YouSaid · the spoken record

Upasna Gautam

lines on the record: 62
first: 2023-02-23
most recent: 2023-02-23
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“It's the feedback, right? Like, I love to hear what you found valuable, what helped you, what was a tactic that you took away and employed that helped you, things that made sense, things that didn't make sense, what you'd like to hear more about, any specific topic that would be valuable to do a deeper dive on. All of those things are very valuable to me.”
2023-02-23 · Lenny's Podcast · An inside look at how CNN builds product | Upasna Gautam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Very easy to find me online. I'm pretty active on Twitter and Instagram. I recently became an amateur content creator, so I share lots of stuff here and there on social. So any social platform, well, not any, only on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram. So any of those three is good. And I always love to hear feedback on stuff that resonated and made sense and the stuff that there are further questions on. Always love having. Conversations around that. So, yeah, DMs are always open.”
2023-02-23 · Lenny's Podcast · An inside look at how CNN builds product | Upasna Gautam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Every election season is absolutely crazy in the best way possible. It's incredible to see our democracy in action and watch history unfold. And while that's happening, using the platform, you had a direct hand in building. And it's never lost on me that my work impacts the world every single day. And on the crazy, frustrating, stressful days, like that is what serves as my anchor.”
2023-02-23 · Lenny's Podcast · An inside look at how CNN builds product | Upasna Gautam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of utmost importance. I think that in itself is the key takeaway, right? It's like, how do you bridge the gap between collecting that feedback, having those conversations? Like, how far are you from your users? How frequently are you having conversations? How consistently are you having conversations? And I always think the more frequently and the more consistently and earlier on in the process that you're having those conversations, the better.”
2023-02-23 · Lenny's Podcast · An inside look at how CNN builds product | Upasna Gautam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I can add on to that to make it relevant for others, which is it just goes back to, you know, there's There's no substitute for having those direct conversations with your customers and your users, right? And it's like when you understand that the assumptions you make are not one-to-one or ever going to be one-to-one with their actual feedback and developing that line of communication with your users and your customers”
2023-02-23 · Lenny's Podcast · An inside look at how CNN builds product | Upasna Gautam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Bridging the gap between product and editorial mutual trust and respect has had an outsized impact on our success as a high-performing team.”
2023-02-23 · Lenny's Podcast · An inside look at how CNN builds product | Upasna Gautam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Point of the question is Do you have and can you exhibit high agency? And especially, again, working in news, it's so important. And so there's not like a specific answer. I think the ability to actually define something specific and tangible in itself is a really, really, really good sign. I think a lot of, you know, people definitely get startled by that question sometimes because it requires you to kind of have to know what it is that you put on the table, right? So yeah, it's different every single time. But the fact, if they can define something out of that question, it's usually a positive sign.”
2023-02-23 · Lenny's Podcast · An inside look at how CNN builds product | Upasna Gautam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“TV show is a toss up between the Mandalorian and Ted Lasso. I know it's not very new, but I don't watch tons and tons of TV and I usually find like the few that I latch onto and then I get obsessed with and then I got to take a break for a while. So those are my last two obsessions. Movie is everything everywhere all at once. Last amazing one that”
2023-02-23 · Lenny's Podcast · An inside look at how CNN builds product | Upasna Gautam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He was an engineer, and they were in their very beginning phases of introducing, well, at that time, there was no product, but product type stuff into his engineering practice. And so he had to read that book and was like, you need to read this book. So I never forgot about it. And then the third one is actually, it's not a book, but it's an article that I think is still very powerful and relevant to this day. It's the new product development game published by Harvard Business Review in 1986. And it looks at a really different approach. One that I resonate a lot with because it's a lot along the lines of how we work at CNN around rapid development and time and flexibility being like key anchors of successful development. So I threw that in there as well.”
