadrant and ending in the bottom right quadrant of mastery. Mastery of any domain takes time to learn and, in most cases, someone to observe and learn from.

Authentic Competence

Competence appears more like an “S-curve” of learning for organizations. The Competence Continuum, shown below, is an attempt to integrate previous models about how people learn in a way that allows us to deconstruct knowledge. As a result, we can support the learning process and shift the entire curve to the left, allowing our teams to gain competence faster.

As you progress along the continuum toward mastery, you can break mastery up into six, measurable stages. Each stage has an important threshold that allows you to measure whether or not it has been objectively achieved. When those criteria are met, it demonstrates the achievement of the corresponding level of competence. I call this the competence continuum.

Ground zero (Awareness) shows the point at which you are first exposed to the domain of knowledge. Each stage of learning takes time. After you achieve “mastery,” you realize that the line continues into infinity. There are always next-level “unknown-unknowns” to conquer.

Let’s talk about the six stages. I used an alliteration with “A’s” to make it more memorable:

Awareness. Achieving awareness exposes the learner to language that provides access to the basic concepts, facts, and content. This allows the learner to begin building a sense of familiarity, and they soon become conscious of the fact that they are incompetent in the domain. This is the beginning of their journey. At this stage, it is critical to the consumer’s mindset to make them aware that the domain of competence is both accessible and achievable. For example, if you want to move the needle on “diversity and inclusion” in the workplace, building competence in your team around what “diversity and inclusion” means is a key foundational step. You have to first expose them to the concepts and the language that surrounds diversity and inclusion. They have to be aware that the problem exists, and they have to believe that they can do something about it to consider learning more about it.

The Appreciation Threshold: the point at which learners determine that they care about this domain of competence enough to try to understand and learn more about it. This demonstrates that they are ready to take the next step. You might measure that they have reached this stage because they have made a time commitment to look into it.

Appreciation. At this stage, the learners understand the basic concept exists. But the learners have not yet put what they’ve learned into action yet. They don’t actively use the information to make decisions because they have not yet connected to the purpose and have not yet decided to adopt it. Our job as leaders is to connect learners to the purpose of the knowledge or skill. We need to inspire them to want to learn it. Another key to the appreciation phase is the growth mindset. The learner has to believe that they can attain the skill or knowledge. If they enter this phase with a fixed mindset, they are doomed to fail. That’s because people don’t learn linearly. As they consciously practice, they will make mistakes on their way to conscious competence.

The Adoption Threshold: learners cross the “Adoption Threshold” when they self-determine that they care enough about this domain of competence to incorporate it into their lives and adapt their behavior to gain knowledge or skills through learning and practice. You might measure that they have reached this stage because someone else has observed them accomplishing it or utilizing the knowledge in the wild.

How to Objectively Measure Appreciation:

• Has a stated or written, SMART goal for learning the thing.
• Has demonstrated progress toward learning the thing.

Adoption. The magic really starts when we recall the information or content at the appropriate times without external triggers. This is competence in action. We can put the knowledge to work to make decisions and, as a result, our personal behavior changes. We have made the knowledge our own. We do things right and we actively learn the language or skills required to adapt and adopt behaviors and knowledge, as well as assimilate the competence into our work and our lives.

The Application Threshold: learners cross the “Application Threshold” when they demonstrate that they have learned the skills or gained the necessary knowledge. You might measure that they have reached this stage because multiple people have observed and provided feedback on them accomplishing it or utilizing the competence in the wild.

How to Objectively Measure Adoption:

• Recognized by their peers as having successfully done the thing at least once.
• Recognized externally as having successfully done the thing.
• Recognized by an externally validated third party, like a certification.

Application. Mastery only comes with practice and time. This is the origin of the 10,000 rule of mastery in any domain. The rote application of a skillset over a period of time, in the arena, is where authentic confidence is built. This is the point at which the learner has demonstrated many times that they are able to apply the knowledge or skill consistently. In this phase, the learner actively stays in the “zone” of learning and improving different nuances of knowledge or skill. They recognize when they have mastered part of the domain and are growing bored and they seek out new learning. Alternatively, they recognize where their knowledge or skill gaps are causing them frustration and put their heads down to overcome the challenges at hand.

The Advancement Threshold: when a learner puts their personal seal of approval on the content, shares concepts they have learned in conversations with others, and learns to teach the concepts, they begin to help spread awareness. At this point, they have crossed the “Advancement Threshold.” You might measure that they have reached this stage because multiple people have provided feedback that they taught or purposefully exposed others to the domain in the wild.

How to Objectively Measure Application:

• Recognized by their peers as having successfully done the thing multiple times.
• Recognized externally as having successfully done the thing multiple times.
• Acknowledge as reliably capable of doing the thing by others.

Advancement. This is a high form of engagement with knowledge. It occurs when learners initiate conversations with others in the context of the knowledge to move the needle on performance. This is where you start to build competence in a community or people. When we have engaged others and created an impact beyond ourselves, we have gained momentum within the context of the ideas and are turning them into wisdom through sharing. It is in this phase that the consumer of knowledge turns into a teacher and sharer of that domain of knowledge.

The Amplification Threshold: When your community begins to experiment with new ways of executing, training, or improving the value delivered in the domain, they have crossed the “Amplification Threshold.” When they care enough about the domain to reach for an even better result and work to improve the domain, this is a powerful form of mastery. You might measure that they have reached this stage because they have been recognized by their peers or by the outside for their contributions to the domain.

