Best Practices for Product Managers to Help Build Highly Effective Teams
Presented by Nicole L. Birdsall, MBA, MA
Link to slides here.
In my two decades as a Product Manager, I have experienced a variety of teams, a range of situations, and countless challenges while striving to deliver excellent customer experiences. In addition, I have spent over a decade in graduate and doctoral level academic programs studying and researching human psychology, organizational behavior, consumer behavior, and cyberpsychology. Over these years, I have compiled a set of best practices and tools that I use to help build highly effective teams that deliver exceptional customer experiences.
In this talk, I want to share my product management best practices and experiences with you in hopes they will help you in your product development journey. I will cover key topics including (a) working together, (b) managing and prioritizing the work, (c) customer discovery and readying stories, (d) measuring what and how we work, and (e) communicating out.
About Nicole:
Nicole has 20+ years of product management experience and 17+ years as an adjunct professor. She is currently the Distinguished Senior Manager of Product Management for Pricing at PayPal and a Senior Adjunct Professor at Golden Gate University teaching eCommerce and Marketing Management.
Nicole started her career as a software engineer for System Software Associates (SSA), an ERP company, and Comergent Technologies, a B2B eCommerce software company. During her years at Comergent, Nicole transitioned to product management. In her product management career, she has managed a variety of software, database, communication, and eCommerce products including Comergent’s partner relationship management (PRM), Experian’s cooperative databases, eBay’s email and communication platforms as well as eBay’s Pricing Platform, and eHealth’s Medicare eCommerce site. Aside from her full-time career, Nicole enjoys teaching a variety of eCommerce and Marketing Management, undergraduate and graduate courses in asynchronous, synchronous, and in-person modes. Nicole has a B.S. in Operations Management and Information Systems from Northern Illinois University, an MBA concentrating in Marketing from Golden Gate University, and a MA in Psychology focusing on Organizational Behavior from Golden Gate University. She is currently working on her Doctorate in Business studying the convergence of Cyberpsychology and Consumer Behavior at Golden Gate University. In her spare time, Nicole loves hanging out with her husband, Ryan, daughter, Jaclyn, and four K9 children. She volunteers for multiple dog rescue organizations and is on the board of directors for the California Miniature Schnauzer Rescue. She is learning carpentry and stained glassing, loves trail running and hiking, and is a 1st-degree black belt in Tae Kwon Do.
