Breakfast and Mentoring: Thoughtful Roundtable

roundtable

Contributed by Nina Mitchell, Volunteer for the BPMA Mentorship Program

To kick off the new session of the BPMA Mentorship Program, we organized a breakfast and roundtable at the GoDaddy offices in Cambridge. Our gathering provided mentors and mentees the opportunity to meet in person. The 25 attendees also addressed key Product topics in a roundtable format. Here’s a brief overview of what we discussed:

• Customer feedback is extremely important when making product decisions. What makes for a high-quality customer interview? The group discussed how many interviews to conduct, how to find good interview subjects, how to craft the most useful questions, and how to identify patterns in the feedback.

• Product Managers often hear about the concept of Minimum Viable Product. Mentors reviewed how they create and conduct the MVPs at their business. Some groups had the chance to talk about the metrics they use to measure success and what the benefits, risks and tradeoffs are of developing an MVP.

• Pricing is a topic that often comes up for PMs. What models have mentors used to research and develop it? Guests offered an overview of their experiences and how they came up with pricing.

Thank you to Vanessa Ferranto, Senior Manager of Product and Experience at Zipcar, for facilitating our meeting. We look forward to another event in early 2017.The BPMA Mentorship Program is the first ever program dedicated to the product community in the Boston area. The program is currently in its seventh year and is inviting product management and marketing professionals in the region to join this highly received program.To learn more about the BPMA Mentorship Program, please visit us at www.bostonproducts.org/mentorship. We are looking for mentors! Submit your application today: http://www.bostonproducts.org/?page=Mentor_SubmissionInterested in applying to the 2017 program? Apply here: http://www.bostonproducts.org/?