Category: Entrepreneurship

Our 15th episode of the Caremind podcast features an engaging conversation with Ali Littman, Head of Engineering at Modern Health. If you’ve been curious about the inner workings of tech leadership, this is an episode you don’t want to miss.

As a respected voice in her field, Ali regularly shares her knowledge and experience in management and leadership at various forums. She stands out for her unique approach, seamlessly combining technical expertise with empathetic leadership, serving as a lighthouse for those finding their way in tech.

But Ali’s role extends beyond her responsibilities at Modern Health. She’s also passionate about nurturing future leaders, offering coaching and mentorship that empowers individuals to set and achieve their career goals, tackle imposter syndrome, and overcome professional obstacles.

In our latest chat, we discuss the multifaceted aspects of coaching, technical product management, and engineering.

The Unconventional Road to Engineering Leadership

Ali Lid’s career path hasn’t been the typical one. It’s characterized by a deep exploration of the healthcare industry and an adept understanding of technology, which has established her as a strategic force within various organizations. This navigation through the sectors helped her accumulate a broad knowledge base, crucial for her to excel in the Technical Product Management (TPM) function and within engineering.

Her responsibilities were diverse, including the design of architecture and organizational strategies. These responsibilities not only drew on her healthcare industry insights but also on her grasp of business operations, fueling the engineering initiatives she spearheaded.

According to Ali:

I definitely have a bit of a nonstandard career path.

As time passed, she was afforded the chance to grow within her roles, gradually taking on tasks that were once the domain of an engineering director. She was entrusted with additional engineering teams, propelling her growth further.

How Technical PMs Can Tackle Career Growth Challenges  in Medium & Large Companies

Ali Lid suggests that roles such as technical project managers and technical product managers can often be less defined in many companies, especially if the teams are small. This can lead to rapid early growth, but as structure is introduced into these organizations, they often remain flat, making further growth more challenging to navigate.

Additionally, if the roles are less defined, or a career ladder is introduced later than when you joined the organization, there may be a lack of alignment around the expectations for each level and what growth opportunities could look like. As such, it’s crucial to establish your growth goals early and communicate them with your manager or mentor to plan your career progression effectively.

It’s really important to as early as possible, establish what your growth goals are and communicate them with your manager or mentor, so that you can start planning for your career progression.

However, in these organizations, you might need to work extra hard to demonstrate your value and impact, especially during the startup phase. This can be even more challenging if you don’t have all the necessary tools to demonstrate your impact, such as product analytics.

Strategic Thinking for Self-Promotion: What are the Core Elements?

Ali believes self-promotion is closely tied to understanding how success is measured in terms of business impact. Aligning your work with business goals demonstrates value, and understanding how success is measured relative to your career ladder can help you have more productive conversations with management about your growth.

The way I think about self-promotion has a lot to do with really understanding how success is measured, which I think a lot of it comes down to impact and what the business is trying to do.

Once you understand these concepts, Ali recommends continually identifying instances where you’re adding value and expressing your skills, and sharing these with your managers. This is the first level of self-promotion: letting your managers know the value you’re adding to the business.

The second level of self-promotion, is at the department level. You should make it clear how your work is benefiting your sub-organization or peers, which makes your value and influence more visible to other management members and peers.

The third level of self-promotion is at the company level. Show how your work drives the company forward and seize opportunities to present this to everyone. This gives you more visibility with senior leadership and the chain of leadership that approves promotions, and it can also help you gain sponsorship and feedback to build your case for growth.

However, when it comes to communicating and influencing upper management or stakeholders, it can be challenging to cut through the day-to-day noise. Aligning your communication with company goals and speaking the language of business value that the leadership cares about can help you stand out and promote your work effectively.

HealthTech Success: Why Technical Product Managers are Essential

Technical product managers are very important for health care because it’s a specialized, highly regulated, and rapidly changing industry. There are all these different recurring players in this complex web of relationships and integrations, and there are constantly new players, resources, and rules. Because of that, we really need people in this role to support the foundations of our systems to meet the needs of the industry and the ability for companies to work within it but also disrupt it.

This requires a lot of focus on ensuring that our systems can integrate with and scale alongside or operate meaningfully differently but still play by the rules. Technical product managers play a crucial role in that, and that’s where you end up getting that same marriage of the techno-functional side of things as well as the health care expertise needing to be well understood. They coordinate across all the different engineering teams and external partners to ensure that our systems operate in a way that scales and makes sense.

Talking about the importance of doing due diligence before going into a new company, career-wise, Ali suggests the following for immersing oneself in the business context:

• The company’s financing situation
• The market and strategic moment the company is in
• Whether the company has achieved product-market fit
• The company’s profitability
• Whether the company has an opportunity or has cornered the market or is in a highly competitive space
• If the company is going through hyper-growth
• The state of the economy in which the company operates

  2023 MARKET OVERVIEW: FEATURES, COSTS, AND BENEFITS OF HOSPITAL MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS FOR HEALTHCARE PROVIDERSRead also:

Factors that Shape Our Choices: Constraints, Values, and More

It’s essential not to overlook the financial aspect of the business you’re involved in. If you’re not familiar with the basics of finance, it’s well worth your time to get up to speed. Start by learning about the customers – who they are and how they contribute to the business’s revenue. Understand how the business earns money and what factors can affect this income.

Make sure to look into the return on investment (ROI) for different business decisions. Identify the areas that consistently bring in money (cash cows) and the ones that seem to drain resources. Get a handle on the company’s budget and runway – or how long the company can keep running at its current burn rate.

When it comes to scaling technical product management teams and engineering teams, combining technology and operations is crucial. The top three components for technology include:

• Deciding what you want to be core to your business and what your team should spend time on.
• Finding technological ways to make development more efficient, such as standardized assets or service templates.
• Standardization across platforms, standards, and processes to ensure consistency and avoid technical debt.

On the operations side, the top three components for scale include:

• Strong people management, including scaling your hiring function, onboarding, and performance management.
• Communication flows to ensure that information is shared effectively as the organization grows.
• Decision-making strategies that allow for distributed decision-making while still maintaining clear accountability and shared processes for cross-functional resolutions.

  HOW TO CREATE PRODUCTS PEOPLE WANT: THE SECRET OF SUCCESSRead also:

How Management Principles Impact Personal Growth

The question of what to optimize for in life is indeed a profound one. It’s important to recognize that work and personal life don’t exist in isolation; they merge together to form the totality of one’s experience.

I don’t view work as entirely separate from my personal life. It’s a happy blend of the two that make up the entirety of my existence.

Through self-reflection and life coaching, you can identify the key values, objectives, and emotions that you wish to prioritize in your life. It’s beneficial to embrace emotions in the workplace, as many of our aspirations are linked to the feelings we desire to cultivate.

This approach can be applied to both professional and personal goals, aiming for specific experiences. For instance, if mentoring and fostering growth in others brings you joy, seek a job that allows you to do this regularly. Outside work, engage in activities that you love, such as rollerblading, which may also provide mentorship opportunities.

By employing the same frameworks to your work and personal life goals, you can devise an optimal plan to become the person you aspire to be.

In Brief…

Below are 3 takeaways from speaking with Ali:

• Non-Traditional Career Paths and Leadership Roles: Ali advocates for the importance of defining growth goals early on, especially for roles like technical project managers and product managers where role definitions may be less clear in smaller companies.
• Strategic Self-Promotion: Self-promotion should occur at three levels – with managers, at the department level, and at the company level. Effective self-promotion allows for more visibility, sponsorship, and feedback, all of which are essential for career growth.
• The Importance of Technical Product Managers in HealthTech: In a specialized, regulated, and rapidly changing industry like healthcare, technical product managers play a crucial role. They support the foundations of the system, ensure it can integrate with and scale alongside others, and help the company operate within industry rules. 

WATCH ALSO:

PODCAST #14. HOW TO EXCEL IN STRATEGIC PLANNING FOR EFFECTIVE PRODUCT MANAGEMENT: TIPS FROM AN INDUSTRY EXPERT & OKRS

PODCAST #13. THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PRODUCT MANAGEMENT: UNLOCKING HUMAN INSIGHTS & OKRS

PODCAST #12. THE PRODUCT MANAGER’S PATH TO HAELTH TECH INNOVATION: PRODUCT STRATEGY, LEADERSHIP & OKRS

PODCAST #11. THE SKEPTICAL IDEALIST: HOW PRODUCT MANAGERS NAVIGATE HEALTH TECH CHALLENGES

PODCAST #10. WEB 3.0 AND HEALTHCARE: OPPORTUNITIES FOR GROWTH AND COLLABORATION

Today’s Careminds series features a special conversation with Russell Taff, the former head of product at Ready. Russell, with his wide range of experience and in-depth understanding, shared his perspectives on the healthtech industry. We had discussions spanning from the granular details to broader insights, as we tracked his journey from being a software developer to ascending to the role of VP of product. The narrative is rich with pointers that could help new engineers pave their path to success. Let’s dive right in.

