Gabrielle Bufrem - Confessions Of A First Head Of Product (Turing Fest 2022)

The Head of Product role is alluring in many ways - it was Gabrielle's dream job when she was a PM and it is the dream role of many product people. In this talk, Gabrielle shares her assumptions about the role and which assumptions she learned are right, wrong, and which ones are very wrong. This talk walks through learnings as a Head of Product, highlighting the challenges and lessons learned while building great products and, most importantly, great teams.

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Transcript

1. Confessions of a
   first head of product
   

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2. 8 lessons learned
   So that you don’t make the same mistakes I did
   

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3. Hi! My name is Gabi
   Product Manager → Senior Product
   Manager → Group Product Manager →
   Head of Product
   During my free time I’m a vacation surfer,
   coffee snob, foodie, and I also love to travel!
   Grab me for a during the conference
   and let’s keep the conversation going
   @gbufremsays
   

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4. Lesson #1: Everything will be broken
   

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5. Lesson #2: A lot of people won’t understand what
   you do
   

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6. Design
   Engineering
   Product
   Magic ✨
   Represents
   the business
   Represents
   the customer
   Represents the
   technology
   

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7. What does a Head of
   Product do?
   ● Sets the vision for the product
   ● Works on how we get there
   ● Grows the product team
   

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8. VISION
   BUSINESS GOALS
   OBJECTIVES AND KEY RESULTS
   STRATEGY
   

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9. VISION
   This is hard...
   Where we
   are now
   

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10. Lesson #3: You coming in = people having less
    control. People don’t like that
    

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11. Lesson #4: The best onboarding is talking to your
    customers
    

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12. Lesson #5: There is a weight to what you say and
    you can’t take that away
    

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13. Lesson #6: You need to get people comfortable with
    building the thing that works for now - not the best
    thing
    Now Next Much later
    

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14. Lesson #7: Your hopes of process will clash with the
    level of scrappiness required
    

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15. Lesson #8: Making suboptimal decisions trying to
    save money will cost you so much money
    

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16. Recap
    ● Everything will be broken
    ● A lot of people won’t know what you do
    ● You coming in = people having less control. People don’t like that
    ● The best onboarding is talking to your customers
    ● There’s a weight to what you say and you can’t take that away
    ● You need to get people comfortable with building the thing that
    works for now - not the best thing
    ● Your hopes for process will clash with the level of scrappiness
    required
    ● Making suboptimal decisions trying to save money will cost you so
    much money
    💔
    🤨
    😤
    󰬷
    🚲
    󰝯
    🏝
    🤑
    @gbufremsays
    

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