Welcome to Toucan’s Product Management Masterclass!
We’re grateful for the privilege of bringing you insights from our amazing community of product experts.
Today, we get to hear from our very own Charles Miglietti, Toucan’s CEO and Chief Product Officer!
Charles has offered some fascinating insights on productivity hacks, challenges, and the qualities that many strong products share – we hope you enjoy it!
Happy reading 🤓
- 1. Tell us a bit about yourself!
I’m 33, and a father of 3! I like cooking a lot, listening to music, hiking and spending time with my family.
- 2. In one word or one sentence, how would you describe your product management style?
Pragmatic
- 3. How did you get into product management?
I was a technical co-founder (of Toucan) and quickly found myself taking ownership of driving the product roadmap. I’ve never looked back!
- 4. What are one or two things you typically do during the first hour of your day that leads to a productive day?
I review my priorities for the day, answer my ongoing requests, and make sure to clean my emails.
- 5. How would you explain Product Management to a 5-year-old?
Product management is the art of choosing the one best thing to build given a huge box of Lego pieces!
- 6. What’s one of your biggest challenges in product management today?
Aligning the priorities of our stakeholders and assessing the impact of what’s being released.
- 7. What are the qualities of a great product manager?
Many of the great product managers I’ve met are: pragmatic, organized, can visualize themselves in a user flow, and always take inspiration from their daily experiences to continually innovate.
- 8. What has made you successful in your role?
Once again: pragmatism 🙂
Knowing when to say no, going beyond solution/implementation, and digging for critical needs to design simple solutions.
- 9. How do you decide what (or what to not) to build? To buy?
It depends if it’s core for my platform or not, and if there are existing solutions already available that cover my needs.I did a webinar on the build vs. buy topic that digs a bit deeper into this.
- 10. How can PMs stay ahead of user requirements, or make sure they’re aware of them early?
By constantly conducting user interviews, analyzing how people use the software, and discussing what they don’t do on the platform to determine how to improve usage.
- 11. How would you prioritize your resources when you have two important things to do but can’t do them both?
I prioritize based on a few factors:
- The client impact
- The time/cost required to do something
- The impact of not doing something
- Alternative solutions that are available
- 12. One of your highest-paying customers demands a feature from you that isn’t on your roadmap…what do you do?
I don’t say yes to everything, but I aim to understand their concerns and integrate something in the roadmap that serves everyone’s interests (usually by digging further into the needs and not by developing the exact implementation that that customer has in mind).
- 13. Quickfire: what qualities make a good product? Any tips and tricks for our readers for building a better product?
Focus on:
- Impact on your users
- How you automate workflows
- Daily tasks that would be a burden without you
- 14. What aspects of product management do you find the most exciting? The least?
The most exciting part for me is setting the roadmap and prioritizing in real-time. The least… is the actual delivery of the feature with daily meetings, user testings, bug fixing etc.
- 15. Tell me about how you interact with customers/users?
I always run casual interviews with buyers and users, constantly ask for feedback, and do my best to cultivate relationships with them that encourage a feedback culture.
- 16. What is one best practice you’ve adopted/applied in the last few months that had a positive impact on your role? How has it helped you?
I’ve given a clearer scope and objectives to my product managers. It helped me organize the user journey and make sure that each step of the process had precise ownership.
- 17. What are some common mistakes you see product teams making?
I see teams ship products too late, thinking “we must get X, Y, and Z done before we can even think of releasing this”…
In my opinion, successful teams release step-by-step and gauge the true (as opposed to assumed) usage/impact before investing more.
- 18. Any closing thoughts/things you’d like to add?
While the product is core for many businesses, it’s so important to not lose sight of sales, marketing, customer success, and all the various teams that contribute to making a company successful. At Toucan, we try to foster a culture where everyone contributes to the roadmap in some way, shape, or form.
That’s a wrap for today’s Product Management Masterclass – thanks, Charles!