Choosing Product Development: The Story Behind the Decision

From his formative years at General Assembly in New York, Russell first cut his teeth on web development. His initial technical background was broadened significantly during an apprenticeship at an early-stage EdTech startup, where Russell learned valuable lessons about product management, including the importance of clear communication, vision, and capacity planning.

Russell’s career took a decisive turn when he transitioned into roles as a support engineer and solutions architect at a Series B startup. He found himself at the forefront of the company’s relationship with its user base, effectively translating complex technical concepts into business cases. His experiences there amplified his growing interest in product management.

His first significant role as a product manager was at Rocket Wagon, an IoT consulting firm. A mentor, Alex Casts, provided him with invaluable guidance on incorporating data at the core of their operations. Casts also introduced Russell to powerful project management principles that have since become part of his professional toolkit.

When Russell eventually joined health tech firm Ready, as Director of Product Operations, his key focus was to enhance the product’s scalability and make product feedback more effective. Following a promotion to Vice President of Product at Ready, Russell faced the challenge of steering the company in a new direction as COVID-related demands began to recede. He needed to have both a grand vision for the company’s future and a clear plan for how to get there, requiring precise financial management, astute risk assessment, and a high degree of focused execution.

Transitioning into Product Management: What Qualities Do You Need?

Firstly, having a sense of compassion is key. Having had firsthand experience at the frontline, I’ve developed empathy for users. It’s essential to understand the reasons behind users’ requests for new features or bug fixes. Don’t just see these as new tasks; delve into the core of why these requests are being made. Trust me, this understanding will build trust and create a powerful dialogue with users.

Always be open to learning. Learn from everyone – those above you, those below you. Never shy away from saying, “I don’t quite understand this, could you explain further?” Embrace every teachable moment that comes your way.

Keep your hands dirty. It’s vital to be involved in every step of product development. Before using a new template or an existing one in a new project, test it out yourself. Ensure it’s the right fit. Don’t just try to make things work; ensure they’re the right tools for the job.

Don’t forget to include visual representations of your ideas. It’s not just about words on paper; your ideas need to come to life visually. This approach fosters collaboration and opens up opportunities for feedback.

How Software Engineers Can Get Better at Business Documentation

Trust-building is a must in any work relationship. Be clear about why you’re questioning anything to prevent any misunderstanding about your intentions. It’s all too easy for stakeholders to feel their ideas are being dismissed when they hear “no,” even when the real issue is limited resources.

Communicating with stakeholders to understand their perspective is vital. Gathering insights and helping justify requests ensures a shared understanding.

Cultivate trust by clearly articulating your reasoning, explaining the “whys” and “why nots,” and showing how an idea might work now or in the future. Displaying vulnerability and a readiness to learn can also help create a collaborative environment where everyone feels comfortable admitting when they don’t understand something.

As a leader, it’s vital to create a space where vulnerability is welcome. This kind of open communication can strengthen teams by fostering mutual respect and encouraging learning from each other. Conversely, if communication isn’t transparent, teams can start to fragment.

Product managers need to also demonstrate active listening and meaningful engagement with people’s ideas. Always question and understand the reasoning behind all actions – big or small. This strategy drives progress and helps prevent the team from losing sight of the collective goal.

Consumer Preferences Matter: Why Some Products Win and Others Don’t

In the dynamics of an organization, there can often be misconceptions about the technical or product teams. Particularly among stakeholders, both internal and external, the word “no” is heard frequently. This occurrence is not due to any mistrust or disbelief in the merit of an idea but often arises from the constraints of finite resources and decision-making capacity.

So, it still boils down to trust. Explain why you’re challenging something, so people understand it’s not a distrust in their ideas, but rather a consideration of priorities. Being upfront about your “whys” or “why nots” can help build this trust and foster a collaborative environment.

There needs to be a space where people feel safe to express their doubts, fostering an atmosphere of learning. It’s when communication breaks down and feelings are kept hidden that teams start to falter.

More importantly, you should listen. Understand the essence of people’s ideas, continually questioning why we’re doing what we’re doing. This mindset keeps us focused on our collective goals.

An interesting example from the healthcare sector illustrates how behavioral economics influence consumer decisions. The ‘left digit bias’ concept, where even a slight price difference, like choosing between gas priced at 4.99 and 5.01, impacts choices.

Pre-pandemic, healthcare choices were frequently based on value and accessibility rather than exhaustive comparisons. However, in the post-pandemic world, factors like convenience, safety, and trust in service providers have become paramount. By understanding what elicits positive or negative experiences, we can craft solutions that resonate more effectively with users.

Adding or Improving: When Is the Right Time to Shift Focus in Product Development?

We frequently see companies rush to release new features or products without putting enough thought into tracking their performance or visibility. This common shortcoming can lead to missed signals that are critical to various stakeholders within the organization. It’s crucial to align on the data with all parties involved, ensuring the agreed-upon success metrics are clearly defined and measurable for each project.

Moreover, understanding your audience also helps, whether that’s internal users navigating workflows or external customers engaging with your product. Each product or feature released should cater to a specific cohort and encourage them to perform a well-defined action. This could vary from clicking a sign-up button to entering their insurance information into a workflow. The key is to clearly define these aspects, understand them, and engage in targeted personalization and segmentation to encourage action.

Having a clear vision and articulating it effectively is crucial. Each feature we’re working on must contribute to the meaningful future of the company.

While the idea of testing might conjure images of lengthy processes with numerous steps, the reality is much simpler. By having a defined cohort and a clear action, you can execute simple tests even at the point of release. Changes to words or colors, A/B testing in production, and other modifications can yield insightful data about how to move your target audience over the action line effectively.

This understanding of growth and goal-setting is crucial. Good product management also requires keeping an eye on environmental factors such as economic conditions and current events, which may affect your product or its marketing strategy. For instance, in the healthcare sector, the news cycle can greatly influence public perception. By aligning your message with the current sentiment, you can tap into these fluctuations and use them to your advantage.

Additionally, timing should align with communication, especially in value-based care workflows. The comprehension of environmental factors and patient lifestyles contributes to more meaningful communication. 

The 80/20 principle advises focusing 80% of your time on the most crucial 20% of the work. This strategy guides prioritization and ensures that important tasks get the attention they need.

If you understand your patients or users’ routines, you can communicate effectively at the most opportune times. While it’s essential to grasp the difference between correlation and causation, hypothesizing about potential correlations and reducing noise as much as possible can help you master your data rather than always playing catch-up.

What Are the Essentials of Building a Successful Product Development Team?

The concept of collective ownership is something product managers should be passionate about and strive to bring to each project. Rusell believes that including everyone in the team, from ideation through to solution, cultivates a greater sense of ownership and responsibility. This shared ownership fosters team unity, enhances motivation, and ultimately results in a product that everyone is more emotionally invested in.

For every new project, it’s essential to include everyone in the team from the initial ideation phase through to solution. This approach fosters a sense of collective ownership.

The impact of this approach is significant because teams that feel a sense of ownership, rather than just contribution, are more likely to be driven by empathy for the end-user. This empathy can lead to more user-centric solutions, as team members feel more compelled to question and improve upon aspects of the product that may not provide an optimal user experience, even if they adhere to the original specifications.

Further, incorporating input from stakeholders at all levels and across different teams can strengthen the overall solution. For instance, involving customer service in brainstorming sessions can provide valuable insights from a unique perspective. Such inclusive collaboration not only drives motivation but also ensures a richer understanding of the problem and the proposed solution.

Taking the concept of collective ownership a step further, it’s important to consider the positive habits and associations we want to foster with what we’re building. Using BJ Fogg’s behavior model, which posits that behavior is a product of motivation, ability, and a prompt, we can create solutions that users will find genuinely beneficial and become habitual users of.

A practical application of this model can be seen in the telehealth space, where functionality has been transformative, particularly for those with limited access to healthcare services, such as individuals in rural areas. These tools are especially vital for mental health services, which might be scarce in these regions.

However, while these advancements are promising, caution must be exercised to avoid pitfalls such as overprescribing. In this regard, technology can provide a solution by utilizing artificial intelligence and machine learning to analyze comprehensive patient data. Such insights can lead to personalized treatment plans, thereby reducing the risk of unnecessary prescriptions.

Wrapping Up

In our engaging podcast with Russell Taff, we gleaned vital insights for burgeoning engineers and product managers. Here are three distilled points:

• Product Management Transition: Embrace user empathy, effective communication, and continuous learning when shifting from software development to product management.
• Engineering-Business Documentation: Foster trust and collaboration with clear, concise communication that encourages openness among stakeholders.
• Consumer-Centric Product Development: Understand consumer behavior and needs, incorporate data-driven strategies, and establish clear success metrics for impactful product development.
• Collective Ownership in Teams: Create a sense of shared responsibility to enhance motivation and create more user-centric solutions.
• Behavioral Economics in Healthcare: Consider behavioral economics and adapt to shifting consumer preferences, particularly in light of significant industry changes, such as those induced by the pandemic.

