Micro-Interview: Aleksandra Boshova | Group PM | Ocado Technology
💬"I believe that implementing cheap MVPs is one of the best ways to validate product ideas."
INTRO NOTE:
Aleksandra Boshova is a Group Product Manager at Ocado Technology, a company building the future of online retail through world-class systems at the intersection of robotics and IoT, cloud platforms, big data, machine learning, software development, and beyond.
In under 500 words, she shares:
Her product discovery secrets…
How she deals with stakeholders’ conflicting opinions…
Some of her sources of learning…
And more…
Enjoy!
“What's the main secret to your product idea validation process?”
I believe that implementing cheap MVPs is one of the best ways to validate product ideas. I have many examples of how a particular functionality is intended to work in a specific way or serve a specific need. Yet, sometimes in real life, the functionality may be used in a completely different way. When you give your users the simplest possible solution, you can find out very quickly if the idea is valuable.
“What did your biggest product discovery failure teach you?”
The smartest and most sophisticated solution is not always the best! It is related to the MVP approach, which we didn’t take at the time. We built a very smart solution that maximizes productivity, however, it turned out that it introduced additional complications for the users, and they just preferred not to use it. If we had tried something light and validated our assumptions early on, we would have solved the problem better.
“Can you share an example of a successful product feature or improvement originating from user research or feedback?”
Our business model allows us to be very close to our customers and users, which is great, and we often hear feedback. The product I manage supports manual fulfillment of online orders in grocery stores – it guides the operatives to collect the orders most efficiently. Typically, we visualize the products one by one, and we expect that operatives collect them in a specific order, but our users find it easier to collect several products in one go. We solved the problem by showing the next three products they need to collect, and we received a lot of positive feedback from all our users.
“How do you handle situations where there is conflicting feedback from stakeholders, users, and internal teams during the product discovery phase?”
This is something that often happens as our customers have different operating models. In such cases, I first analyze the data – when there is conflicting feedback a decision needs to be made and the data usually helps me make the right decision. This also helps me convince any stakeholders with opposing opinions to accept the suggested approach. There are some cases when due to legal reasons all points of view need to be considered. In such cases, I would create a configurable solution, but this is not something I like doing as it usually makes the product more complex to use.
“How do you stay updated on the best practices in product management?”
Product Management-related groups and pages in social media (like PDMA, ProductTank, and Product School) can be very helpful for keeping up with the latest trends.