Can a single course change your career trajectory? For Mike Donovan, Senior Vice President of Product at Sauce Labs, the answer to that question is a resounding yes.
ย Can a single course change your career trajectory? For Mike Donovan, Senior Vice President of Product at Sauce Labs, the answer to that question is a resounding yes. โ Tweet This
Mikeโalong with several dozen of his coworkersโenrolled in the Continuous Discovery Habits Master Class. Through the course, Mike developed his listening skills, created better relationships with members of the sales team, and began to use the insights he gathered to improve the product offering, make a positive impact on company revenue, and earn several promotions along the way.
Mike attributes his promotion from Group Product Manager to Director and eventually Senior Vice President to the skills he developed in the Master Class, but the impact ripples beyond changes to his job title. Mike now believes the majority of the Sauce Labs product team is committed to discovery and confident in their ability to innovate. Theyโre no longer simply โproject managingโ requests from sales, but using the insights theyโve gained from customers to bet on products and features that are making a genuine impact on the companyโs revenue.
We caught up with Mike to learn how he was able to use the skills he gained in the Master Class to build a culture of discovery and innovation at Sauce Labs.
Meet the Continuous Discovery Champion, Mike Donovan
Mike Donovan, Senior Vice President of Product at Sauce Labs
Mike Donovan is the Senior Vice President of Product at Sauce Labs, a company that offers automated testing and error monitoring solutions and helps customers like Verizon Media and Walmart develop, test, and deliver high-quality web and mobile apps at enterprise scale.
Mike began his career as an engineer and transitioned into product about five years ago. While heโs worked in a range of roles and companies, he describes his focus as building enterprise applications for some of the largest companies.
When it comes to his product philosophy, Mike says, โI believe that the only value a product team delivers is by releasing working code to production that solves a real business need.โ
I believe that the only value a product team delivers is by releasing working code to production that solves a real business need. โ Tweet This
Mikeโs Early Days in Product at Sauce Labs
When Mike first joined Sauce Labs in December 2020, he says the product org was โthe extreme picture of a feature factory.โ Back then, the sales team would pass customer requests to the product team,ย who then had to essentially project manage the development and delivery of these features.
The results were apparent to MikeโSauce Labs wasnโt reaching its full potential for growth, and the company was at risk of being edged out by competitors who were responding better to customersโ needs.
Mike joined the product team right around the same time as Susannah Axelrod, the former VP of Product at Sauce Labs, and realized they shared the same values. โWe believe that innovation stems from truly understanding the problems that we are trying to solve instead of just implementing a solution,โ says Mike.
We believe that innovation stems from truly understanding the problems that we are trying to solve instead of just implementing a solution. โ Tweet This
Unfortunately, the organization around them wasnโt set up to support this way of thinking. โThe culture wasnโt there to even think about that, nor were the skills across the product management organization,โ Mike explains.
It was around this time that Sauce Labs hired Product Talk to run a private cohort of the Continuous Discovery Habits Master Class for 36 of their product team members in August 2021 (another group of 40 from Sauce Labs would later join a private cohort in October 2021 as well). Mike says it was beneficial both on a team and personal level: โWe learned so much as a group. I personally benefited from learning how to truly identify a problem and really get into the behavioral psychology around how people tell you the ideal story instead of the actual story.โ
A few members of the product team at Sauce Labs taking time to socialize (and maybe share some learnings from the Product Talk Master Class?).
Reflecting on the experience, Mike says, โThe Master Class gave us the confidence to collect actual stories so we could get our company back to a stage of growth and innovation.โ How exactly did this happen? Weโll explore this transformation in more detail in the rest of this post.
The Product Talk Master Class gave us the confidence to collect actual stories so we could get our company back to a stage of growth and innovation. โ Tweet This
Early Continuous Discovery Habits: Getting Started by Participating in Sales Conversations
After completing the Master Class, one of Mikeโs first steps was getting the product team to regularly participate in sales conversations. This might sound simple, but in reality it took a lot of time and effort. Mike explains, โAs an enterprise sales business, I had to really convince the sales team that we were not asking them or customers to do more work, we were not asking to slow down their process and their sales cycle; we were looking to speed it up. My job is to put food on their table, and I would do so by discovering the customerโs true needs.โ
Mike believed that many customersโ needs could be solved with the current product at the time, but people didnโt know how to ask for the right solution. If he could participate in sales calls, he argued, he could pivot the solution to meet the customerโs needs so the sales team could close deals sooner. โIf there does happen to be a gap, the faster that we understand that gap and problem, the faster we will actually fix it and then ultimately grow revenue. I had to do a lot of selling on that,โ says Mike.