WATCH ALSO:

PODCAST #15. ENGINEERING LEADERSHIP: HOW TO INTEGRATE TEAM COACHING & HEALTHTECH PRODUCT MANAGEMENT & OKRS

PODCAST #14. HOW TO EXCEL IN STRATEGIC PLANNING FOR EFFECTIVE PRODUCT MANAGEMENT: TIPS FROM AN INDUSTRY EXPERT & OKRS

PODCAST #13. THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PRODUCT MANAGEMENT: UNLOCKING HUMAN INSIGHTS & OKRS

PODCAST #12. THE PRODUCT MANAGER’S PATH TO HAELTH TECH INNOVATION: PRODUCT STRATEGY, LEADERSHIP & OKRS

PODCAST #11. THE SKEPTICAL IDEALIST: HOW PRODUCT MANAGERS NAVIGATE HEALTH TECH CHALLENGES

In our CareMinds series, we’re all about showcasing the many paths to success in health tech product development. Today, we have the pleasure of sharing Laura Furman’s unique story. Laura, currently a senior product manager at Oura, kicked off her leadership journey with Students Agencies.

Laura opens up about her everyday work. She emphasizes the importance of AI and machine learning tools in her role, particularly during the product discovery phase, contributing significantly to the product’s development.

We hope you find Laura’s story as captivating as we did. Happy reading!

Is Product Development a Bold Claim or a Logical Step?

“The student agency’s experience is something that keeps coming back and keeps coming up as something that was really unique and an interesting foundation.”

Laura Furman – Senior Product Manager at Oura

Conventional wisdom may suggest that early experiences become less relevant as a professional journey progresses. However, Laura finds that her involvement with Student Agencies continually resurfaces as an integral part of her career. Student Agencies is a non-profit educational institution that provided Laura with first-hand business management experience during her college years. It comprised several diverse, student-run businesses, offering services from real estate property management to tutoring, marketing, and even a full-service moving company.

In this unique setting, Laura served as the general manager of one business for a year before stepping up to become the corporation’s president. Although not directly related to product management, this entrepreneurial experience provided Laura with an invaluable perspective on running a business from top to bottom, including direct customer interaction and budgeting.

In her role as president of Student Agencies, she created the first CTO role, utilizing the skills of the engineering students to enhance business performance. Despite the annual turnover inherent to the student-run structure, Laura credits an experienced CEO’s guidance for the continuity of the businesses. This end-to-end entrepreneurship experience, she believes, is a great asset for anyone entering product management, as it provides a comprehensive understanding of business strategy.

Transitioning to Product Management: A Personal Account

“I think a lot of people when they’re transitioning have a hard time, sort of filling the gap between where they are now and the skills they need to have as a product manager.”

Laura Furman – Senior Product Manager at Oura

Laura embarked on her career journey with uncertainty, opting for the retail industry as her starting point. She joined Gap’s management rotational program, and was tasked with e-commerce merchandising. Her role entailed strategizing the customer experience on Gap’s website, from product discovery to checkout.

As she delved deeper into her role, Laura identified a problem within one of the categories she was managing. This challenge provided an opportunity for her to explore business analytics extensively. She carefully examined every SKU, tracked trends across the assortment, and used this data to analyze the state of the business.

The most significant shift in her career occurred when she led a design sprint to rectify the problem in her managed category. This experience lit up her path towards product management, leading her to investigate job descriptions and key skills required for a product manager role. With several skills already under her belt and a drive to fill the gaps in her resume through projects and side assignments, she was ready to transition into product management.

The Evolving Role of a Product Manager

“My belief is we will produce the best ideas if we collaborate, I don’t think the PM should be coming up with all the solutions themselves, the solution should arise out of collaboration with the team”

Laura Furman – Senior Product Manager at Oura

The core of a product manager’s role is being the voice of the customer. It’s about understanding their needs, not just through face-to-face discussions but also through data analysis. As you step into it, remember that it’s not only about the customer’s desires, but also about striking the right balance with the business’s expectations.

When you craft your strategy, your ability to bring people onboard will be invaluable. Drawing from Laura’s experiences and skills in debate and negotiation, you’ll find that seeing multiple perspectives and effectively persuading others to join your journey can be a game changer. Additionally, remember that growing to be a product manager involves constant learning and iteration. You’d have to negate lengthy product road maps and promote a culture of continual testing and analysis.

Tools and Resources for Aspiring Product Managers

Taking the reins on your professional growth can be an empowering experience. One effective strategy to foster continuous learning is to dedicate each quarter to a specific focus area. This could start with understanding data analytics, mastering SQL, and becoming adept with tools such as Google BigQuery and Looker. This disciplined approach provides an opportunity to delve deeper into each field, enhancing your overall skillset.

Secondly, the value of mentorship in your journey cannot be overstated. A supportive and knowledgeable mentor can accelerate your growth, guide you through uncharted territory, and provide you with essential industry insights. Building connections within your organization is a beneficial way to learn from others and gain diverse perspectives.

Lastly, don’t let the fear of appearing unknowledgeable hold you back from asking questions. It’s a common misconception that asking basic questions exposes a lack of knowledge. In reality, it often leads to constructive conversations and enhances understanding. It’s essential to comprehend the bigger picture, particularly in understanding the system architecture. Spending time with engineers to grasp how different components of the system interconnect can provide invaluable insights. This broader understanding will be key in interpreting project estimates accurately.

How AI and Machine Learning Are Impacting Product Development

“The AI and machine learning tools that you use in your day to day…it provides an uncanny ability to tap into a problem, a domain that you don’t necessarily know a lot about. And it could quickly kind of guide you towards some potential solutions that could be applied to a certain identified problem if you don’t have a deep enough context to it.”

Laura Furman – Senior Product Manager at Oura

Mercari, a popular Japanese peer-to-peer marketplace akin to eBay, has an intriguing blend of challenges and experiences. The platform accommodates a broad array of categories, including clothing, technology, home goods, and handmade crafts. With this vast spectrum of products, one interesting challenge is managing User Generated Content (UGC). The diversity in UGC listings and searches can lead to discrepancies and inconsistencies due to differences in syntax, which in turn could reduce the visibility of items in search results, thereby affecting sales.

One notable project tackled at Mercari was enhancing the search and listing experience based on the brand and category of an item. The goal was to pre-populate custom attribute fields specific to the item type being listed. For instance, if a user is listing an iPhone, they could specify the model and size, allowing potential buyers to filter down their searches effectively. This approach was particularly useful in more subjective categories like clothing, where the search could be as specific as ‘straight leg jeans.’

To add another layer of sophistication, machine learning was brought into the mix. This technology helped predict necessary custom attribute fields based on the brand and category. It also fed these attributes into Mercari’s search taxonomy to optimize search results. Towards the end, the project began to utilize computer vision to guess the category and subcategory of clothing based on the photo. While this presented new challenges due to the variety of user-submitted photos, it also offered a fascinating direction for further enhancing user experience on the platform.

Sure AI and ML Complement Product Development, But How Can Managers Put Them to Effective Use?

First, from a day-to-day operational perspective, AI could serve as a sounding board, albeit it may not replace the nuanced understanding and context that comes from someone deeply familiar with the product. The idea here is that AI tools might not fully grasp the complexity of the product and its dynamics like a human member of the team who is immersed in the project.

The second application is more exciting: using AI tools to create prototypes. This could be especially beneficial for non-technical PMs who don’t have coding skills. They could potentially leverage AI to write code and thus develop prototypes, enhancing their ability to demonstrate their ideas beyond mere words. While there’s skepticism that AI could generate a feature-ready piece of code given the uniqueness and standards of any given codebase, using AI to create initial prototypes could be an innovative approach that empowers PMs to delve more into the technical side.

It is also believed that AI could streamline the process of creating a prototype, saving valuable time. This makes AI an attractive tool in the product management space, not just for its potential to enhance the overall workflow, but also to empower product managers with new capabilities.

From Novelty to Necessity: Does a Fresh Perspective Matter When Companies Hire?

Laura’s journey to AA three years prior was primarily driven by a long-standing personal passion for health and wellness. After reading “Why We Sleep” by Matt Walker, she developed an interest in the importance of sleep for mental performance and overall wellbeing. Tracking sleep with an “Oura” ring and studying the data became an obsession, eventually leading her to a position within the company. Her shared vision with the company’s CEO, who viewed sleep as the foundational pillar of health much like personal training, created a strong connection.