2023-02-23 · Lenny's Podcast · An inside look at how CNN builds product | Upasna Gautam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“One, mindfulness in plain English two how to win friends and influence people I have to attribute a lot of my communication skills to my dad forcing me to read that book when I was like 10 years old and”
2023-02-23 · Lenny's Podcast · An inside look at how CNN builds product | Upasna Gautam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If you are interested in working in news and have a product background, or the inverse of that, if you work in news and you're interested in breaking into products. So either side of the coin or any combination of that news media product technology, even a lot of audience development and analytics and data science folks in there too. It's just an amazing community for knowledge sharing in tech and new. So there will be a fit for you somewhere or to learn something or at the very least to meet other really amazing people.”
2023-02-23 · Lenny's Podcast · An inside look at how CNN builds product | Upasna Gautam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Go to newspaper.org. There is a very active Slack group with a couple thousand people in it, a very active and popular job board as well. And you just have to submit an application on the website, a forum, sorry, on the website to join the Slack. And then you'll get an invitation to join the Slack. And then you'll have all of the resources, your fingertips. It's very low barrier to entry. We want everyone and everyone who is interested in the intersection of news and product to be a part of it. And the cool thing about it is, like I mentioned, it's a global network. We have people from the biggest newsrooms across the world to all of the regional ones to, you know, even big tech, one of my fellow board members was, you know, doing news at Twitter. One was working on the Google News Initiative. So it's a really, really awesome group of people and everyone is so hungry.”
2023-02-23 · Lenny's Podcast · An inside look at how CNN builds product | Upasna Gautam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Manager and said, okay, you can hire a couple people, but it was all in them and they had no idea what to do, right? And so some of it, it's across the board and it's amazing to see people doing this from scratch who never in a million years thought they'd like walk into it. You know, they're not coming from big tech. They don't have startup backgrounds. They had journalism degrees from around the world and they're learning how to do product and build, not just learning how to do it. They're building product practices. They're actually building and developing products and features. And they're creating more leaders in the space as well and across their newsrooms to empower each other. So that's been really amazing to see. And it's the most valuable professional organization I've been a part of just because it is so niche that, you know, talking about product management is always fun.”
2023-02-23 · Lenny's Podcast · An inside look at how CNN builds product | Upasna Gautam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Editors who have been cobbling together how to make this thing that they want, but hey, maybe this PRD framework will help you just to keep it on track. So like these very simple rudimentary types of things have helped them so much. And so last year we kicked off a mentorship network in which we had about 400 people apply. We accepted 150 mentees from across the world and matched them with 50 mentors from different newsrooms across the world in leadership positions. And each mentee defined a goal that they wanted to work on and all, of course, having to do with product management. And some of them were creating a product management role for themselves in the newsroom. Some of it was creating a product management practice. Maybe they were given the title.”
2023-02-23 · Lenny's Podcast · An inside look at how CNN builds product | Upasna Gautam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of product thinking and product management in newsrooms, while also increasing the diversity of thought and the diversity of people in those positions as well. And making the resources more readily available, especially for those smaller newsrooms that don't have the money to hire tech talent. And that in itself has, so that group, the newspaper alliance, has grown dramatically in the past three years since I've been a part of it since the beginning. And we regularly produce the resources that are catered, product management resources that are catered to working in a newsroom because it is different. It is very unique. But there are, of course, frameworks and processes that are still relevant, right?”
2023-02-23 · Lenny's Podcast · An inside look at how CNN builds product | Upasna Gautam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“On other jobs that they never signed up for. And so they've had to learn how to do things, product management and engineering and coding hacks because there was Editors and journalists, they're doing so many other things other than just their reporting of the news, right? They've had to take on other roles because of those restraints in the newsroom. And so there was a group established and a community established during the pandemic called the News Product Alliance. And there was like a realization occurring all at the same time that, wow, there's a lot of us doing this work like What do we call it? Is this product management? And it was. It's product management at so many different levels. And so the news product alliance was formed during the pandemic in 2020, I believe, by several media and news executives who had been there and done and have seen people in their newsrooms do that. And the goal of it is to increase the awareness and education.”