His approach involved a lot of presentation and repetition of specific examples. โEvery chance I got with a customer in front of the sales team or with the sales team, I would try to literally help them close whatever deal possible. At the same time, I would use the opportunity to also do research and discovery about what the true need was.โ Next, Mike would catalog all of the examples heโd built up and present them to the sales team. โI would always have three examples in my back pocket about how the sales cycle was shortened from bringing the product manager along to help close the deal and do discovery about what problems the customer had. It was very example-driven,โ says Mike.
I would always have three examples in my back pocket about how the sales cycle was shortened from bringing the product manager along to help close the deal and do discovery. โ Tweet This
He adds that he had to be very proactive about getting invited to these calls. Heโd see a particular problem or feature request and then heโd ask to participate in that specific call. Heโd do his homework ahead of the call so he could provide more support and actually help resolve the issue. โBut my subliminal purpose there was to really do discovery,โ says Mike. โYes, of course, we helped customers, but I was actually there to discover their true needs rather than solve their one problem.โ
Mike says this approach was key because he didnโt want the sales team to feel like he was slowing their process down. โIn an enterprise organization, I think we all have to understand weโre here to build revenue both near term and long term,โ he explains.
In an enterprise organization, I think we all have to understand weโre here to build revenue both near term and long term. โ Tweet This
The Next Major Step in Discovery: Introducing Outcome Thinking
Another critical point on Sauce Labsโs continuous discovery journey involved beginning to think in terms of outcomes. Mike says, โIt seems more like a journey than a destination because Iโm always learning about how to better orient myself around the business metrics.โ
His goal is to get the product team organized around the product outcomes that drive the business and to connect the dots from the business metrics to the product metrics to the feature adoption metrics.
At Sauce Labs, this started by organizing the product and engineering teams by the product line they supported. They refer to these as โvalue streams.โ And Mike explains, โWhen they report on the health of their product, I donโt ask about roadmaps. Of course, I have to care about delivery timelines, but I really just want product teams to deeply understand the business metrics they are trying to impact, and link them to product metrics they believe are leading indicators of success. The value streams report on these metrics on a bi-weekly basis so that everyone is aligned on what really matters.
Mike admits that this is a really hard thing to figure out, but he encourages teams to just start working this way with the knowledge they have rather than striving for perfection at first. He reiterates that this isnโt something teams get right on the first try. โThe first thing everybody does is give me 20 feature metrics because they donโt understand the product metrics. Then they usually get the business metrics, but they donโt understand the connection between everything. Eventually, though, I find that by presenting progress on improving the metrics regularly, it forces the product teams to understand the connections. Teams will start to understand it and really whittle it down to the concise list of metrics that matter and can make the connection points.โ
Another Critical Step: Consistently Collecting Customer Insights
Mike says another key step in Sauce Labsโs continuous discovery journey was beginning to consistently collect insights from customers, especially from teams outside of product. โWe have a plethora of discovery notes and insights. Everybodyโs really good now at sharing information with us as a product team.โ
Sauce Labs uses Productboard to collect these insights, and Mike says that while itโs good at collecting these unstructured insights from various sources, it can lead to information overload. โWe have a lot of customers. They have a lot of needs, a lot of problems we could be solving for them, a lot of areas to improve the business. We struggle to keep our heads above water with all the incoming insights that we could be learning from.โ
But compared to the situation when Mike joined and he had to advocate to participate in sales calls, this is a good problem to have and an indication of how far theyโve come.
Itโs also important to note that adopting continuous discovery habits is an ongoing process everywhere, and Sauce Labs is no exception. โThereโs pockets of greatness, but itโs not consistent everywhere,โ says Mike. โIโm really proud of how far weโve come and weโre constantly retrospecting on our process to improve it.โ
With continuous discovery, thereโs pockets of greatness, but itโs not consistent everywhere. Iโm really proud of how far weโve come and weโre constantly retrospecting on our process to improve it. โ Tweet This
Committing to Continuous Discovery Fuels Mikeโs Professional Success
Getting the sales team bought into the idea of discovery, coaching the product team to think in terms of outcomes, and encouraging everyone to collect insights from customers were already major wins at Sauce Labs. But Mike says thatโs not the only benefit heโs gained from participating in the Master Class.