Her career transition strategy involved balancing industry experience and role skills as two vital variables. Initially, she drew upon her retail industry experience while developing necessary product skills. In the next move to AA, she utilized these newly acquired skills despite not having prior industry experience. Laura believed that possessing either industry experience or role-specific skills could facilitate a successful transition.

Laura’s perspective emphasizes seeing personal strengths as valuable contributions to her role and not being discouraged by perceived shortcomings. This outlook, particularly essential in product management, is about leveraging unique experiences and skills to meet new challenges in different industries. She also understands the importance of this mindset in successfully navigating work within a remote team, such as the Finnish-based company AA.

Understanding and Improving Predictable Delivery

Working across different time zones and geographies is challenging. While Laura has experience in this from her time at Merri, dealing with a 10-hour time difference at her current company has brought new challenges. She has realized the importance of well-prepared and efficient meetings, especially given that her early morning is the end of the workday for her colleagues in Finland. A critical success factor in such settings is robust asynchronous communication, making sure everyone is fully prepared and discussions are fruitful. In addition, they have implemented a system of reviewing and improving their workflow at the end of every cycle, accepting the reality of time differences but striving to make it better with each iteration.

One key learning Laura shared is the downside of over-relying on Slack for communication. It can create confusion, lead to critical information being missed, and ultimately decrease overall happiness within the team. Instead, they have focused on making communication more structured and traceable, using tools like Sigma, Jira, and Confluence to comment directly on project documents, ensuring a clear source of truth. If there is an excessive use of Slack, it’s often a sign that the project is experiencing chaos and needs attention.

When it comes to product improvement, Laura’s approach is guided by lessons from her mentor from Google. Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) should be ambitious, and achieving 70% of an OKR is a commendable feat. Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are used more at the feature level, measuring specific outcomes. She emphasizes the importance of treating the development of a feature as a hypothesis – if they do X, they should see Y outcome in the data. This approach then allows them to review and learn from the outcome, guiding the development of future features.

Conclusion

Here are the most important points from our conversation with Laura Furman: 

• Early experiences matter

Laura’s involvement with Student Agencies during her college years, a non-profit educational institution that provided first-hand business management experience, played a crucial role in shaping her professional journey.

• Transitioning is possible with the right skills and drive

Despite starting in a seemingly unrelated field (retail industry), Laura managed to transition to product management by building on the skills she had and bridging gaps through projects and side assignments.

• Adaptability and continual learning are key in product management

The product manager’s role is not stagnant; it evolves with customer needs and business expectations. It also involves continuous learning, testing, and analyzing to stay ahead.

• AI and ML are powerful tools in product development

These technologies not only assist in operational efficiency but also empower product managers, especially those with limited technical skills, to visualize and prototype their ideas.

• Personal strengths and unique perspectives are valuable asset

Even if you lack industry experience, personal strengths, skills, and a fresh perspective can be instrumental in succeeding in new roles and different industries. 

WATCH ALSO:

PODCAST #16. BEHIND THE SCENES OF HEALTHCARE: HOW DOES PRODUCT MANAGEMENT DRIVE CHANGE?

PODCAST #15. ENGINEERING LEADERSHIP: HOW TO INTEGRATE TEAM COACHING & HEALTHTECH PRODUCT MANAGEMENT & OKRS

PODCAST #14. HOW TO EXCEL IN STRATEGIC PLANNING FOR EFFECTIVE PRODUCT MANAGEMENT: TIPS FROM AN INDUSTRY EXPERT & OKRS

PODCAST #13. THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PRODUCT MANAGEMENT: UNLOCKING HUMAN INSIGHTS & OKRS

PODCAST #12. THE PRODUCT MANAGER’S PATH TO HAELTH TECH INNOVATION: PRODUCT STRATEGY, LEADERSHIP & OKRS

In this episode, we had a chat with Rany El Diwany, who’s the Director, Product Management at Athena Health, about handling payments from patients and dealing with insurance issues. 

Rany told us about how problem-solving and managing products are related. He also talked about the usual hurdles he comes across in his job managing products. 

The article below presents a summary of our conversation.

Companies’ Endless Pursuit of Solutions without Problem Clarity

In product management, the focus is not solely on building software but rather on solving business problems. As a product manager, your role is to lead a team in understanding and addressing these key problems. One effective approach is to explain the problem in a simplified manner, ensuring everyone involved shares a common understanding of the issue.

“Always start by making sure you have a full understanding of the problem before even getting to the very first solution that you want to think through.” 

Rany El Diwany – Director of Product Management at Athena Health

However, it is crucial to remember that before jumping into solutions, you must thoroughly understand the problem. Take a step back and examine the problem from different angles, exploring its nuances and complexities. This is where the double diamond principle comes into play.

Exploring the Double Diamond Principle

The double diamond principle is a framework that consists of two diamonds, each representing a specific phase: discovery and definition. 

The first diamond, the discovery phase, involves gathering a wide range of qualitative and quantitative information. You’ll want to collect customer feedback, stay informed about industry trends, and analyze relevant data. This phase aims to provide you with a comprehensive understanding of the problem space.

During the discovery phase, patterns and recurring themes will emerge from the gathered information. These indications of convergence signal that you are getting closer to identifying the core aspects of the problem. It’s important to pay attention to these signals as they will guide your next steps.

Convergence leads you into the second diamond, the definition phase. At this point, you organize the collected information into different work streams, horizons, or categories. With a clearer picture of the problem, you can begin prioritizing the identified areas. Prioritization is especially critical in complex domains like healthcare, where limited resources must be allocated effectively.

Once you’ve prioritized the areas, you transition from the discovery phase to the definition phase. You select the highest priority item for further analysis and solution development during this stage. While other areas are temporarily set aside, they remain in your peripheral vision for future consideration.

How to Navigate the Problem Space

“If you haven’t aligned with what you’re trying to solve and agreed on what the definition of success is to start, you’re certainly gonna arrive at an end state where not everyone is happy.”

Rany El Diwany – Director of Product Management at Athena Health

Mr. Diwany understands the significance of grasping and aligning with the problem at hand. He believes that measuring success and achieving alignment among team members heavily relies on a solid understanding of the problem being solved. Moving forward as a cohesive unit is challenging without a shared comprehension of the problem and its definition.

At Athena, Rany‘s preferred method for building alignment is by utilizing pitch decks. These decks serve as comprehensive presentations that outline the why, how, and overall plan for addressing a specific problem. They provide a foundation for sharing information and conducting readouts with stakeholders, including leadership, customers, and partners. 

In Mr. Diwany‘s view, alignment is not a one-time event but an ongoing effort throughout the product development journey. Regular check-ins, discussions, and feedback loops are essential to maintaining alignment and adjusting the course if needed. By continuously revisiting and refining the understanding of the problem, the product team can stay on track and adapt as necessary to ensure that their solutions effectively address the needs of the business and its stakeholders.

By thoroughly understanding the problem space before diving into solutions, you establish a solid foundation for your work as a product manager. This approach allows for a more focused and effective product development process. You can confidently explore solutions, knowing that you clearly understand the problem you’re trying to solve. This ultimately increases your chances of developing a successful product that addresses the needs of your customers and your business.

Strategies for Analyzing and Understanding Complex Problems

From Mr. Diwany‘s perspective, objectivity is a key principle when making decisions. Emotions should not drive choices; rather, data should be the guiding force. To achieve this, asking the right questions and gathering qualitative and quantitative data is crucial. 

Identifying the broad categories of the problem is only the initial step. Delving deeper and analyzing the underlying layers is equally important. This can be achieved by utilizing well-known practices such as the “five whys” technique, which helps uncover the root causes and significance of the problem. Product managers can gain a clearer perspective by breaking down complex issues into simpler components and developing an intimate understanding of the problem’s intricacies.

Effective communication is paramount throughout this process. As a product manager, you are responsible for conveying the problem to various stakeholders, including customers, leaders, and team members such as engineers and UX professionals. The goal is to ensure everyone involved shares a common understanding of the problem. Any misalignment in problem perception can lead to challenges and hinder efforts to solve the problem effectively.

Product managers should actively evangelize their comprehension of the problem space to promote a shared understanding. Even in their absence, others discussing the initiatives should be able to explain them consistently and accurately. Ron emphasizes the importance of maintaining a shared language and perception, as it ensures everyone is on the same page and facilitates effective collaboration in solving the problem.

How to Unravel Bias and Build Effective Roadmaps

“Your roadmap should be problem-focused and not solution-focused, especially because you don’t know what you’re going to learn between now and something that you might have queued up.”

Rany El Diwany – Director of Product Management at Athena Health

Maintaining a problem-focused approach is crucial once the discovery and definition phases are complete and pitch decks and roadmaps are being developed. Ron believes that roadmaps should revolve around the problems that need to be addressed rather than being fixated on specific solutions. This is because, throughout product development, new learnings and insights may emerge, potentially rendering previously planned solutions obsolete.

