THE PROBLEM-SOLUTION SPACE

Products exist to solve problems. So, what happens when you don’t have a clear understanding of the problems you’re attempting to solve? In short, you may develop a “solution” that fails to ease your customers’ major pain points. 

WATCH ON-DEMAND

What You Will Learn

Ken Feehan shares how he spent half of his career as a Product Manager in meetings with developers trying to convince them to take his direction on how to solve the customer’s problem. They didn’t want to. But then a mentor suggested a different approach: Focus on illuminating the actual customer instead. Genius!  

Heeding this advice, Ken began to communicate in writing the customer problems and personas during team meetings with developers. In doing so, he was suddenly more influential and valued, and the team started producing superior products they all wanted. Now, it’s his mission to share this approach with other Product Managers, and help them bring superior products to market, as well. 

Join the experts for the “problem side” of Product Management. They’ll show how to use personas to drive beyond flimsy feature requests, and how to uncover the actual “job" that customers would gladly pay you to do for them. When you get clear about those customers and the problems they need to solve, you are ready to “walk on the problem side,” leveraging a refreshed and creative relationship with your development team.    


Key takeaways:
  • How to break the cycle of being ignored in meetings with developers.
  • The effectiveness of using personas and interviews to understand the customer problem.
  • How you can inspire your team to build better products in less time by being the champion of the “customer problem.” 

About the Presenters

Ken Feehan

Ken Feehan

Principal Trainer and Consultant, 280 Group

Ken has deep experience in both the product development and Go-To-Market phases of the product cycle. He has worked/consulted to hardware, software, cloud, infrastructure and services companies and understands the business needs of each. Ken has worked and/or consulted for large companies and for start-ups. He has experience with cradle-to-grave lifecycle management at hardware companies, felt the pressure of product launch at start-ups, performed forecasting and Product Management for Dolby as it went public, and performed as the Product Owner in fast-moving Agile teams. He has worked with hardware, software, services, apps, cloud and enterprise companies.

Rina Alexin

Rina Alexin

CEO, 280 Group

Rina is the CEO of 280 Group. She began her career at McKinsey & Company as an analyst on the credit portfolio team, offering trading recommendations to hedge against credit and interest rate exposure. She then joined MetLife’s Global Leadership Development Program, focusing on employee recognition programs and removing roadblocks to support intrapreneurship in the Latin America Office of Innovation. Rina joined the 280 Group with a focus on bringing transformative change to organizations by arming product people with the right tools and skills to do great product management.