How to Objectively Measure Advancement:

• Recognized by their peers as having trained others in the domain.
• Recognized externally as having demonstrated proficiency in the domain.
• Demonstrated evangelism of the knowledge.

Amplification. Momentum occurs when we work to improve the domain of knowledge through thoughtful experimentation. Some of these experiments result in innovations that improve the performance of the system. This is the evolution of competence. When we have engaged others and have worked to improve the domain for others, we have gone beyond what is expected and are creating ways to accelerate the learning and the craft. At this stage, we experiment with ways to improve access to the ideas, advance the ideas, and take the skills to higher levels. The amplification stage is the holy grail for competence-building in any domain. Our goal should be to maximize the number of people in our ecosystem that reach this stage. Our longer-term goal is to collapse the timeline in which competence is achieved, moving the curve to the left.

How to Objectively Measure Amplification:

• Recognized by their peers as having advanced the domain by teaching better practices.
• Recognized through an award or third-party acknowledgment of accomplishment.
• Confirmed contribution to training materials or process documentation.

These levels can be put into a matrix or a spreadsheet to show where each member of your team is with respect to their objective level of competence. You can then roll your skillsets up to give you a view of your organizational competence.

I have seen too many instances of “competence surveys” that lead to inauthentic conversations and bruised egos. Attempts to assess competence that are based on subjective surveys are better than nothing, but an objective, observation-based, and validated approach is much more meaningful for your organization, will breed confidence, and will reduce organizational politics and posturing.

Confidence and Overconfidence

I have met many business leaders and entrepreneurs in my travels and career. The successful ones are those who know how to ride this line of competence and confidence masterfully. Leaders offer a bold vision of the future — even if the leader isn’t sure that this vision is perfect. The team will build its competence — and everyone’s confidence — as they learn and create to achieve the vision. A proper vision and an environment where people can safely experiment, grow, and learn, can lead to unbelievable accomplishments.

On the other hand, I have seen dramatic failures when overconfidence is taken to the extreme and teams are sent on death marches with no chance of success. This is often because their leaders are either not aware of their confidence levels or not focused on powerfully growing their people and teams along the way. It is important to keep a finger on the pulse of your team so you can ride the line and support their confidence without them becoming overconfident.

When leaders understand their blind spots, they can plan to learn and refine their vision of the future, based on the teams’ deliverables. When teams understand their own blind spots, they can see what else they need to learn. The more transparency and objectivity we create around competency levels, the more our teams can achieve over time, as they learn. Progress and success rely on having proven competence, a growth mindset, and the confidence to create an environment that allows our teams to learn and achieve even more.

If you liked this, clap, share widely, and let me know how it works for you. I promise to honor your feedback.

References:

Objective Prioritization is Impossible, Sean Flaherty (2019).

Flow, Czikszentmihalyy, Mihaly (2008).

Blink, Malcolm Gladwell (2005).

Insanely Simple, Segall, Ken (2012) (Note: In his story about Steve Jobs, he describes the “Reality Distortion Field” created by Jobs that people were able to step into to create products that didn’t exist before.).

Teaching for learning (XVI), Broadwell, Martin M. (1969).

“The Johari window, a graphic model of interpersonal awareness,” Luft, J.; Ingham, H. (1955).

Proceedings of the Western Training Laboratory in Group Development. (Note: This is a graphic model of interpersonal awareness. I am extending it to groups in this article).

Mindset, Carol Dweck (2006).

The Handbook of Self Determination Theory, Ed Deci and Richard Ryan (2004).

Sean Flaherty is Executive Vice President of Innovation at ITX, where he leads a passionate group of product specialists and technologists to solve client challenges. Developer of The Momentum Framework, Sean is also a prolific writer and award-winning speaker discussing the subjects of empathy, innovation, and leadership. 

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In this episode of the Product Momentum Podcast, Kent Weathers joins Paul Gebel and asks us product people to imagine for a moment a world without waste – specifically, the staggering 70% of the estimated $6.8 trillion investment that companies will make in digital transformation in 2023 (HBR). As product managers, our role must be to teach organizations not only how to build things better – but also how to build better things.

“That’s what product management does; that’s the missing component,” he adds.

Despite making tremendous progress in recent years, professional development for product managers has been slowed. Not by the scarcity of training/learning options for them, but “by organizations that unintentionally prevent them from doing good product work.” Kent’s mission (and, by association, APP’s) is to empower product people to do what they know to do by helping C-suites structure their organizations and develop their processes around product.

The key is to develop within the organization a product management practice, Kent explains. “A practice is about aligning all the necessary product functions and all the functional heads around good, sound product management and then developing a culture where people are empowered, where they’re trusted, where they know what to do.”

The end result, he adds, is an organization that can unleash the power that product management brings to the table. “Without it,” he concludes, “they’ll never actually see the true value of product.”

Catch the entire episode to learn more about Kent’s and APP’s shared approach:

• Problem. Unlike the fields of law, accounting, and education (among others), no clear standards exist that guide candidates and prospective employers where product managers are in their careers.
• Action. Through APP, Kent is working to get all the voices together to create – and codify – industry-standard best practices for the field of product management.

• Objective. Provide a genuine assessment of where product managers are in their careers, and what hiring managers should be looking for, to optimize the PMs’ fit within their organizations.

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