As he was learning how to discover customer problems in a sales-led organization, Mike realized he was also discovering a lot about where the product needed to improve the customer experience in ways that would help grow revenue. โI was essentially responsible for over half of the revenue, even though I wasnโt really enabled or empowered to own it, but I didnโt care. I could see growth slowing. I could see why we were losing. I was hearing it directly from hundreds of customers now that I was involved in so many customer conversations with the sales team.โ
Because Mike was able to directly connect his work to the companyโs revenue, he began to quickly progress up the career ladder. โI was a group product manager for six months. I got promoted to director within six months. Then I think about six months later, I was a VP. Within another year, I was a senior VP.โ
Mike says itโs clear to him that this progression is connected to what he learned from the Master Class and Continuous Discovery Habits. โIt all goes back to that journey of discovering what our customers truly need and then coming up with engineering-led solutions that were outcome-driven, focused on what really drove revenue, frankly.โ
Drilling down into a specific example, Mike says there was a push to diversify their portfolio of products that wasnโt trending toward the desired results. We donโt need to get too into the weeds here, but suffice it to say that this product impacts the engineering velocity of Sauce Labsโs customers. The faster it works, the faster engineers who use this product can release code.
Once again, Mike turned to what he was hearing from customers in discovery: โIโm hearing from customers what they really need. They need the basics. They needed our platform to be fast and reliable. So I had to orient the team around the outcome of improving performance. I even had to get buy-in from leadership that we didnโt have the right outcome as a product because we were missing this performance metric that our customers needed us to improve.โ
With the right outcome set, next came the solution. Yet again, this was not easy, but Mike persisted. Mike explains, โI remember hitting walls because people were confined by constraints that didnโt exist. They really thought they had to stay within the user experience of the current system.โ But Mike challenged them to wipe it all away, erase all those constraints, and just focus on the outcome of improving performance. He continuously challenged the team to come up with new ideas to solve the problem.
Hosted Test Orchestration was one of the products that, thanks to discovery, helped Sauce Labs diversify their portfolio.
And it worked! The team came back with an approach that solved the customer problem and also introduced a completely new way for users to interact with Sauce Labs. โIt made everything 50% faster and really solved the actual problem. Not in the way that anybody was asking us to solve it, but in a brand-new interaction mode,โ says Mike. โI took that idea and then created a new product where speed was a value proposition, along with ROI and cost reduction. That turned into a new product offering that we launched earlier this year that is on track to not only build revenue but keep us very competitive in the market and resolve some of those customer challenges.โ
Summing it all up, Mike says itโs really thanks to discovery that he was able to achieve this. โIt all came from really listening to what people were asking for, and using every opportunity from sales and support conversations to discover their true needs.โ
And perhaps the biggest benefit of all is that going through this experience has given the Sauce Labs team the confidence to try new things in the future. โThe company now has a repeatable way to develop innovative ideas.โ says Mike. โWeโre not afraid to launch new products and capabilities before they are 100% perfect. We trust that our discovery process will guide us through each iteration, ultimately achieving the outcome we set out to. And I think thatโs critical to the future success of the company.โ
Weโre not afraid to launch new products and capabilities before they are 100% perfect. โ Tweet This
Key Learnings and Takeaways
The Sauce Labs product team has clearly undergone a significant transformation since theyโve begun to adopt continuous discovery. Reflecting on his experience, Mike offers a few key learnings and takeaways.
Continuous discovery is a collection of habits
Mike finds that thereโs an ongoing tension between the idea of continuous discovery as a process vs. habits. โEverybody thinks itโs a process that you follow. Then when you veer off a little bit, they throw their hands up and they say youโre not doing it and therefore, everythingโs invalid. Or people look for a very structured way to do a user interview or do discovery.โ Mike believes itโs important to challenge the idea that continuous discovery is a strict process and accept that itโs actually a set of habits that you do every day.
Mike believes regular habits, like speaking with customers and identifying opportunities, are the key to discovery.
Every individual contributor has more remit than they tend to give themselves credit for
Similarly, Mike sees many people waiting for someone to provide a structure or process for continuous discovery, but this isnโt actually necessary. โI think that people are waiting for others to build a process when, instead, they need to realize they actually have the agency to do it within themselves, and itโs possible to do it right today. Thereโs nothing stopping that from happening.โ
Everything starts with touchpoints with customers
When Mike first wanted to participate in sales calls, he had to convince salespeople he wasnโt going to slow down their sales process and he even had to take on more of a support role to solve customersโ specific problems. But doing this allowed him to build his case, show the power of discovery, and ultimately grow his influence. As Mike puts it, โBuilding up these examples over time helped build my own influence in the organization. I think that my impact or influence at this organization is directly correlated with the number of customer calls I had. I think the same goes for every product manager at any company.โ
I think that my impact or influence at this organization is directly correlated with the number of customer calls I had. I think the same goes for every product manager at any company. โ Tweet This
Want to see your product teamโs skills and impact skyrocket? Come join us in the next cohort of the Continuous Discovery Habits Master Class!
The post Product in Practice: Continuous Discovery Fuels Innovation at Sauce Labs appeared first on Product Talk.
Product in Practice: Continuous Discovery Fuels Innovation at Sauce Labs was first posted on January 3, 2024 at 6:00 am.
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