2023-02-23 · Lenny's Podcast · An inside look at how CNN builds product | Upasna Gautam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Compared to the rest of product management as a discipline and the tech industry Product management and news is still in its, I will say, infancy. And that's just because it hasn't been an integrated role for as long as it has been in big tech. But it is starting to become more and more not just prominent now, but people are realizing the value and power of it because especially in smaller newsrooms, I mean, see it like CNN, places like New York Times, Washington Post, we have great embedded, you know, strong product teams, but that is not the case for the majority of newsrooms across the country and the world. Newsrooms are strapped for resources. They are strapped all resources, including financial resources. And so first, bringing in product and tech talent is expensive. And that in itself has forced editorial staff and journalists to take”
2023-02-23 · Lenny's Podcast · An inside look at how CNN builds product | Upasna Gautam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“These resources and I need these things and I need knowledge. You don't need anything. You need five minutes and yourself. And that's it.”
2023-02-23 · Lenny's Podcast · An inside look at how CNN builds product | Upasna Gautam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, sorry, not easy. Simple, not easy way always to think about what meditation actually is. It's like instead of like having to uproot your whole life and the way you live to like bring meditation in, think about what you already do every day and how you can just be more present, like fully present. And that's one of the core examples I give is start with brushing your teeth and just brush your teeth. There's a old app I've been using for a long time. If you're into that, I stopped using it recently, but it's still amazing. It's called Insight Timer. The free version is amazing. It started as like a single frame app about 10 years ago, and it's turned into this. They've done amazing things with that product. So that's what I recommend. But again, you don't, I think, again, when people have a vision of meditation in their mind, they're like, well, I need these tools.”
2023-02-23 · Lenny's Podcast · An inside look at how CNN builds product | Upasna Gautam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Totally. I think when people think of meditation, you immediately think of sitting on a meditation cushion like a monk for an hour. And that doesn't have to be true, especially if you're just starting. And there's also, of course, social media has commercialized what meditation is a lot as well. But Adden's core, all it is is being deeply aware of the present moment, right? So I always tell people who are, for example, like really busy moms who have no time, right, in the morning for an hour long meditation is, okay, take something in your day that you do every single day. You brush your teeth every morning, right? Okay, take brushing your teeth. Can you brush your teeth and just brush your teeth? And when you're brushing your teeth, you are engaging all of your senses and being fully present and aware of how it feels, how it smells, how it sounds. That's, you know, two or three minutes of your day. That's meditation. And I think it's an amazing way to, in an easy way.”
2023-02-23 · Lenny's Podcast · An inside look at how CNN builds product | Upasna Gautam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Are you actually listening to what they say? Or are you going in with your own assumptions? Because maybe you're a user of the product. And it was very interesting because I actually started writing freelance for CNN this past year. And I was like, oh, okay, I'll be user now. And no, I'm not. I'm not going to say that it helped me understand their pain points so much more and where they're coming from in a whole different light. But again, I am merely a proxy. I'm not actually the user. What they do is still drastically different. And so when like having those like customer interactions and stakeholder interactions, the priority should be to listen. And I think that is one of the most important things I've learned. And it's also helped build trust and respect between a previously fragmented”
2023-02-23 · Lenny's Podcast · An inside look at how CNN builds product | Upasna Gautam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They have shortcuts that they have lingo for in our content management system. They call things nicknames. And so you have to speak many different languages as a product manager. And there's one thing that, you know, learning and teaching mindfulness has like strengthened. It is that communication, yes, it's very important. How do you become an effective communicator? I think a lot of times we think of speaking articulately first and foremost, or we think about writing well, which those two are really, really important things, but those can't be effective for us as product leaders if listening. So I think listening and being able to converse in the language of the listener is the utmost importance. And how do you like do that in your day-to-day? It's like, okay, if you're having a conversation. With your customer”
