2012
North America
Lucas Galgano
HEAD OF PRODUCT
When Lucas Galgano recently joined Knotch as their first Head of Product they were a fast-growing team of 60 with a roster of brand name customer logos you might expect of a company 10 times their size. They grew this customer base on the promise of a new form of content intelligence for brands, pairing content performance with consumer sentiment in real-time. Now they needed to solidify the vision and deliver on it.
Lucas’ first goal was to create a 12-month roadmap. And while some product leaders might feel pressure to have all the answers, Lucas took a different approach.
“The best products are always created by putting the user at the heart of the development process. It means product management shouldn’t be done in isolation, sitting in a corner and coming up with ideas. There needs to be a collaborative approach. Bringing everyone on that journey was important to me and I needed a tool to be able to do that.”
Lucas Galgano
HEAD OF PRODUCT
Early on he ruled out managing this process in generic tools he’d used in the past.
“We have multiple products with lots of features and so many ideas to get out the door. Managing our roadmap out of Excel and PowerPoint as we’ve done in the past wasn’t sustainable. I needed something that could scale with our growth.”
Lucas Galgano
HEAD OF PRODUCT
In the end, Lucas adopted Productboard because it allowed him to visualize his roadmap, but also to flexibly collect, organize, and prioritize feature ideas. As part of his first big initiative, he ran ideation exercises with colleagues across the organization. He captured these ideas in Productboard and from there, added more context, force ranked them, and shared with colleagues for additional feedback.
Lucas later presented the roadmap at an all-hands that was remarkably well-received for someone who had joined the organization barely several months prior. Colleagues didn’t just appreciate the plan — they raved about the entire process, and welcomed the opportunity to be a part of it.
Productboard is now an integral part of Knotch’s product management process. The team uses the Slack integration to push product ideas and feedback raised by colleagues into one centralized repository for product insights. They then manage feature ideas in Productboard as they advance from new ideas, to candidates, to delivery. When features are ready to be worked on, they are pushed to Jira. Productboard’s two-way Jira integration means subsequent changes are synced everywhere, so less time is spent managing disparate systems.
This is just one of many ways Lucas has found Productboard saves him substantial time throughout the week.
“What would normally take me multiple spreadsheets, multiple PowerPoints, multiple presentations I can literally just click to change the view in Productboard to optimize it for a certain audience. My prep time for both regular product meetings and customer-facing presentations was cut in half. It’s given me so much time back in my calendar, which is super refreshing.”
Lucas Galgano
HEAD OF PRODUCT
Knotch’s Blueprint product helps you monitor content across the web — for inspiration, or to keep an eye on the competition.
But the productivity gain is just part of the picture. By defining a clear prioritization framework in Productboard, Lucas has ensured he’s able to identify the most relevant ideas to support his strategy. Alongside context around user needs aligned with Knotch’s personas, this helps him communicate the context behind the plan to colleagues on a continuous basis.
“When engineers can see the actual customer feedback on products and features – it helps justify their effort. They need to understand the overarching picture, the entire roadmap, and how what they’re working on supports it.”
Lucas Galgano
HEAD OF PRODUCT
For Lucas and his team, providing transparency into the product team’s processes isn’t just a nice sentiment. Their collaborative approach is integral to sourcing the best ideas, boosting morale, and ensuring the optimal solutions get delivered.
“We believe work is people coming together to create, hack, and collaborate. And we believe technology should make work easier and faster, not harder. When designed and developed correctly, it encourages new ideas and excitement.”
Lucas Galgano
HEAD OF PRODUCT
Lucas achieved that level of collaborative creation across his organization thanks to his efforts to rally everyone around this new prioritization and roadmapping process. Productboard was there to support his team every step of the way.
Ready to make products people want?