While it is possible to anticipate future problem areas and prioritize them in the roadmap, the exact solutions may not be known at that stage. As the work progresses and solutions are developed, Mr. Diwany emphasizes the importance of measuring their impact and assessing if they effectively address the critical aspects of the initiative. Defining appropriate metrics to validate the impact and success of the solutions becomes crucial in this context.

“Human bias is there, and it’s easy to get attached to a solution… you need to remove that layer of emotion from the equation and be confident in the metrics that tell a successful story.”

Rany El Diwany – Director of Product Management at Athena Health

Rany believes that within the realm of product management, it is essential to constantly remind oneself about human bias. It’s natural to become attached to a particular solution and emotionally invested in its success. However, he emphasizes the need to remove emotion from the equation and instead focus on finding the right metrics to gauge success. If a solution fails to yield the desired results, it becomes necessary to pivot and adjust based on data-driven insights.

Similarly, Rany notes that while the agile framework is valuable, it is not a rigid recipe but rather a flexible framework that should be adapted to suit the unique needs of each project. These challenges highlight the complexities inherent in product management. He believes that by recognizing these challenges and remaining open to continuous learning and adaptation, product managers can navigate the dynamic landscape of their role and strive for success.

What Are the Main Drivers of Lack of Transparency Costs in Healthcare?

One of the significant challenges in the healthcare industry revolves around understanding how different insurance companies handle various scenarios. Mr. Diwany acknowledges that each insurance provider has its policies and rules, which adds complexity to building software solutions based on logical patterns. The diverse approaches required by different insurance companies make it difficult to achieve consistency. To tackle this issue, Ron emphasizes the importance of promoting transparency, especially for patients who often have limited visibility into the internal workings of healthcare.

“We want to get to the point where we have transparency… helping patients understand what costs may occur before they actually see the provider.”

Rany El Diwany – Director of Product Management at Athena Health

Transparency is pivotal in helping patients understand and appreciate the information typically hidden from them. It involves providing patients with upfront cost information, enabling them to make informed decisions. Ron notes that healthcare’s lack of cost visibility sets it apart from other aspects of the US economy, where prices are known before purchasing a product or service. Building trust through transparency becomes crucial, as even professionals within the healthcare industry may have doubts about their healthcare bills.

Trust can be fostered by being clear and upfront with patients about the potential costs associated with their medical encounters. Establishing transparency and trust creates an environment where some of the challenges faced by healthcare practices can be addressed. Overcoming these barriers and transitioning to a system where patients are willing to make payments or down payments for services rendered requires a significant journey.

While progress and efforts are being made to establish transparency and trust, Rany acknowledges there is still a long way to go. 

Mr. Diwany explains that several functional aspects are being improved within the focus area of cost transparency. 

• One of these areas is insurance selection, which can be challenging due to the many insurance companies and the wide variety of insurance packages. Accurately identifying the appropriate insurance for each patient is crucial to ensure successful claims submission and payment. 
• Patient eligibility is another key component of cost transparency, involving understanding copayments, coinsurance, deductibles, and out-of-pocket limits. Having this information is essential for estimating costs accurately.

In addition to cost transparency, Rany emphasizes the importance of enhancing payment options. This includes exploring various methods such as digital wallets and platforms like PayPal and introducing automated payment plans. Offering flexible payment options is particularly important for patients facing financial difficulties, allowing them to pay outstanding bills over time without significant financial strain.

Opportunities and Qualities for Success in HealthTech Companies 

As a PM, you’ll collaborate with diverse teams, including developers, user experience experts, analysts, customers, and leadership. 

The success of a product hinges on aligning all stakeholders toward solving the identified priority problem and achieving the desired metrics. Building strong relationships and working collaboratively with people from various backgrounds and roles are crucial skills for a PM. 

At Athena, the company values respect and intelligence, regardless of cultural, ethnic, or sexual orientation differences. Therefore, having strong communication skills and the ability to work with diverse groups of people are vital in this role.

“Being a PM and then being a PM in the enterprise B2B space and healthcare, there’s definitely some additional work that goes into play. And it’s hard; it’s a hard job, but it’s rewarding.”

Rany El Diwany – Director of Product Management at Athena Health

Rany highlights that introducing the healthcare dimension adds complexity to the PM role. Unlike the focus in some PM literature, which is often business-to-consumer (B2C), healthcare often involves business-to-business (B2B) interactions. PMs with experience in B2C and enterprise B2B environments understand the thoughtful coordination required when planning, building, and developing solutions.

Athena Health serves a significant number of healthcare providers, and any changes made to their workflows can substantially impact their business operations. Coordinating deployments and providing thorough training and insights to customers is critical to minimizing disruptions and ensuring smooth transitions. Being a PM in the enterprise B2B space within healthcare demands diligent efforts to ensure that solutions enhance workflows rather than hinder them.

While being a PM, particularly in the healthcare industry, comes with challenges, Ron also emphasizes the rewarding aspects of the role. Being a PM in the healthcare industry requires unique skills and a deep understanding of the importance of effective communication and collaboration in driving successful product development.

As a product manager at Athena, Rany is invested in driving company initiatives promoting healthcare transparency. He believes leveraging technology, data, and collaboration can make significant progress in this area. Athena is about creating a system where patients have full visibility, enabling them to make informed decisions and engage in proactive planning.

You Can Foster Psychological Safety With These Two Essentials

Psychological safety is crucial for effective teamwork and innovation. Creating an environment where everyone feels safe to contribute ideas, whether good or bad, fosters creativity and innovation. Mutual respect is key. Rather than an “us versus them” mentality, the focus should be on solving problems collectively. 

“One of the most important things is psychological safety, right? No one is bringing a bad idea to the table.”

Rany El Diwany – Director of Product Management at Athena Health

Building motivated and cohesive teams that enjoy working together and are enthusiastic about tackling challenges is essential. Encouraging open dialogue, valuing diverse perspectives, and creating a culture of psychological safety lay the foundation for successful problem-solving and driving innovation within the team.

Which Future Changes Should We Expect in Consumer Cost Management?

When it comes to healthcare practices, understanding and navigating costs can be complex. Practices have contracted rates with payers, but these contracts often involve intricate stipulations. For example, different charges may have different reimbursement percentages, or certain charges may not be reimbursed at all. 

Helping practices gain a clear and simplified understanding of the contracted rates in various scenarios is a crucial first step. Currently, efforts are underway to provide practices with easier access to published information from payers. 

While Medicare and Medicaid present additional complexities, simplifying the process for practice users to have transparent insights into contractual rates is considered a critical foundational milestone. This step will assist practices in managing costs more effectively and making informed decisions that will sustain them in the future.

Bottom Line

Below are three major takeaways from our chat with Mr. Diwany:

• Thoroughly understand the problem before diving into solutions: Product managers must invest time in understanding the problem space from different angles before developing solutions. 
• Transparency and cost management in healthcare: Cost transparency benefits patients and healthcare practices, leading to better financial experiences and streamlined operations.
• Psychological safety for effective teamwork and innovation: Creating an environment of psychological safety, encouraging open dialogue, valuing diverse perspectives, and fostering collaboration are essential elements of effective teamwork.

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PODCAST #17. CHARTING A COURSE IN HEALTH TECH: FROM STUDENT ENTREPRENEURSHIP TO ADVANCED PRODUCT MANAGEMENT & OKRS

PODCAST #16. BEHIND THE SCENES OF HEALTHCARE: HOW DOES PRODUCT MANAGEMENT DRIVE CHANGE?

PODCAST #15. ENGINEERING LEADERSHIP: HOW TO INTEGRATE TEAM COACHING & HEALTHTECH PRODUCT MANAGEMENT & OKRS

PODCAST #14. HOW TO EXCEL IN STRATEGIC PLANNING FOR EFFECTIVE PRODUCT MANAGEMENT: TIPS FROM AN INDUSTRY EXPERT & OKRS

How often do you meet clients so inspired by an idea that they can’t wait to start development right here, right now? They are passionate about their project and driven by a natural desire to see the final product as soon as possible. Hence, they constantly push the entire management and development team. And this may seem logical – start earlier, finish sooner; what’s the point of fighting the moonlight?

However, in software development, the primary role is played by preparing the project itself. It is the Project Discovery Phase that is crucial for successful development. After all, if the product doesn’t meet the market demand, it won’t matter how well it is made.

Starting work without proper planning is like putting together a puzzle without having a picture of what needs to be done. Of course, all the pieces will fit in the end, but how much time will be lost? As many developers confess, in almost half of such cases, the development process goes beyond the original financial and time limits, while the result leaves much to be desired. And all because the starting stage was conducted carelessly or even skipped in order to start work on the spot.