2023-02-23 · Lenny's Podcast · An inside look at how CNN builds product | Upasna Gautam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I think the takeaway and the tactic is that goes back to exactly what we talked about in the beginning is the ability to pause before reacting is the key to mindful communication and being a successful product manager. I think a lot of times we are taught to have all the answers or we're expected to have all the answers and people assume we have all the answers. So it's a really frustrating sometimes place to be in. if you listen and you know where to go to get the answers that in itself is like a tremendous place to be so i think the power of meditation being able to pause before reacting lets you do things like conversate in the language of the listener so when i'm talking to my journalists or i'm not using technical terms or like content management technology terms they have whole different vocabulary that they use”
2023-02-23 · Lenny's Podcast · An inside look at how CNN builds product | Upasna Gautam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To say, and you listen to them, and he was like, that in itself is really, really hard to teach. And I was like, okay, yeah, I can do that. So when I think about what communication means, I also attach that to mindfulness, like mindful communication is so critical for successful product management, no matter what type of product environment you're in. it means being like deeply aware of the conversation you're having and when i'm having this conversation with you i'm only having this conversation with you when i'm talking to my design late i'm only talking to my design lead when one of my journalists is venting because this feature is not working the way we told them it was going to i am shutting my mouth and i am listening”
2023-02-23 · Lenny's Podcast · An inside look at how CNN builds product | Upasna Gautam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Meditation has helped so much because of the clarity of mind and clarity of thinking you're able to cultivate because of it, especially when it comes to communication. And this comes back to another tactic, I think, right? So meditation is one. You can't get around it. It's a very, very powerful tool. I will die on that hill. But thinking about workplace tactics, communication is so essential. When I started at CNN, it was a very new chapter for me. It's my first official product management role after working a decade in tech and data and search infrastructure. And it was really scary to make that change so far into my career. But when I asked my boss why he took such a big chance on me, he said, it's because of your communication skills and relationship building skills and that I've seen you in a room where engineers listen to you and what you have.”
2023-02-23 · Lenny's Podcast · An inside look at how CNN builds product | Upasna Gautam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Two parts to this. So, one, I would be remiss as a meditation educator if I didn't say that there is no substitution for meditation. So you just got to do it. It takes a long time and it's a lifelong work in progress. But the good thing is that it also, like the more you do it and consistently you do it, it compounds over time. And I always, okay, if you think of any job description for a product manager, right? mostly the same core stuff. You need to be able to lead a team without having authority. You need to have great communication skills. You need to be able to drive an ambiguity. You need to be able to work with a lot of different people on the technical side and the business side. All of the stuff that we hear all the time, right? But like how do you actually become better at those things, right? Like there's only so much you can gain from reading a book. To me, it's either A, you got to go do it.”
2023-02-23 · Lenny's Podcast · An inside look at how CNN builds product | Upasna Gautam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, I, of course, can't speak for the entire CNN product team, but I can speak for myself and my specific team. So, in order to stay competitive in our modern news landscape, building this content management platform and the technology behind it has taught us how to enable rapid development and integration of new features and workflows. And we've been able to quickly test hypotheses while reducing risk. And again, time is of the essence, right, when it comes to breaking news. And when you layer that with a very complex content management technology, there's a lot of moving parts. And we've been able to do that successfully. And that's pretty amazing. And because of that, we've developed, I think, this unique skill of high agency under high pressure. And I really think that that skill or combination of skills is our superpower. And that is something you”
2023-02-23 · Lenny's Podcast · An inside look at how CNN builds product | Upasna Gautam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In there, and it all happened in the span of minutes. And so while that is happening, while that dress rehearsal is happening, we have our engineers and our editorial support team on hand as well. So they're observing what's happening while it's usually me and one of our editorial stakeholders and leads facilitating the actual rehearsal part and getting user feedback on, okay, what did something raped and everything work as it was supposed to work and also allows us to understand like how far we can go with stress testing different features on our system. So each one is different, but it's a crazy amount of stuff and information you can gather in such a short span of time because it cannot serve the needs of breaking news, then it's useless. So it's a lot of work that goes into it for, you know, this three minute.”