The better you prepare for the project, the more likely it will go smoothly. Although it will delay the launch, it is undoubtedly worth it. This preparation is the Project Discovery Phase. Let’s understand what goes into it, and what depends on it.

FUNCTIONAL VS NON-FUNCTIONAL REQUIREMENTS: MAIN DIFFERENCES & EXAMPLES

What Is the Discovery Phase

Usually, the project life cycle includes the following stages: initiation, planning, execution, control, and completion. Of course, the better groundwork you provide for the project at the initiation stage, the smoother the path your team will be able to take later on. 

The Project Discovery Phase is the planning phase of project initiation, when team members gather information about the project, determine a budget, and form precise project boundaries. The purpose of the discovery phase is to be able to make data-driven decisions and reduce all risks associated with product development. 

This includes gathering and analyzing information about the project, its target audience, scope, and objectives. This phase also examines additional information related to the development process, such as primary and secondary functions and measurable performance.

The Discovery Phase can last from a couple of days to several weeks, or even months, depending on the project’s complexity and scope of work. The Discovery phase is usually placed in the first sprint in a modern Agile management system. It helps to determine how well the software development team and  business owner understand each other from the beginning. 

OUTSTAFFING VS. OUTSOURCING VS. MANAGED SERVICES: DIFFERENCES AND BENEFITS

What Happens in the Project Discovery Phase?

HIRING A DEVELOPER FOR YOUR BUSINESS: A SIX STEPS GUIDE

The Step-By-Step Process of the Product Discovery Stage

In the Discovery Phase, it is important to follow a consistent algorithm of actions; modern Agile management framework helps the team in this. If you follow it steadily, then the software development project will become a predictable and pleasant activity for the client, just as a house is built quickly and smoothly according to the drawings of an experienced professional architect.

SHOULD YOU HIRE APP DEVELOPERS NEAR ME OR OUTSOURCE OVERSEAS?

It’s worth talking to clients first, finding out what they already have in their pockets. They may have already done user research themselves, have a software development team but not enough people to manage all the processes. Or, the customers just came in with an idea and very rough budget, and all these “floating” elements need to be put together with a directive strategy that turns into a rock-solid roadmap. So, how do we start project discovery checklist?

This step helps determine the main problem you want to solve with the software. Based on this, decide who will be the primary contact person on the implementer’s side.

The first phase of the Project Discovery Phase involves discussions with the founder or owner of the product. The survey method gathers as much information as possible about the vision and future product, its goals and business needs. The data is then passed to the executing company’s internal use to move on to the subsequent phases.

 

WHAT TECH STACK TO CHOOSE FOR YOUR PROJECT

This list should include product owners, project managers, administrators, end users, developers, investors, and any other categories involved in creating or using the finished product.

Determine who serves as the key facilitator. Provide the manager with any current information or documentation about the project. This person decides what is missing and what is hindering the project.

The project manager, business analyst, and account manager lead in the discovery phase. Sometimes they may be joined by developers and designers. They help with SRS, prototype wireframes, or scope estimates.

The project management role during the discovery phase of a project is extensive, from planning and organizing internal meetings and recording all the details discussed to ensuring productive interaction between developers and the product development team on time and within budget.

PROJECT MANAGEMENT FOR SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT: THE APP SOLUTIONS TIPS

Prepares the project’s usage scenarios and requirements, goals, and target audience. In addition, he/she will be responsible for researching the product’s niche, competitors, and customers. The business analyst decides whether the product is needed in the market as the customer sees it, and whether to make any changes based on the collected analytics.

During the Project Discovery Phase, the developer keeps track of what technologies and languages need to be used, suggests alternative and more appropriate ways to approach the development of core features, or notes the lack of implementation. This person is responsible for creating the architecture and logic of the future software project.

Responsible for creating user experience aligned with project goals: user-friendly navigation, intuitive design, and visually appealing design. Creates sketches, mockups, wireframes, and prototypes to bring the vision to life.

QUALITY ASSURANCE AND SOFTWARE TESTING FOR MOBILE PROJECTS AT THE APP SOLUTIONS

Sometimes gets involved in the discovery process to explore possible problems in the execution phases of the solution.

Selecting such a team and having them work together allows for more than a short list of business and technical requirements and estimates during the Project Discovery Phase. In addition, it provides an incentive for customers and performers to work on the same wave, without asynchrony, as all participants get a holistic view of the project as a whole and, in particular, why a specific feature is needed.

HOW TO OUTSOURCE MOBILE APP DEVELOPMENT

Developing successful software projects requires a complete understanding of the target audience. A market analysis studies its size, amount of competitors, financial and technological features, and trends. The data collected takes into account the needs of the stakeholders, as well as the needs of the product’s end users and competitors’ experience.

Building the user journey and defining the target audience will be vital in creating the product, as it enables the formation of effective marketing strategies. This requires the software development team to analyze how, when and under what circumstances the intended product or solution will be helpful. For example, what will make a user visit a particular site or download a mobile app?

The virtual portrait of the target audience includes information about the likes and dislikes of users, their hobbies, professions, and much more. In addition, we identify the problems our users face and find ways to solve them with the product. Finally, using information from user feedback, we modify the initial plan to reflect real users’ expectations, needs, and pain points.

Through market research, we can understand what the industry is doing concerning similar projects and adopt market best practices. Ultimately, this helps us set realistic expectations for the project, create valuable benchmarks, and calculate the time and cost required to develop a full-scale product or MVP, bringing us to our next point. 

HOW MUCH DOES IT COST TO DEVELOP AN APP: DETAILED FEATURE BREAKDOWN

Once you understand the competition better, it is time to work on the product specification. At this discovery stage, we form a product requirements document including software requirements – design details, recommended tech stack, feature set, architecture description, and so on.

This document will ensure that development goes smoothly; the product requirements document lists all the planned features and functions. In addition, requirements development defines the complexity of a given functionality. This establishes the effort required in the design, development, testing, and project management phases.

In this step, the information architecture is also developed. It helps to outline the essential elements, how it should all work, what roles exist, what functions you will have, and how they should relate to each other.

Based on the information gathered during the sync of all the participants, the development proposal helps ensure that the project discovery team will create a product that meets all of the client’s requirements and expectations. It also clarifies the project vision and minimizes entire project development risks.

HOW TO MAKE AN APP: LIFE CYCLE OF MOBILE DEVELOPMENT

After forming a product requirements document, we start working on an interactive prototype. Simply put, this is a model of a particular piece of software that functions just like the final product. It helps to test functional assumptions and identify potential technical problems. In addition, a prototype model helps the software development team better understand the project, and you can focus on improving the user experience up front.

A prototype is a demo version of an application design based on a technical specification. It represents how the application should work, not the visual components. It is an integral part of the discovery phase of a software project.

UX/UI-rs work on the project’s design concept and visual representation in the form of mockups or prototypes. Creating clickable prototypes is considered good practice for thinking through how critical features work.

At this stage, developers choose which programming languages, frameworks, and services will be best for the project’s success. They can compare what will work best for certain product parts or think about which web application architecture will be most efficient, saving time and costs.

FEATURE PRIORITIZATION FOR THE PROJECT’S MVP 

The ultimate goal of preparation is to reach a stage where the discovery team can give an accurate estimate of the time and cost required to create the MVP or full-scale product.

This stage includes finalizing the team’s composition, key milestones, and the likely timeline for each step. Based on these, you can create a timeline and calculate the approximate total cost of the project. Ideally, you also map out the project’s success.

Another essential document that the discovery stage leads to is a complete project schedule with specified milestones, deliverables, and timelines.

When the discovery team relies on a clear set of requirements, they can accomplish every task of the development phase without any postponements or changes. All those responsible know the intermediate project goals, deliverables, and deadlines. This is the bottom line by which you can move forward with confidence.

HOW COLLABORATIVE LOGISTICS SOFTWARE IMPROVE SUPPLY CHAIN VISIBILITY

Benefits of the Project Discovery Phase

Project Discovery Stage gives confidence in the stability of the project thanks to the following:

• In-depth niche market research allows you to make decisions based on data, not assumptions. It’s about more than just the proven usefulness of the product but also about refinements based on feedback from potential users.

• A clear framework for the project’s cost at the very beginning due to the strictly defined goals and phases of work avoids surprises. The price is not subject to change at each new stage. In such a situation, finding investors is much easier.

• Saving the customer not only money but also time, avoiding the need to make costly edits in the final stages of the project.

Collaborative work at the Discovery Phase provides a lot of opportunities and avoids misunderstanding and other unpleasant moments, among which:

• A vague idea. Sometimes customers come to development companies with a vaguely formulated project at the idea stage, and the client needs help understanding how to implement the project. What business processes should accompany it, what stack and features the final product will have, and what can be limited to the MVP stage? And finally, does the target audience need the potential product? Without detailed elaboration of all the nuances “onshore,” you should not start “sailing.” In the next step, there will be questions, problems, miscommunications, and inconsistency of expectations and results.