2023-02-23 · Lenny's Podcast · An inside look at how CNN builds product | Upasna Gautam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To our writers and our producers. And then from there, it goes out all the places it needs to go. There's a video that needs to be created. There's an article that needs to be written. If there are, you know, and again, the TV side, I have no insight into. It's like a foreign land to me, but as far as the digital scope goes, there's a lot of work that has to be done. Even things like photo and imagery, right? Like we have a whole team dedicated just to selecting photos, like the photo desk is very involved with that process. And so that is all scripted out. And so we say, okay, here's the news. Here's how it's going to break. And then we run it. And so we use, you know, interpersonal communication tool that work, of course, email. And like we run the whole thing from the minute the email is sent to and of course since we're testing the platform with this breaking news dress rehearsal to the minute you hit publish on that page and there's a lot of stuff that goes on.”
2023-02-23 · Lenny's Podcast · An inside look at how CNN builds product | Upasna Gautam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Descripted, right? So we can only get so close to the real thing. But one thing we do is we script everything, right? Like the teams and the players that we need involved in it, what the incident is. And it usually starts when breaking news occurs with an email. The news gathering team sends an email.”
2023-02-23 · Lenny's Podcast · An inside look at how CNN builds product | Upasna Gautam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Granular detail when we think about everything that could possibly go wrong because it has bent and it will happen and it does go wrong. So that was kind of cool. It was validation to know that the platform we have is really stable and strong and secure, that it was a fallback for the election.”
2023-02-23 · Lenny's Podcast · An inside look at how CNN builds product | Upasna Gautam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's funny, but also crazy and amazing so our new content management platform, you know, where we've been building it for a while and stress testing it for a while. And politics and election season at CNN is Super Bowl times 100. And so we have to be all hands on deck, like all layers of support. And so we have also a lot of layers of fallback in case something happened, right? Like there's layers and layers of infrastructure fallback if cnn.com.com goes down or another service goes down. And so and actually did happen a couple of years ago in the 2020 election. And one of the fallbacks at that time because we were not, we are, you know, we're still on our current content management platform, but we had our new one as we're building it as one of The levels of fault. And if XYZ fails, then it goes to our current platform. And it did.”
2023-02-23 · Lenny's Podcast · An inside look at how CNN builds product | Upasna Gautam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Up to the relevant teams, there are a lot of layers to that protocol when a critical incident occurs. And so our editorial support team is that first layer of support, whereas my team might be the second or third, depending on the level of severity and who gets escalated to. So there's definitely a lot of processes in place. We're not always that first line of defense, which is actually it alleviates a lot of stress to know that we have an entire team around the clock globally dedicated just to that.”
2023-02-23 · Lenny's Podcast · An inside look at how CNN builds product | Upasna Gautam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's certainly team specific because, again, the scope of work across teams really varies. But since my team's product is an entire platform, it's my job to ensure we're crystal clear on our goals because like I said, they may change on a week-by-week basis. One sprint might be high priority feature development and another sprint maybe we're focused on medium priority optimizations and bug fixes. We know that anytime there's a critical incident in production, it also takes critical priority over everything else. So it's a balancing and juggling act that relies heavily on intuitive decision making. But I will say we're also really fortunate to have a global 24-7 editorial support team that we work really closely with. So they are the ones who handle troubleshoot, escalate incidences, incidents.”
2023-02-23 · Lenny's Podcast · An inside look at how CNN builds product | Upasna Gautam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“One of my key stakeholders, she leads the video team at CNN and she is, we've had some discussions about doing a sizzler reel for our content management platform as since we're onboarding people and building new features. And there have been discussions with her about getting a celebrity to come and promote product for us. So working on it.”