• An undetermined amount of work. Suppose you do not prescribe each step in advance (what should go after what, what is a priority, what can wait, what is the logic of importance). In this case, the amount of work will constantly change, missing deadlines will be revealed, and implementation will be greatly delayed.

• Uncertain budget. This comes out of the previous step. If there is no clear roadmap, the duration of work and goals are constantly changing (upwards), which means the funding costs will also change. Sometimes budgets get so bloated that it’s easier to drop the idea.

• Forced downtime. The steps depend on each other, so if you break one of them, it can stall subsequent efforts. Without clearly defined steps, regulations, policies, and technical documentation, you can’t just change the development team you’re unsatisfied with because no one from the outside will want to get into the mistakes of others; it’s better to start from scratch. So the client also wastes time looking for a “rescue” team and concludes that beginning with the Discovery Phase is necessary.

• Unsatisfactory result. If all the stages of work were done ad hoc, and instead of developing a quality product the team was busy “fighting fires” because of mistakes, it is hard to imagine that the product will be good, in demand, and meeting the expectations of the client and end users.

 

A carefully planned Project Discovery Phase usually takes about 10% of the total duration of a project. So, as you can see, it is not as much as may initially seem, and the benefits far outweigh the costs.

INCEPTION PHASE OF SOFTWARE PROJECTS WITH THE APP SOLUTIONS

The Bottom Line

It is important to understand that the Discovery Phase is not a whim of a development company trying to get as much money from the client as possible. On the contrary, by going through this process, the customer gets a predictable roadmap, in terms of time/stack/finances, for working on the solution. Furthermore, they may save a lot of money through getting market research which confirms that the game is not worth the candle, and the idea abandoned without investing time and resources.

We have our own SWAT at The APP Solutions, who will quickly guide you through the Discovery Phase – we will answer all the questions of interest, give an estimate of the cost and duration of the project, as well as what you can do to improve your product and much more. So contact us if you want a quality analysis and guidance for your idea in the shortest possible time.

The guest of this episode was Nick McKenzie, Group Product Manager at Redox, an orchestra conductor who always finds common ground with investors, techies, and marketers alike to create an amazing workable product: “I just naturally gravitate toward solving hard problems with large folks of smart people and still try to do that.” Nick began multitasking in college, playing sports, editing the school newspaper, studying economics and political science to become a great lawyer, and eventually realizing he wanted to combine healthcare with technology.

Embrace Action and Market Feedback

That led him to Walgreens, and it was an opportunity to see the interplay between the commercial and human aspects of healthcare delivery.

AGILE HEALTHCARE: HOW TO IMPLEMENT THE APPROACH

“I operate under the idea that it’s better to release something from a product and have to tweak it than to over-design and never get feedback on a thing. So I am generally biased toward action and implementing feedback, and sharing decision-making along those lines in a reasonably fast time frame.” 

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PODCAST #1. CREATING A FUTURISTIC SURGICAL ROBOT

PODCAST #2. DISRUPTING HEALTHCARE SERVICES

PROJECT MANAGEMENT FOR SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT: THE APP SOLUTIONS TIPS

Nick is a person who doesn’t get hung up on things for long but tries to make MVPs, tests, and upgrades according to what the market dictates. 

From App Knowledge to EHR Integration Architecture

The next step in his career was working at the famous company Cerner. Nick says the following about his work there: “You learn your app, and then you become the solution architect of that app. So you gain more knowledge than the subject matter expert of that given application. That was my intended path, and my path was exposed to 16 or 17 of Cerner’s applications in my first year.”

Nick went on to work with the EHR integration architecture, which he compares to building a house, where an entire team of contractors, roofers, electricians, and plumbers work cohesively under an architect. 

“I was always fascinated with this idea of being the translator helping clinicians translate their requirements into what they wanted the system to be designed and then translating back to the technical teams how to execute and interestingly enough. It’s all that product management really is.”

THE HEALTHCARE ECOSYSTEMS: A TOUR THROUGH THE HEALTH-INTERCONNECTED WORLD 

Simplifying Healthcare Data with a Personal Touch

The next step in Nick’s career was Redox – a single API for providers and products. Mission – making the world’s healthcare data frictionless for adoption. The mantra for every large team meeting is that we are all patients. We might not be patients today, but at some point, all of us will become. What is Redox doing now? Expanding buyer personas, changing the focus on the product. 

There was also talk about how Nick sees the difference between a startup with 250 people in series D and a Fortune 500 company with 25,000 people. It’s the mechanics of running a business, like HR management, annual reviews, and culture… These things are handled more centrally in a big company, and they’re very personal at Redox. You have a much deeper ability to influence people directly. Nick explains in quite some detail and fascinatingly what he thinks the difference is between product development and the KPI system at a big company and a not-so-big one. 

How to build the right product team? Focus on a diversity of skills to avoid tunnel vision. You need people who can offer different solutions to problems so that you can gather the best of those perspectives and assemble them into a workable strategy for the future. 

HOW TO MAKE EHR/EMR EPIC INTEGRATION WITH YOUR HEALTH APP

The Multifaceted Chameleon Approach

“Product is a complex field. You have to understand the dynamics of the business; you have to work directly with engineers, and you have to interact with customers. You kind of play different roles.” 

Product management as a professional discipline that attracts people who used to write code, do business, and do architecture. Nick thinks of product management as a chameleon. Some days you have to be blue and interact with investors and customers; other days, you have to be green head down and solve engineering team problems; and some days, you have to be a completely different color in market research, interviewing people, and doing podcasts. And it’s all proportionate based on business needs. 

Nick talked about interoperability in healthcare and where it’s headed. We spent the last 10 to 15 years digitizing the U.S., but the problem was they were in different systems that spoke different languages. Now we’re in the throes of unifying into just one language. And we have to get to the point where we can universally translate from one language to another language to provide computational algorithms to provide new clinical therapies.

TOP 10 HEALTHCARE TRENDS EXPECTED TO BE IN 2023

***

The APP Solutions launched a podcast, CareMinds, where you can hear from respected experts in healthcare and Health Tech.

Who is a successful product manager in the healthcare domain? Which skills and qualities are crucial? How important is this role in moving a successful business to new achievements? Responsibilities and KPIs?

Please find out about all this and more in our podcast. Stay tuned for updates and subscribe to channels –

Spotify: https://spotifyanchor-web.app.link/e/abvcQJFW3tb

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SL9CfKy5ZqM

This week our guest is Patrick Cullen, SVP of Engineering at Carrot Fertility – not only an IT expert but a three-time Ironman Triathlon accomplisher! College was also a bit of an obstacle course, as Pat chose to study computer science and business administration, which is not easy to combine when you’re still very young and a member of the track and field team. However, that’s where Cullen learned how to work as a team – how to take responsibility and delegate it to others.

Pat’s Journey: Balancing Innovation and Scalability

After Pat’s studies, he quickly worked his way up from Help Desk to chief software engineer at CommerceHub, keeping his love of sports in mind and founding Hoopdog. This startup organized amateur basketball tournaments.

WATCH ALSO:

PODCAST #1. CREATING A FUTURISTIC SURGICAL ROBOT

PODCAST #2. DISRUPTING HEALTHCARE SERVICES

PODCAST #3. HOW TECHNOLOGY CAN HELP IMPROVE HEALTHCARE OUTCOMES

Working at Carrot Fertility is, first and foremost, about the satisfaction of giving hope and helping families who can’t have children. That in itself is a good motivation. Then, by improving the quality of the product, Pat builds iterations based on user feedback – some teams focus on innovation, and some reinforce what we’ve already done. So 60% is scalability and risk reduction, and 40% is innovation.

“It’s an art, but it’s so complex that I feel like when science has so many variables, then we just call it art.”

Analytics numbers should guide you at any stage of product creation but be prepared that not everything can be confirmed by numbers at once – letting go of the right things at the right time. The perfect product is the enemy of a good product – don’t hesitate to “let out the door” something that doesn’t seem to meet your criteria.

TOP 10 HEALTHCARE TRENDS EXPECTED TO BE IN 2023

Solving Complex Problems and Advancing Healthcare Ecosystems

“There’s something fun to solve whether it’s more like the market fit or architecturally complex; I love all problems like I love all my children equally.”

THE HEALTHCARE ECOSYSTEMS: A TOUR THROUGH THE HEALTH-INTERCONNECTED WORLD 

What does Carrot plan to do next? Investing in the modularity to ensure ease of adoption for companies and health plans; continuing to invest in our data platform to increase visibility in outcomes of journeys; investing in various fertility journeys for improved engagement.

“I am a solver at heart, so I love hearing about a gnarly problem that I can roll my sleeves up and get involved with.”