2023-02-23 · Lenny's Podcast · An inside look at how CNN builds product | Upasna Gautam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Publish an alling board onto like a politics page. And we're like, oh, okay. So I guess that's it. So one thing we started doing is sending like. These gift boxes of random chots and stuff, would that mean things to us from the whole year? And it's like just cheap little like gag gifts and stuff that we send to each other. I have like random stuff all over my desk. I don't even know if I can share some of it. So we try to make it a point to at least share and celebrate. And then when we're in person, we do too. But again, being remote, there's definitely a challenge there.”
2023-02-23 · Lenny's Podcast · An inside look at how CNN builds product | Upasna Gautam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's different also because they're usually in person in the newsroom and I work remotely. And actually, most of my team works remotely. And so, you know, they have their ritual. But I will say one of the things that we started to do is, so onboarding teams has been a big goal of ours and that we've slowly checked off the list over 2022. And anytime we successfully onboard a team or launch a new feature, you know, it's not anything crazy or fun. Like there's only so much you can do when you work remotely, but we definitely make it a point to celebrate. And it's been hard to figure out ways to keep Team Morale up when you're all remote. And it started with, we knew we needed to start doing something when we would have a big launch and it was so anticolectic and we would literally hit.”
2023-02-23 · Lenny's Podcast · An inside look at how CNN builds product | Upasna Gautam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I'll be very honest. We are not one of the cool teams, the politics team, like, and the breaking news teams have all these cool rituals and fun things that they do.”
2023-02-23 · Lenny's Podcast · An inside look at how CNN builds product | Upasna Gautam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Experts on the why are we doing this and what are we working towards to better determine technical feasibility. And he's done an amazing job of also passing that knowledge down to the rest of our engineers on our team. So it's really like this mentality of getting that important feedback from our journey. Process right up front. It makes the whole process in general more efficient.”
2023-02-23 · Lenny's Podcast · An inside look at how CNN builds product | Upasna Gautam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We have multiple variations of those. Some are standing ceremonies, of course, and some are ad hoc. Again, it's really based on the work we're doing in whatever phase we're in. But when it comes to product review and product discovery or design review meetings, in addition to my design lead, I've made it a point to bring in my tech lead and engineers along for this product discovery ride. And that's definitely been a game changer as well. When our engineers are able to understand our journalists' needs at the same level as we are, they're able to define the foul to do it with so much greater clarity and precision. And so my tech lead is embedded also in our product discovery process. He joins our user testing sessions and our design jams and our editorial conversation, planning sessions, and it's helped him and the rest of our tech and engineering team.”
2023-02-23 · Lenny's Podcast · An inside look at how CNN builds product | Upasna Gautam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Goals that we know that, okay, this is what we need to work towards. And that makes, you know, we, like the saying we always hear in product, right, of stay firm on the goal, but flexible on the process. And like we've definitely been able to use that and leverage that in the way that we track against our goals.”
2023-02-23 · Lenny's Podcast · An inside look at how CNN builds product | Upasna Gautam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's a combination of both. So we have one that is an overarching roadmap that tracks to our company OKRs and our product organization OKRs. And then from there, I mentioned we have our squads of product teams. And we have OKRs on those as well track up to the larger, broader ones. And so once we get down to that level though, there is flexibility and we have autonomy to tackle those how we want, which is really great because the scope of work across our different product teams is drastically different. Working on core platform like I do versus working on video experience versus podcasts. I mean, it's apples and oranges. And so it's really awesome that we have the flexibility to kind of make it work for us while also having these larger”
2023-02-23 · Lenny's Podcast · An inside look at how CNN builds product | Upasna Gautam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, absolutely. We do. We've used OKRs for a long time and they've served as an anchor for my team over the last three years. I kind of already, I can't go into specifics on like what are OKRs are, but I did kind of cover the two main parts of it, which is, you know, rebuilding or content management platform and onboarding our users to it. So again, this is a long game at CNM when you're working on a core platform to replace a legacy one. And so we break those OKRs down, of course, even further into, we look two to three years out and build goals based off of that. Then we break them down by quarter and month. And then out of that, for my team and what I do, I need to, for my own sake and my team's sake, break those down by the week. And when we're in rapid development phases, we're planning on a daily basis.”
2023-02-23 · Lenny's Podcast · An inside look at how CNN builds product | Upasna Gautam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Most of our product, work, and product teams all sit behind the scenes. And so I think just that in itself, like the sheer size of that is surprising to a lot of people. So I mentioned like all of the different teams, right, product teams that are based off of function, content management platforms, infrastructure, personalization, video, podcasts, linear TV. And I think that in itself, the sheer size of it, like we're not the size of Google by any means, but at the same time, we have the expertise and the depth and breadth of a lot of those larger tech companies.”
2023-02-23 · Lenny's Podcast · An inside look at how CNN builds product | Upasna Gautam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think the most surprising thing may actually be that there's just so many different types of products that we build. Like I said, I think when most people think of CNN, UC TV and you think of Anderson Cooper and all of the things that are very publicly, you know, visible, there is”
2023-02-23 · Lenny's Podcast · An inside look at how CNN builds product | Upasna Gautam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My role is focused on rebuilding the tooling and the editorial experience of that platform, as well as doing the actual onboarding of our journalists. So we work cross-functionally because our team kind of is the umbrella over a lot of different teams. So we truly work cross-functionally to make sure that, you know, we're serving our journalists with the tools that they need to do their job in the most efficient way possible.”
2023-02-23 · Lenny's Podcast · An inside look at how CNN builds product | Upasna Gautam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The core platform team, our stakeholders, and our customers are, like I mentioned, our journalists and our editors, which presents a really unique dynamic. And it's one that I love. We have direct access to our customers at all times of day for better or for worse. And they're embedded into our product development process. And each of those teams under CNN Digital is kind of like a squad, very similar to how it is at other larger tech companies. We have PMs. We have engineers, designers, and delivery managers embedded in those squads. And since my team is a core platform team, our main responsibility is to A, build our newer, faster, more flexible content management platform to replace our legacy one. And B onboard our entire editorial staff to it. And so even more specifically,”
2023-02-23 · Lenny's Podcast · An inside look at how CNN builds product | Upasna Gautam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes. So I mentioned earlier my team sits on Zen and Digital. And I think when most people think of CNN, of course, you think of TV and linear programming. I have nothing to do with that. CNN Digital is digital and it's made up of several teams that are structured around a lot of different product areas. It includes everything from the content management platforms that I work on to data infrastructure to personalization to video experience, which includes like the products of video editor and the video player to podcast. There's a lot. So each of those are product teams. And so we also split out the way CNN has split out into CNN digital is because there's a separate core content platform that powers broadcast and linear TV. And the one that I work on powers CNN digital. So on my team.”
2023-02-23 · Lenny's Podcast · An inside look at how CNN builds product | Upasna Gautam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Either maybe already have that we can optimize, B, we build anew, or we tell them it's not viable. And the good thing is that because they've been along for the ride with us throughout the product discovery process, we've earned their trust and respect so that when we tell them something like it's not viable, they usually get it.”
2023-02-23 · Lenny's Podcast · An inside look at how CNN builds product | Upasna Gautam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And do a simulation of a breaking news scenario to stress test our platform because all breaking news scenarios are definitely not the same either. So this gives us a lot of great feedback in that short amount of time at the speed of breaking news. And then last but not least, we have office hours, which I just started last year. And that's also probably what you can imagine, open blocks of time where me and my product design partner and my tech lead are this there to answer questions, help people troubleshoot any friction they might be experiencing in their workflow, get their feedback. We just wanted to open up another line of communication. So we do those right now once a week. Sometimes they go up to two times a week if we're in a really rigorous onboarding phase. After those conversations sessions and events happen, it's our job to translate their needs into the functions that we a”
2023-02-23 · Lenny's Podcast · An inside look at how CNN builds product | Upasna Gautam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source