Shape Product Understanding and Success

Every experience of your career and your journey is something that you can build on and learn from, so always embrace where you are and live in the present because it will help influence your future in terms of product understanding the life cycle and phases of your products and what their place is in that and invest accordingly, whether it’s early innovation or something that you need to start mastering.

FEMTECH IN HEALTHCARE: HOW TO MAKE IT EFFECTIVE

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The APP Solutions launched a podcast, CareMinds, where you can hear from respected experts in healthcare and Health Tech.

Who is a successful product manager in the healthcare domain? Which skills and qualities are crucial? How important is this role in moving a successful business to new achievements? Responsibilities and KPIs?

Please find out about all this and more in our podcast. Stay tuned for updates and subscribe to channels –

Spotify: https://spotifyanchor-web.app.link/e/abvcQJFW3tb

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SL9CfKy5ZqM

Our guest this time is Paul Norton, Health Tech Product Leader at Oscar Health. Norton’s future choice of profession could not help but be influenced by his physician’s parents. At home after work, they discussed the barriers that prevented them from providing quality care to the population. As a result, Paul grew up with the understanding that he wanted to change that situation. Our guest’s college years came during the Obama presidency and his ObamaCare program. He worked for an economist who worked with national leaders to design health care worldwide and specifically to implement the Affordable Care Act. Paul likes that kind of systems approach but realized that research wasn’t for him; he was focused on action and execution, which can be achieved through technology.

Paul’s Journey to Product Solutions

So Paul ended up at Athena Health, where he focused on strategizing and implementing products related to value-based care, where his “political” background helped him. At that time, medical institutions began actively funding digital projects, such as the introduction of electronic health records, and Paul’s company doubled in size and revenue in 3 years.

Having Domain expertise or background in something that may look slightly different from your peers can help you take on higher levels of responsibility early.

You’d think, what more could you want? But Paul continued to develop himself, earning his MBA and MPH degrees and having had time to work with a unicorn company. Norton noticed that insurance companies desperately needed technology to adequately share medical data. That was exactly what Oscar Health, a tech-driven insurer, was doing. That’s how Paul got into that company and is now the Assistant Director of Product Solutions.

Policy and Regulatory Change Creates Opportunities

The connections and people can come from all kinds of different places.

A considerable challenge is asking a healthcare organization to remove and replace its entire infrastructure. The market has been looking for more modular offerings, so Oscar is moving to a more modular strategy and is about to go to market with a patient engagement tool called Campaign Builder, a user experience you can’t get from an insurance provider. “We sort of have that fully integrated Tech stack enables that because we’re not having to sort of move data around between different systems and sort of piece things together; it all sort of layers on top of things, and it gives us a lot more flexibility with how we sort of surface data to members and providers.”

We often underestimate how policy and regulatory change create opportunities.

Any person who has gone to a doctor in the U.S. has been told that they can’t access some element of their information, whether it’s their medical information, information about the payment to a provider, or the number of times HIPAA has been misused as a reason not to share data with a person.

Navigating Complexity and Learning in Healthcare Evolution

When you look at your technology capabilities, you think about the differentiator of your offering and how that differentiator becomes more robust when the political environment changes, which is essentially a market condition.

There are three key characteristics of product ownership – curiosity, skepticism, and empathy.

You have limited resources at your disposal, and you have a lot of requests from a wide range of stakeholders, and you have to prioritize and understand the motivations. This requires significant skepticism because you often have to say no. You have to have good data skills because how else will you assess priorities?

“I’m trying to get the state of California to spend tens of hundreds of millions of dollars to create a statewide health data network and pass laws requiring it”, Paul advises, “If you’re in doubt about whether you’re right for the product manager role, ask yourself why you were hired for that role. It was for a reason.”

And also explains the difference between a large company and a startup: in a smaller organization, priorities are a problem because resources are limited, but there are also fewer stakeholders making decisions, so it becomes much easier to reach a consensus. On the other hand, in a large team, there are many more people around from whom you can learn.

Every day I learn something new, expect a huge change in healthcare, hopefully in a good way.

WATCH ALSO:

PODCAST #1. CREATING A FUTURISTIC SURGICAL ROBOT

PODCAST #2. DISRUPTING HEALTHCARE SERVICES

PODCAST #3. HOW TECHNOLOGY CAN HELP IMPROVE HEALTHCARE OUTCOMES

PODCAST #4. BOOST BUSINESS WITH ITERATION: QUICKER TIME TO MARKET, BETTER PRODUCT

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The APP Solutions launched a podcast, CareMinds, where you can hear from respected experts in healthcare and Health Tech.

Who is a successful product manager in the healthcare domain? Which skills and qualities are crucial? How important is this role in moving a successful business to new achievements? Responsibilities and KPIs?

Please find out about all this and more in our podcast. Stay tuned for updates and subscribe to channels –

Spotify: https://spotifyanchor-web.app.link/e/abvcQJFW3tb

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@careminds4634/ 

Our new episode features Lindsay Dornfeld, MBA, Sr. Manager Veradigm – Bachelor’s in Rehabilitation Psychology, Masters in Business Administration, and she’s also a certified health information technology specialist. It’s hard to find a more appropriate education for what she’s doing now. Lindsay began her journey in medicine, working with children with autism. Even though her work is no longer directly related to patients, their happiness with the product is always at the forefront of her mind.

Lindsay Dornfeld’s Journey in Healthcare Management

One of her first jobs as a manager rather than a therapist was involved in leading platform migration training for end users for the climate education process. Here Dornfeld not only taught but also learned how to listen to users and try to consider their wishes and further improve the results.

When you know what you’re doing or why or how you are doing it, but to be able to explain it to someone else is a really invaluable skill.

In her next position, Lindsay is already managing program KPIs, better performance, patient progress metrics, and client portals: “Driving greater transparency starts with everyone agreeing that it’s okay to have roadblocks, it’s okay to refine the data if you’re working on project management, but you’re stuck in thinking it has to be a certain way.”

To account for KPIs, Lindsay uses the colors of a traffic light, where green means all is well, yellow means you may be at risk and red means you are already at risk (of deadlines, budgets, etc.) And green all year round doesn’t mean that by the end of the year, red won’t suddenly show up somewhere, so it’s better to use yellow as a safety net, and you don’t end up in the red zone. After all, always being on your guard is justified for work and your personal life.

Breaking Barriers for Team Success

Lindsay stresses the importance of communicating with end users to clearly understand their work: “If I’m talking to someone in a nursing home, I might want to speak to a charge nurse. I wasn’t even aware of that detail that would impact her workflow, so looking for that strategic partner and getting the whole team’s buy-in and responsiveness will be beneficial for the whole team needed.”

If you say: “I need this signature by the end of the month because it is 2-5 million dollars,” and it’s critical to the success of our product, that’s a little bit easier to say: “I need this now, I need this right now” all the time.

If I can’t explain why it’s important and urgent, then it probably is something that can wait until tomorrow.

Lindsay shared how she selects people for her team, what a stopgap is, and why. She also shared her vision for her role: “My team is smarter than me. So I’m here as a manager and a leader to break down those barriers for them to get the roadblocks out of the way so that they can come through and do their job, and they do it the best.”

NPS and the User Experience

Our guest also explained why she considers NPS (not profit or margin) the main indicator of success. You can’t think you’re doing well if people don’t recommend your product to people they know.

I want to be able to make a doctor’s appointment in less than one minute, and that’s my measure of success.

This means paying attention to the critical errors that get in the way of making a doctor’s appointment in one minute. At the same time, don’t focus on the flaws that don’t affect the inconvenience of the appointment in any way. In this way, the 20 root causes eliminate 80 percent of errors. Involve people, talk, ask questions, and interrogate. So you end up with a car that can go from point A to point B, and whether it has heated seats and a sunroof is secondary.

I keep the business lens, and I see the dollars and the numbers, but I also see the people and the families. The joy, the pain, the reason you know why we do what we do.

WATCH ALSO:

PODCAST #3. HOW TECHNOLOGY CAN HELP IMPROVE HEALTHCARE OUTCOMES

PODCAST #4. BOOST BUSINESS WITH ITERATION: QUICKER TIME TO MARKET, BETTER PRODUCT

PODCAST #5. EMPOWERING EXPERTISE: HOW TO THRIVE AS A SCARCE SPECIALIST IN B2B

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The APP Solutions launched a podcast, CareMinds, where you can hear from respected experts in healthcare and Health Tech.

Who is a successful product manager in the healthcare domain? Which skills and qualities are crucial? How important is this role in moving a successful business to new achievements? Responsibilities and KPIs?

Please find out about all this and more in our podcast. Stay tuned for updates and subscribe to channels –

Spotify: https://spotifyanchor-web.app.link/e/abvcQJFW3tb

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@careminds4634/